Puyallup's Public Safety Building Measure May Still Fail

PUYALLUP, WA — It's not that Puyallup's public safety building measure wasn't popular. It's that voting wasn't popular enough.

In Tuesday's general election, Puyallup voters were asked to weigh in on Proposition 1, which asked voters to approve funding for a new $82.7 million public safety building. The building would house the police department, the local jail and the Puyallup Municipal Court.

Supporters of the project argued that current public safety buildings are out of date, including the current Puyallup police building, which was built in the late 1960s. Voters generally agreed. The first ballot results Tuesday evening showed the proposition was prevailing with 60.55 percent of voters saying "yes" to the new building.

Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to get the new building built. The county's bond and levy validation process required that propositions such as this must meet two criteria, the Pierce County Auditor's office explained.

• The measure must pass with at least 60 percent of the vote, which the measure currently has.
• The voter turnout must equal or exceed 40 percent of the turnout of the last general election, a level that Tuesday's turnout did not meet.

To meet the 40 percent threshold, 9,370 Puyallup voters would have needed to cast a vote on the proposition either way, the auditor's office said. As of Tuesday, just 5,558 ballots had been counted.

In other words, the 2020 presidential election may have actually doomed Proposition 1. Pierce County saw a record voter turnout in 2020, which in turn raised the necessary threshold for the 2021 measure.

There is still time for the vote to meet the threshold. Fewer than 20 percent of Pierce County voters had their ballots tabulated by the time the polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

The Pierce County Auditor estimated that 39 percent of voters will ultimately cast their ballots in the election, meaning that, if there are 4,000 uncounted Puyallup voters, and 60 percent of those uncounted voters supported the measure, it could still pass.

Unfortunately, Wednesday ballot drop created another hurdle: not only are there still not 9,370 Puyallup ballots tabulated (the latest count has 7926) but later voters appear to be less enthusiastic about the proposal, causing the approval rate to dip below 60 percent to 59.97 percent.