Did you know that the state League is looking at this question?
In June of this year, the League of Women Voters of Washington voted to conduct a project evaluating the state of democracy in Washington. This idea came from the League of Women Voters of Maine who have been conducting a
biennial assessment of their state democratic processes since 2020. The purpose of this report is to examine and assess democratic processes using indicators based on publicly available data, published reports, and research.
Members of the Washington state League realized that in these tumultuous times, this idea had great relevance and initiated an effort to conduct a similar evaluation, adapted for the processes in the state of Washington. This idea was approved at the state Convention in 2025 with a report due in two years.
Questions to be examined include:
- how representative is our legislature and executive leadership of the state population
- how active are Washington voters; are there correlations between voter participation and different demographics such as poverty rate, racial make up, or other factors
- how aggressive is our voting system in facilitating voting
- are our voting systems structured to result in the most representative outcomes
- is the conduct of our elections secure, transparent, and efficient
- what is the effect of money in our political system; how transparent are our democratic processes
- what is the health of our media, not only newspapers but also other forms of our public media
- what are the obstacles for public participation in a rapidly changing digital world
- how robust is our judiciary system
- and how strong is our education system in supporting an informed public
We hope that by presenting data around these different issues that the League, the legislature, executive leaders, other non-profits and the general public can assess how well Washington state is fulfilling expectations for how our democracy should function. This first report will address a limited number of topics but followup reports will expand the topics and show data trends over time.
Several members of the Snohomish League are already participating in this effort. If you are interested in learning more, please contact
Jean Snider.