Candidate filing for local offices starts Monday

By Evan Smith

Candidate filing for local offices, either online or in person at the King County elections office, starts Monday.

Candidates can file in person at the County elections office in Renton or online. Elections officials encourage candidates to file online. Candidates who go to the elections office get sent to a computer terminal and told to follow directions.

Online filing lasts from 9am Monday, May 11, through 4:30pm Friday, May 15. Candidates file by following the appropriate links at the county elections web site.

In person filing lasts from 8:30am Monday through 4:30pm Friday at the county elections office in Renton. In-office filers get instructions on using an in-house computer.

All candidates must pay their filing fees by the end of the filing week. Candidates can send their fees by mail. The filing fee is 1 percent of a position’s annual salary. Unpaid positions, like those on school boards, fire commissions, and utility district boards, have no filing fee.

Candidates can withdraw their names from the ballot through Monday, May 18 at 4:30pm.

All local positions are nonpartisan. Positions with three or more candidates appear on the Aug. 4 primary ballot, with ballot order determined by a lot draw. The top two candidates advance to the November general-election ballot, where the ballot order follows vote order in the primary. Positions with only one or two candidates appear only on the November ballot, with ballot order determined by the lot draw.

Positions on 2015 ballots include Lake Forest Park mayor, three positions each on the Lake Forest Park and Shoreline city councils and the Shoreline School Board, two positions each on the Ronald Wastewater District board and the Northshore Fire District board, and one each on the Shoreline Fire Department board, the North City Water Commission and the Lake Forest Park Water District board.

Candidates for the School Board positions must each live in one of five director districts. The three school board positions on 2015 ballots are those representing Director District 1, an area north of Northwest Richmond Beach Road and east of a line that mostly follows 12th Avenue Northwest; Director District 4, which straddles Interstate 5 in the south part of the School District; and Director District 5 along Lake Washington in the southeast corner of the School District. Mike Jacobs currently represents Director District 1; Dick Nicholson now represents district 4; and Richard Potter represents district 5. Ballots throughout the School District will include all three positions.

City Council and school board positions have four-year terms; positions on the fire, water and wastewater commissions have six-year terms.

Also on this year’s ballot will be the positions of county assessor, county elections director, two positions on the Seattle Port Commission and two positions on the King County Superior Court and one place on the Court of Appeals.

Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com.

Updated 05-10-2015 7:13am