SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash — Spokane is on track to have the largest amount of voters its ever had for a presidential election.
Even though Washington State has had mail-in voting for years, Spokane County is seeing a new spike in voter registration.
"We are expecting, potentially, a record breaking turnout in this presidential election," said Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton. "We've had almost 3,300 new registrations in August alone."
Spokane County now has over 334,000 registered voters, she said.
The main reason for the increase in voter registration is due to the overwhelming interest the presidential election is driving, according to Dalton.
A surprise to her is one demographic that is finally registering a lot of new voters.
"Well, we are seeing registrations in the younger population, we are seeing some better turnout than we would expect," she said. "It's going to be an amazing year."
Thousands of new voters could mean the election may be hard to predict, but Dalton isn't worried. Spokane is a traditional area, she said.
"Eastern Washington as a whole definitely leans towards Republican candidates, although there is a Spokane-area core that votes solidly Democrat," she said. "But in the Spokane area, we really do vote by person, not necessarily by party."
It is still another reason why people should come out and vote, she said. She is projecting a historic turnout among all voters in Spokane County.
"Normally, in a presidential election, we would see about 80-82%," she said. "This presidential election, we're expecting to approach 90%."
She is expecting 300,000 ballots, which is over 80,000 more than in the 2008 presidential election.
Washington gives a three-week grace period for votes to trickle in from either the United States Postal Service or ballot boxes. Your vote will only be counted during the grace period if it is marked as sent the day of election or earlier.
USPS recently came under backlash following protocol changes that would have impacted election mail getting in on time. Dalton is not concerned about Eastern Washington's branch.
"Our Postal Service employees know how to handle vote by mail, they know how to handle those ballots," she said. "But just to be certain, we're hoping that voters put their ballot into the mail no later than Monday before election day, just to be safe and get that postmark"
Ballots will be sent out on October 16. You can learn more about voting in Washington and Idaho by texting the word vote to 509-448-2000.