Unopposed Elections in Whatcom County, WA

01

Findings

General elections only. Washington holds local elections in odd-numbered years, which is where the rate is highest — those are the ballots with the fire, water, cemetery and school seats on them.

Source WA Secretary of State official general election results, 2014–2025 · as of 2026-09-05

02

By kind of office

Not evenly distributed. The seats with the highest rates are mostly the ones with the lowest profile — park, cemetery, water and fire districts, where a filing fee and a handful of signatures is the whole barrier.

Share of races in each kind of office that drew a single candidate. Bars are static; the widths are the data, and the printed figure beside each bar is the value.

1. Fire district

   16 of 16 races

   100%

2. Judicial

   1 of 1 races

   100%

3. Water/Sewer district

   9 of 11 races

   81.8%

4. Park/Cemetery/Library

   14 of 18 races

   77.8%

5. City

   16 of 27 races

   59.3%

6. School district

   8 of 15 races

   53.3%

7. Port district

   1 of 2 races

   50%

8. County

   0 of 3 races

   0%

9. Hospital district

   0 of 1 races

   0%

Source WA Secretary of State official general election results · as of 2026-09-05 · n 94 races in 9 kinds of office, summing to the whole · scale every bar is a share of its own kind, so the bars are comparable to each other and to nothing else · note this county, the latest general election · definitions

03

The seats themselves

Every one of these was decided by a single person filing. The full list is here rather than a sample, so a specific office can be looked up instead of inferred from a rate. Every card says which population it belongs to.

What filing required in 2025 — stated, not summarised

These are the statutory requirements as the state publishes them, reproduced because most people have never seen them written down. They are the same for an incumbent and for anyone else.

Window

One week in May, set by statute. There is no late filing. RCW 29A.24.050

Form

A declaration of candidacy, filed online or with the county auditor. It states your name as it will appear, the office, and that you are qualified. RCW 29A.24.031

Fee

One percent of the annual salary of the office. For seats that pay nothing, the fee is nothing. RCW 29A.24.091

Qualification

A registered voter living in the district on the day you file. No signatures, no party, no prior office. RCW 29A.24.075

After filing

A campaign committee and PDC reporting are required only once you raise or spend money. Many unopposed district candidates never do either. RCW 42.17A.205

How to run for one of these seats · component 09, per kind of office

This section appears on every office page on this site, contested or not, filled or vacant. Its presence is not a comment on whoever holds a seat, and we do not say whether a seat is winnable — that would be a prediction, and this page carries records.

Source WA Secretary of State official general election results, November 2025; Secretary of State candidate filing guidance; RCW 29A.24 · as of 2026-09-05 · rows winner named for 65 of 65 seats · absent term and pay per seat — not in the results export; the fee rule is stated instead of a dollar amount · the requirements in full

04

What this report will not compute

This is the one report on the site that ends in an ask, which makes it the one report where the temptation to shade the data is real. Each of these would help the ask and damage the record.

No winnability score.

We do not rank seats by how easy they would be to take, and we do not model turnout. A number telling someone they would probably win is a prediction dressed as a record.

No vulnerable-incumbent list.

Sitting officials are not named on this page as targets. An unopposed incumbent appears in the aggregate and on their own entity page, where their record speaks without our framing.

No claim that uncontested means unaccountable.

Many of these boards are run well by people nobody has ever wanted to replace. The finding is that no one was asked, not that anyone failed.

No geolocation.

The block above counts seats across the whole report and says so, because we do not know where you are. We do not read your IP or ask for your location, on this page least of all — the page is asking you for something.

No connected-records section.

A report is not an entity. It has no node in the graph and draws no edges — the seats it lists link out to their own records, which is where relationships live.

No trend from one cycle to the next.

Washington runs local elections in odd years and state elections in even ones, so consecutive cycles are not comparable. The by-election table above is grouped for that reason.

05

Definitions

What was counted, so the figure can be checked rather than taken.

Uncontested

Exactly one candidate appeared on the general election ballot for that seat. Write-in lines are not counted as candidates.

Race

One seat on one ballot in one election. A three-seat board contributes three races. This is why the denominator is larger than the number of governing bodies.

No candidate

Zero filings at the close of filing week — a population this report does not yet count. The certified results carry no row for a seat nobody filed for, so it cannot be counted from them; it is a distinct finding we do not have, not a stronger version of the one above.

Excluded

Ballot measures, recall questions and advisory votes, none of which have candidates. Precinct committee officer races are excluded too, as party positions rather than public offices — they are numerous and nearly all unopposed, so counting them would raise the headline rate while measuring something else.

Top-two primary

Washington narrows most races to two candidates before the general. A race can be genuinely contested in August and appear uncontested here only if a single person filed at all — not merely because one was eliminated.

Multi-county races

Excluded from county tables, because a race spanning several counties cannot be attributed to one. They are included in the statewide totals.

06

Reproduce this

The figures come from one table built from the Secretary of State result exports. This is the query behind them.

SELECT COUNT(*) races, SUM(is_uncontested) unopposed
FROM race_contests
WHERE election_type = 'general'
  AND election_date = '20251104'
  AND counties = 'Whatcom';

Source

Washington Secretary of State official general election results, 2014–2025.

Uncontested flag

Set when exactly one candidate row exists for a seat on a general election ballot. Computed at import, not by hand.

Rebuilt

2026-09-05. Figures change when the state publishes a corrected canvass.

Cite this report

This is public-records reporting. Use it, and say where it came from.

“Unopposed Elections in Whatcom County, WA,” WashingtonIndependents.org, data as of 2026-09-05, accessed 2026-09-18. https://washingtonindependents.org/uncontested/whatcom/

Copy citationJSON endpointReport a correction

Our tables, figures and notes on this page are released under CC BY 4.0 — reuse them, including commercially, with attribution. The underlying records are public records of the State of Washington and were never ours to license.

If you quote the recruitment block, quote it as our position rather than as part of the finding — that is why it carries a label the rest of the page does not.