According to the Grays Harbor County Auditor’s Office, new 2026 General Election ballots were mailed out to Hoquiam and Oakville residents Tuesday morning.
Original ballots sent to Hoquiam residents were missing the Timberland Regional Library (TRL) levy lid lift, while the ballots sent to residents within Grays Harbor Fire District No. 1 covering Oakville did not include the fire levy.
The Auditor’s Office says to complete the new ballot upon receipt and return it even if you have already completed and returned the initial ballot you received. The Auditor’s Office will hold initial ballots received and supersede them with the new ones as they come in. All ballots must be received by Grays Harbor County Auditor’s Office before 8 p.m. Tuesday, November 3.
“Timberland Regional Library appreciates that this error was caught early, and that the Auditor’s Office has acted quickly to resolve the situation and provided an opportunity for every eligible voter to cast a vote on the Library District’s levy proposition,” TRL stated in a press release.
Grays Harbor Fire District #1 wrote in a Facebook post that, “We want to make our community aware that Proposition 1, the Fire levy lid lift for Grays Harbor Fire District 1, was unfortunately not included on the November ballot.”
According to Grays Harbor County Auditor Joesph R. MacLean, it was cheaper to print completely new ballots in lieu of a single-issue ballot.
Montesano’s ballots are correct despite an error that appeared in the informational pamphlet mailed to voters ahead of the opening of the mail-in voting period, so Montesano residents will not be receiving anything new in the mail.
“Unfortunately, the voters’ pamphlet, which was prepared in June, contains an error regarding the proposed levy increase for Proposition 1. While the official ballot contains the correct information, the pamphlet mailed to voters does not accurately reflect the proposed increase,” said Montesano Mayor Tyler Trimble. “To be clear, the current levy rate is approximately $1.70 per $1,000 of assessed property value, and the proposed 2027 rate is $3.22 per $1,000. That represents an increase of approximately $1.52 per $1,000, not the $0.40 stated in the pamphlet.”
Grays Harbor County is not the only county in the region to experience ballot issues. The TRL levy lid lift was also left off the Raymond ballot in Pacific County. A press release issued by the Pacific County Auditor’s Office on Saturday explained the reason for the TRL levy lid lift omission dated back to 2015 when the annexation of TRL into the city of Raymond “was not correctly reported or recorded. Because of this error, election precinct records were not correctly updated and this affected 1,828 voters in Raymond.” A similar situation occurred with Hoquiam whose library was annexed for taxing purposes in 2011 and not added to the GIS system. A clerical error led to the Oakville omission.
