Our digital collections librarian, who is working on a library project to digitize all past Washington State Voters Pamphlets, stumbled across a crowd pleaser: a blast from the past!

There in the 1988 voters’ pamphlet, is Sam Reed running for state auditor. Our current Washington Secretary of State didn’t win his race that year; Robert V. Graham D beat him out with 55.43% to Reed’s 44.57%. But Reed did go on to be elected Thurston County Auditor five times.

The Library started with digitizing the state voters pamphlet from 1914 and is working its way up to more recent versions – they can be accessed through the library catalog by searching for “voters pamphlet”. Those that have already been digitized contain the link “view online from the Washington State Library.” You can also find them through the Voters Pamphlet Publishing History Chart .