jenk

New voters are registering in King County at a rate well above 10,000 a month [...] The county's rolls included just under 1,041,000 voters as of Friday. The all-time high is the 1,082,406 voters registered for the 2004 general election, the last time races for president and governor appeared on the ballot.

More than 30 percent of the state's voters are registered in King County. The statewide total was just under 3,430,000 Friday, compared with the record of 3,508,208 in 2004.

Per Wikipedia, the census bureau estimated in 2006 that King has a population of 1,835,300 and Washington overall has 6,395,798 - which puts King at 28.7% of the state's population - and means we do have a higher proportion of registered voters than population.

That would also mean King has over 50% of its population registered. (Of course, those under 18 can't vote, so there's a certain amount of those in the total population that can't register.)

For the non-locals: King County is home to Seattle, Pierce to Tacoma, and Snohomish to Everett. Those three counties contain over half the state's population. They also tend to be a bit more liberal than most of the other counties.

More recently, the 2004 gubernatorial election had three recounts, with the last being a manual recount. During the manual recount there was a lot of controversy over King's handling of some absentee ballots (including the county council chairman's ballot). Five other counties found incorrectly rejected and initially uncounted ballots during the manual recount. Not surprisingly, many procedural changes to elections have occurred since 2004.