Archives for August 2009

I received a mailing from Susan Hutchison. It’s vapid, empty, and nonspecific (apparently, she’s for accountability, against waste, and supports small business, jobs and the environment), but that’s all really beside the point. The point is, I received a mailing from Susan Hutchison.

Quite frankly, I don’t remember the last time I’ve received a mailing from a Republican. What little information there is in the voting roles about party affiliation (zip code and participation in presidential primaries), there’s enough to mark me as a strong Democrat in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, so Republican campaign consultants generally assume that it’s a complete and utter waste of money mailing me literature. And rightly so.

But not Hutchison’s.

Either the Hutchison campaign is not efficiently targeting their mailing lists, or, as I’m guessing is more likely the case, they’ve made the strategic decision that they’ll have enough money to target strong Democrats in the hope that we won’t have enough information to know that Hutchison has long been a partisan, conservative Republican.

This is, of course, the major drawback to our new “nonpartisan” elections for county offices; by removing the R or the D next to the candidates’ names we deny voters one of the most useful pieces of information in determining where candidates stand on crucial issues. That is, we end up with a less informed electorate.

And that is exactly what Hutchison is counting on.

I’m heading out of town for a couple weeks, so I just filled out my ballot, and in the interest of wearing my bias on my sleeve, I thought I’d share. In ballot order:  Dow Constantine, Anne L. Ellington, Rob Holland, Max Vekich, Greg Nickels, Dorsol Plants, Jessie Israel, Bobby Forch, Approved and Charlie Mas.

These aren’t endorsements, and these aren’t necessarily the folks I’d like to see win. In fact, in at least one of these races, I plan to vote for somebody else in November. But I have my reasons, such as rewarding good candidates I expect to lose. So don’t read more into this than intended.

Hey Chris… what the hell is up with that headline?  Um, “so far, so good” for whom?

So far, so good on anti-gay rights measure signature check

The secretary of state’s office said Monday evening that it has completed its second day of checking signatures on Referendum 71 – the attempt to repeal Washington’s “everything but marriage” same-sex domestic partner law.

So far the error rate is low, 12.31 percent.

R-71 proponents turned in 137,689 signatures – 14 percent more than the minimum needed to be placed on the November ballot. Whether Referendum 71 will ultimately qualify is still unclear.

As of Monday state election workers had checked 11,502 signatures, and 10,087 have been OK’d with 1,415 rejected, mostly because the person does not show up on the voter rolls.

Okay, let me explain this for my friends in the media one last time. Juxtaposing a 12.31 percent invalidation rate versus that widely quoted 14 percent cushion tells the reader absolutely nothing. In fact, it misinforms by implying that signatures are being invalidated a full 1.69 percent below the maximum rate, when in fact the actual maximum invalidation rate beyond which the measure fails to qualify for the ballot, the signature cushion divided by the number of signatures submitted, is 12.43% (17,112/137,689).

Math matters.

In fact, math matters so much that it can give us valuable insight into the true prospects for R-71… prospects which, given the latest batch of numbers, don’t look so good so far for R-71’s sponsors.

Without adjusting for the exponential increase in duplicate signatures as the sample size increases, the invalidation rate on the first batch of 5,646 signatures was 11.34 percent, while the invalidation rate on the second batch of 5,856 signatures rose to 13.35 percent… not exactly what R-71 backers were hoping for. I’ve yet to see a breakout of duplicates in the second batch, so I can’t refine our 3 to 3.25 percent projection of the duplication rate for the entire universe of signatures, but when adjusting the combined 12.31 percent rate from the 11,502 signatures checked thus by the number of duplicates projected from the first sample, we’re now looking at a total invalidation rate in excess of 15 percent. Which would be pretty typical for a petition drive using a mix of volunteer and paid signature gatherers.

To put that in perspective, should these trends hold up, R-71 would fall short of the 120,577 minimum by over 3,500 valid signatures, or nearly 3 percent.

Failing by 3 percent is a lot different than passing by 1.69 percent, dontcha think? Like I said, math matters.

Speaking of which, it doesn’t take much more data to declare R-71’s failure a near statistical certainty, whatever the final margin, and Darryl will run some simulations as the next few batches come in. But honestly, this measure is toast.

UPDATE:
The SOS has broken out the dupes from yesterday’s batch: 16… which is roughly along the lines of what would be expected, as the percentage of dupes increases with the total sample size. (There were 7 dupes in the first, slightly smaller batch.) Darryl’s simulations are more accurate, but my rough calculations now project a roughly 2.4% duplication rate. Combined, this comes to about an adjusted 14.5% invalidation rate across the two batches, well above the maximum 12.43% rate needed to qualify.

It’s happening here.

Then Cong. Smith asked for comments, and the comments began. The first question: would this new plan include tax payer support for abortion? The next question, from one of the young fellas sitting in front of me: on page … of the House bill, (reading from a copy he had obtained from the internet) it says plainly that if an individual elects the public insurance option, he can never ever have private insurance again. Then many people in the room started to vocalize and clap, drowning out Cong. Smith’s response, and shouting arguments to him.

He asked for people to line up at the microphones for comments. Many people did line up… They spoke of their distrust of the government; the post office, social security, etc; they did not want their health care in the hands of bureaucrats. Several people said in a very angry tone of voice, I just want you (Cong. Smith) to be the first to take this new public insurance, and see how YOU like it. At this, the people in the room jeered, some shook their fists, some said angrily Yeah!

When Cong Smith then took a question from an elderly person sitting up front, who had not lined up at the microphone, a young man shouted loudly that she should wait her turn, why did HE have to stand up if she didn’t… Much supportive vocalization from the seated people. More comments from the next person at the microphone: People who are uninsured now can afford to buy insurance, they just don’t. Many people qualify for medicaid and they just don’t bother. The statistics of infant mortality (the US being number 42 or so in industrialized countries) are false…

So um, hey, maybe reporters could say, walk up to these “opponents” and ask them basic stuff. It wouldn’t be that hard, if there were reporters available and if they knew how to do their jobs and stuff. Just an idea. I guess it’s kind of hard to do since so many veteran political reporters are not working for newspapers any longer.

All this “anger,” and nobody to cover it. If editorial boards ever caught wind of this from reading their own newspapers, fainting couches and smelling salts would be in darn short supply. There is nothing more horrible than partisan incivility, as the editorial boards so frequently remind us.

(Props to WFSE Political Blog.)

The headline on the Seattle Times front page asks “137,689 names later, gay community asks: How did they do it?” in regards to Referendum 71, while over on Slog, Dominic Holden looks at the apparently low invalidation rate on the first batch of signatures and declares “This (Probably) Means War!“…

In case you haven’t heard, a preliminary check of signatures for anti-gay Referendum 71 shows the measure may qualify for the ballot. Some quick math: Elections officials scanned 5,646 petition signatures and found that 4,991 were valid as of last Friday, says secretary of state’s office spokesman David Ammons. That’s a 11.34 inaccuracy rate (which is unusually low compared to a standard inaccuracy rate for Washington petitions of only about 18 percent). Referendum backer Protect Marriage Washington submitted 137,689 total signatures, which would give them a 14 percent cushion. But they’re beating that cushion by nearly three points. If they keep it up through the rest of the signature count, the religious bigots will succeed at putting domestic partner rights of gay couples up to a public vote in November.

Geez… doesn’t anybody read HA on the weekends?

First of all, even if the invalidation rate was as low as 11.34%, they are still not “beating that cushion by nearly three points,” for the media (aided by a lack of clarity on the part of the SOS) is comparing the invalidation rate to the wrong number. R-71’s sponsors submitted 137,689 signatures, 17,112 (or 14.20%) more than the 120,577 minimum required. But since the invalidation rate is calculated against the signatures submitted and counted, so to must the so-called cushion, coming to a 12.43% (17,112/137,689) threshold for invalid signatures beyond which the measure fails to qualify for the ballot.

So based on the raw data from the first batch of signatures processed, R-71 is squeaking by, but by little more than a point.

But, as I explained on Saturday, the reported 11.34% invalidation rate on the first batch of 5,646 signatures is deceptively low because such a small sample cannot reflect the true percentage of duplicate pairs within the total universe of 137,689 submitted signatures. The reason, if you think about it, is obvious, but rather than trying to explain this again myself, I’ll just let the Secretary of State’s Office do so in its own words, from a 2006 FAQ regarding the rejection of I-917:

Duplicates play an important role in the state’s formula that determines the rejection rate on a random check.

In the normal course of events, finding duplicates in a random sample bears directly upon the size of the sample being done.

For example, a random check of 100 names out of 266,006 would not be expected to find any duplicates, but a random check of 200,000 names would be expected to find duplicates. Thus, the size of the pool increases exponentially the likelihood of duplicates.

Finding duplicates in a small 4% sample suggests that the number of duplicates that exists in the entire pool is exponentially larger.

The mathematical algorithm adopted by the state contains calculations designed to account for this dynamic.

Thus, the state is not able to finally determine the rejection rate on a particular initiative simply by looking at the signatures approved and rejected. The formula also calculates the acceptable number of duplicates for the sample size.

The SOS doesn’t specifically share its algorithm for projecting duplicate signature rates, but from the data provided in the I-917 FAQ, one can make a pretty good guess. The SOS reported 24 dupes found amongst 10,819 signatures sampled out of 266,006 submitted, yet projected a 5.45% duplication rate… exponentially larger than the 0.22% rate within the sample itself.

So how did the SOS come up with that larger number? They appear to be dividing the number of dupes by the sample ratio (sample size over total submitted), and then dividing the quotient by the sample size, as in:

( 24 / ( 10,819 / 266,006 ) ) / 10,819 = 5.45%

Run the data from the first batch of R-17 signatures through the same equation and rather than the current 0.12% duplication rate, you get:

( 7 / ( 5,646 / 137,689 ) ) / 5,646 = 3.02%

Now, separate the 7 dupes from the other 633 signatures rejected in the first batch, and you get a projected total invalidation rate of 14.23%… not at all bad by historical standards, but nearly two points worse than what is needed to qualify.

So… how reliable are these projections? It’s hard to say. The sample size is pretty small, and we have no reason to believe the first batch was particularly random. Furthermore, while I’m no statistician, the formula above does strike me as rather unsophisticated. (That said, Darryl ran his own simulations on the same data and came up with a slightly higher projected duplication rate of 3.25%.)

What I can say with absolute certainty is that the duplication rate is dramatically underreported in the first batch, and that it will steadily rise as the aggregate sample size gets larger, increasing the total invalidation rate with it. Thus, while the press may hope for the contentious R-71 to qualify for the ballot and continue to generate headlines, in answer to the Times’ question, “How did they do it?”, the most likely answer will be:  “They didn’t.”

…Wasn’t just the bad air quality in last week’s record heat wave. No, think hotter. It’s election season, and while Goldy might not make endorsements each time out, I do.

From a progressive standpoint, most of the races and issues on the ballot this time are pretty clear choices. Here are my preferences in the races that will be decided this time: Constantine for King County Council; Holland and Vekich for Port Commission; Bloom, Licata, and Miller for Seattle City Council; Bass and Mas for Seattle School Board; Yes on the bag fee.

That leaves the extremely problematic race for mayor of Seattle.

Oy. For four years, ever since the debacle known locally as the Al Runte Disaster, I’ve been clamoring for someone to run against our vile would-be Mayor-for-Life, Greg Nickels. Now, I stand before you, abashed, in the realization that I wasn’t nearly specific enough. What I meant was that I want someone good to run against Hizzoner.

Remarkably, despite Nickels’ huge war chest, and his long record of at all costs (to taxpayers) of offering fellatio to the city’s biggest developers and businesses, seven mayoral challengers have filed this year. Five of them–Mike McGinn, James Donaldson, Joe Mallahan, Jan Drago, and Norman Sigler–have raised significant money. And none look likely to be a significant improvement on Nickels. In fact, the biggest names of the bunch, veteran city council member Jan Drago and former local basketball star James Donaldson, are if anything to the right of Nickels. Drago is a former committee chair for the big-business Downtown Seattle Association, and has faithfully served their interests on council; Donaldson is running on an I-Ran-A-Business-So-I-Know-Everything, anti-tax platform, and has hired reactionary former Monorail Board member Cindi Laws (last publicly noted for a notorious anti-Semitic outburst) as a campaign consultant. Oy. Sigler hasn’t been heard from much at all.

That leaves McGinn and Mallahan as the best hopes for a strategic vote to avoid a horrid Nickels/Drago general election. McGinn is a former local Sierra Club head, tapping the enviro crowd and running as, remarkably, the only one of the eight candidates to oppose Nickels’ epic Big Bore budgetary tunnel disaster. Unfortunately, McGinn is also running a demogogic campaign against Seattle public schools–he wants the city to take over the school system, a “solution” that’s been disastrous everywhere it’s been tried–and in every respect other than the tunnel is perfectly aligned with Nickels’ “it combats sprawl!” developer-friendly war on neighborhoods, the poor, and civic livability. The main difference is that when Nickels’ environmental “agenda” is in conflict with his need to please big money, as with the tunnel and waterfront development, the money will always win. McGinn’s a true enviro believer (and, by accounts, an arrogant one). But that, as Nickels has shown, fits quite nicely with the developer worship routine about 95 percent of the time. Five percent is not much of an improvement.

In comparison with Mallahan, McGinn’s opposition to the tunnel is a plus, but more than outweighed by his cheap school-bashing and his more enthusiastic embrace of Nickels’ War on the Neighborhoods. And so, until recently, I’ve been, somewhat lamely, suggesting a strategic vote for Joe Mallahan — as a corporate cipher with more of an upside than Mike McGinn — in the hopes that he can stop the train wreck of a Drago/Nickels finale. But it’s a weak pick, the (seemingly) least bad of a bad set of options.

But then, as I was talking with some friends about this conundrum, we suddenly realized: Why settle for, say, a protest vote nobody has heard of (that would be Elizabeth Campbell), when you can go with one everyone is familiar with? Why settle for the least bad of the major candidates? Why go with the devil you don’t know (Mallahan), when we can have the devil we all know?

That’s right. The ideal mayoral candidate in 2009 goes by many names: Beezlebub, The Devil, Price of Darkness. But so as to make sure all his votes are counted properly, I’m suggesting we settle on one.

Satan for Mayor!

Now, granted, Mayor of Seattle is a bit of a comedown for Satan. Until recently, after all, he was Vice President of the United States. But that’s just it. He was also, at the same time, Prime Minister of North Korea, President of Haiti, a warlord in Somalia, plus attending to some serial killings in Kansas for yucks and grins. Satan’s a busy guy, but he’s also a detail guy. We certainly wouldn’t have to worry about missing snowplows again.

(Too hot for that.)

Satan, like all the other major candidates, cares about jobs, yes, but cares about the environment, too. (He was immersed in global warming issues before Seattle even existed.) He’s also uniquely qualified to oversee the seemingly inevitable downtown tunnel. And who better to ensure that Seattle is truly a world class city? (Not to mention a city that’s lost its soul…)

Give in to temptation. When you mail in your ballot this primary season, write in one name, the only name, for Mayor of Seattle.

Satan.

Because Seattle is at a Crossroads.

Speaking of editorial endorsements, the Seattle Times endorsed Pete Holmes today in the Seattle City Attorney race, marring my near perfect record on predicting their editorial endorsements over the past few cycles.

Well, sorta marring my record. In contrast to my other unwavering predictions, here’s what I wrote last week:

As for City Attorney, I’m guessing some on the board are tempted to go with Holmes, if only to show they’re willingness to toss out an incumbent (there’s that predictable unpredictability) but I’m betting they stick with Carr.

So I successfully predicted that this was the race in which they might go for the more liberal, less establishment candidate, but I failed to predict the ultimate outcome of their internal debate. A qualified miss on my part, but a miss nonetheless. Damn it.

From Think Progress:

Today, House members are back home to begin their month-long recess. The far right has indicated that they plan to welcome many of their representatives with large, angry throngs (“town halls gone wild”). The corporate lobbyists engineering these “grassroots” efforts have indicated their harassment strategy is to “yell,” “stand up and shout,” and “rattle” the members. Politico reported that Democratic members of Congress are increasingly being confronted by “angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior” at local town halls.

And you can bet that the first time a liberal says or does something intemperate in response it will be all over the national media.

We live in a political culture that is insane. People expect and accept this sort of behavior from the right wing, because they’ve always done it. If there is one hallmark of movement conservatism, it is crude, aggressive and threatening behavior bankrolled with scads of corporate money.

Then when the debate turns sour newspaper editorial boards get to bemoan “partisanship,” as if nothing that came before had anything to do with what is happening in the present. The only strategy conservatives have left is to make rational discourse impossible, and the traditional media has always let them get away with it. We’ll see if anyone in the tradmed calls them out this time.

Here at HA, where the motto is “politics as unusual,” we take pride in doing things a little differently, so this primary election season, rather than joining the parade of candidate endorsements, we’ve decided to march to the beat of different drummer and publish our list of unendorsements. (And when I say “we”, of course I mean “me.”)

While I think I know who I’m voting for in all the races, the choice sometimes involves splitting hairs, but there’s little question of whom I’m not voting for. So here is a list of candidates near the top of the ballot for whom I definitely won’t be filling in the box… HA’s first annual Candidate Unendorsements:

KING COUNTY EXECUTIVE
Thank God for Susan Hutchison. Had this race merely been a battle between the four D’s—all of whom I like, and all of whom are qualified, if in different ways—my unendorsement might have come down to something petty and personal like temperament or height or legislative voting record, but Hutchison is what we call a bright-line distinction. Unqualified, out of touch and arrogantly unopen about her stance on nearly every issue, Hutchison is the clear unchoice in this field of otherwise experienced, if unexciting public servants.

SEATTLE MAYOR
I suppose I could unendorse James Donaldson for his bizarrely inept campaign (and his ineptly bizarre campaign manager), or maybe Jan Drago for her uninspiring calls to bring old blood into the mayor’s office. And of course, it’s awfully tempting to unendorse Mike McGinn, if only to provoke his inch-wide/mile-deep base into a passionate, bike-crazed fury. But something just sticks in my craw about T-Mobile exec Joe Mallahan, a man whose candidacy would be taken only slight more seriously than Norman Sigler’s, if not for the $200,000 he sank into his own campaign. I understand he’s a nice guy and a successful businessman, but I’m not all that sure how that has anything to do with being mayor. And listening to Mallahan on the trail, apparently neither is he.

SEATTLE CITY ATTORNEY
It’s one of those low profile races folks tend not to pay much attention to, and quite frankly, neither had I, despite challenger Pete Holmes’ earnest outreach. But when incumbent Tom Carr started publicly challenging Holmes’ legal qualifications for office, weeks after the deadline for filing a legal challenge had passed, he earned both my ire and my uncoveted unendorsement. Pushing a homegrown version of the birther controversy, Carr insists that Holmes six years providing legal council to the OPA Review Board doesn’t actually count as practicing law, which, assuming he believes what he says, either makes him a crappy lawyer for missing the deadline to file a challenge, or a crappy lawyer for not understanding the law. Or, he doesn’t actually believe what says. You get the point.

REFERENDUM 1 – PLASTIC BAG FEE
Honestly, I’ve always been a little conflicted about the bag fee. On the one hand there’s plenty of environmental justification for limiting the use (and thus waste) of plastic bags, and this is exactly the kind of issue on which Seattle is able to provide national leadership. On the other hand, I reuse my bags, particularly the paper ones, which, double-bagged and lined with newsprint have become an integral part of my efforts to comply with Seattle’s strict food waste recycling mandates. (I just dump the whole, compostable bag into my yard/food waste bin. No clean up, no mess.) But in a display of political douchebaggery, the plastic bag industry has dumped $1.3 million into a cynical, astroturfed “No” campaign, more than earning my unendorsement, and a big, fat “Yes” vote. Hmm. Maybe next year we should put a douchebag fee on the ballot… that’ll really cost the American Chemical Council some money.

Coming up, the Seattle City Council unendorsements… that is, assuming I ever get around to it.

You would think that police officers who know they’re being filmed by their own dashboard camera would be smart enough not to plant drugs on someone right in front of the camera.

Last week’s contest was won by mlc1us. It was O’Fallon, MO, near St. Louis.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

I just noticed that the Seattle P-I no longer looks like the Seattle Times. About time.

I’m not sure yet whether I like the new redesign, but I like it better than the old design.

In an Open Thread yesterday, our most anti-Semitic troll (and that’s really saying something), left this cryptic message:

i reccomend all you liberals go to cars.gov and continue thru all pages.

I normally have some vague sense of where these whackjobs are coming from, but that one had me scratching my head. Apparently, we can blame Glenn Beck for this one, as he was telling his viewers that the “Cash for Clunkers” site allows the government to take control of your computer.

I’m not sure I agree with Jon that this kind of paranoia doesn’t happen during Republican administrations, but during those times, it generally doesn’t get megaphoned from a major cable news program.

The Secretary of State’s office is posting totals to its blog from the signature verification of Referendum 71, and reports that the first day’s totals show the signatures to be relatively “clean” thus far.

During the first day of signature-verification for Referendum 71, over 5,000 voter signatures were scrutinized and the error rate was 11.34 percent.

The State Elections Division crew turned up 4,991 valid signatures out of the 5,646 they reviewed. A handful were duplicates or the signature didn’t match the voter registration card. Almost 600 petition signers were not found on the roll of registered voters.

The early error rate — the count could take the better part of a month at the current pace of checking by about 20 crew members – was running cleaner than the historic average of 18 percent. Sponsors, a campaign group called Protect Marriage Washington, submitted 137,689 signatures. That is roughly 14 percent more than the bare minimum, 120,577, required to secure a place on the November ballot.

Taken at face value that should be encouraging news to R-71 backers seeking to put our state’s recently expanded domestic partnership rights before a vote of the people. But, well… I’m not one to simply take such things at face value.

First of all, at 11.34%, the reported error rate is actually a lot closer to the threshold than it first appears, for while it is true that sponsors submitted roughly 14% more signatures than the bare minimum, the actual maximum allowable error rate is (137,689 – 120,577) / 137,689, or 12.43%.

On the basis of this first batch of signatures, R-71 would appear to be skating by on the low end of the 11% to 16% rejection rate typically seen on all volunteer signature drives, but the raw error rate on such a small sample is deceptive as it does not account for the exponential increase in duplicate signatures as the universe of data expands. That’s why when performing a statistical sampling of submitted petitions, the Secretary of State’s Office attempts to adjust for duplicates using a complex but straight forward algorithm as defined in WAC 434-379-010.

Breaking down the data, of the 655 signatures rejected in the first batch, only 7 were duplicates, yet even this small number plugged into the statistical sampling formula suggests that R-71 would not qualify for the ballot. If we assume that this first batch of signatures, roughly 4.1% of the total submitted, represents a random sampling (and this is not a safe assumption), then it appears that R-71 would likely fall one to two thousand signatures short.

Of course, that margin is still awfully close, and we’re dealing with a very small data set. But for the moment at least, I’m cautiously optimistic that R-71 will fail to qualify for the ballot.

From a blurb in The Columbian:

The U.S. Air Force 304th Rescue Squadron is conducting pilot certification training in Clark County.

On Friday, a Columbian reader reported seeing a black helicopter gunship, which he thought might belong to the CIA, flying low along the East Fork Lewis River just downstream from Daybreak Park.

Look out, it’s the gumbint helicopters practicing to rescue your sorry ass when you fall into a crevasse on an area mountain! Tyranny I tell you!

There are lots of solid reasons to be suspicious of governments, and indeed our democracy depends on a healthy level of skepticism. Being afraid of rescue helicopters and their crews isn’t a solid reason, these are the good women and men who will do almost anything to help those in distress.

But it’s distressingly weird how this kind of pathetic paranoia happens only when a Democrat is in the White House, as the noise machine spreads its cancerous disinformation.

And from a purely practical standpoint, if there are people out there who really think helicopter gunships are ready to descend on Clark County, do they think the small arms they’ve been busily purchasing are going to be effective against gunships? Yeah, I guess thinking things through isn’t a hallmark of the paranoiacs.