The Seattle Times editorial board is once again arguing for making it more difficult to vote.
AH, the weekend after the election and that weird feeling of knowing it could be several weeks before voters learn results of the Seattle mayoral race, a contest essentially tied.
Actually, as the Times’ own news report acknowledges, Mike McGinn took a “decisive lead” in the mayoral race by 8PM last night, but the editorial board writes its weekend editorials in advance, so I guess it would be unreasonable to expect a newspaper to go back and edit something as trivial as a lede to reflect something as trivial as actual news.
Wouldn’t want to learn results too close to Election Day, would we?
Personally, I find the suspense rather exciting, as do, apparently my readers, judging from the sustained traffic HA has generated in the days following the election. In fact, HA rose to prominence covering the excruciatingly drawn out 2004 gubernatorial contest, and I’m guessing the Times sold a helluva lot of newspapers doing the same.
So apart from potentially interfering with their ability to pen a Sunday editorial Friday morning that can maintain its factual relevance much past Friday evening, I’m not sure what the Times editors are complaining about.
New York managed to count its ballots Election Night, so Mayor Bloomberg knew results as he tucked himself into bed. Virginia? New Jersey? No problem.
And as a transplanted East Coaster, I can confidently assure you that there is nothing native Seattleites want more than to be more like Virginia, New Jersey and of course, New York.
Here in the high-tech Northwest, vote counting is slow. Washington lawmakers absurdly refuse to change a law that says ballots must be postmarked — not received — by Election Day.
So when the Times editors say it is downright “absurd” of lawmakers to “refuse to change a law that says ballots must be postmarked — not received — by Election Day,” they unambiguously imply that the need to require ballots to be received by Election Day is obvious. You know… it would be absurd to disagree.
But what exactly is the problem that the Times is attempting to solve?
Clearly, the Times antsy, ADHD editors don’t like to be kept waiting, but while close races do occur under our current system, they are the exception not the rule, and many such races would still remain undecided on election night, regardless of the deadline for mailing in one’s ballot. For example, of the 185 countywide and city races held in King County on Tuesday, currently only two remain within the mandatory recount margin: ballot propositions in Black Diamond and Normandy Park.
Yeah, sure, it took a few days to determine the winner in Seattle’s mayoral race, but other than a couple sleepless nights on the part of Mallahan and McGinn, what harm was done? The Times doesn’t even attempt to make a public policy argument for why definitively knowing the results sooner on a bare handful of close races is worth making it more difficult to vote.
This sets up a lengthy wait during most of November for ballots from New Zealand, the Arctic and other locations to arrive by burro.
That is, if by “lengthy” they mean a couple days and if by “burro” they mean the U.S. Postal Service. Talk about being absurd. No doubt ballots have occasionally come from as far away as New Zealand or the Artic, but the overwhelming majority arrive by the Friday following the election.
Oregon has had all-mail elections for more than 10 years but its law says ballots have to be received by Election Day. Voters know the mailing deadline and use the many convenient drop boxes if they are tardy. Votes are counted promptly.
And Oregon also has a progressive income tax, but I don’t see the Times editorializing in favor of that.
Almost every year, Secretary of State Sam Reed introduces legislation to change the rule. But county auditors and lawmakers protest that they will disenfranchise voters.
I suppose it would be elitist of me to suggest that the collective judgment of 39 county auditors and 147 legislators might somewhat balance the opinion of Sam Reed and the half dozen Blethen-appointed hacks on the Times editorial board.
Oregon voters don’t feel disenfranchised. In fact, Oregon election officials say it can be quite difficult to read a postmark.
And nobody knows the mood of Oregon voters better than the editors of the Seattle Times, who are so in touch with their own readers that they managed to endorse the losing candidate in both contested countywide races, the mayor’s race, and two out of four Seattle city council contests.
The dirty little secret in Washington is thousands of ballots go uncounted every year because they arrive with outdated postmarks.
As opposed to the tens of thousands of ballots that would go uncounted each year due to outdated postmarks should the Times’ proposal be enacted.
Also, King County should be treating Election Week the same way electrical workers treat a power failure: by working around the clock.
Um, in defense of King County Elections workers, even though it took them until Friday to determine the mayoral winner from Tuesday’s election, that’s still three days faster than it took City Light’s electrical workers to restore my power after the 2006 windstorm… and I didn’t have to freeze my ass off in the interim. I’m just sayin’….
Clearly, the county has had its challenges. Voters decided late in the election cycle and held onto ballots much longer than normal.
And these very same late voters broke decisively for Mike McGinn. Which brings us to the most serious concern regarding the Times’ proposal: it might not only determine the outcome of a close race sooner, it could potentially change it.
Indeed, considering the dynamics of the Seattle mayoral race, had voters been required to post their ballots by the previous Friday, Joe Mallahan might very well have won. And whoever you supported in this race, that would be an unintended consequence that deserves considerably more thought than the Times editors are willing or able to give.
Election operations had to be moved to higher ground because of flood concerns. Officials, understandably, try to be as careful as possible after the 2004 gubernatorial election.
Staffing has been enhanced by about 400 but should be boosted more. And election workers should work all day and all night Election Week. Voters deserve a more modern and speedy ballot-processing system.
So the Times is suggesting that KCE should hire and train enough temporary workers to fill three shifts a day during election week, which I suppose would difficult but doable, if at considerable additional expense. Perhaps the Times would be willing to give up its newly won B&O tax break and its longtime sales tax exemption to help pay for the manpower necessary to count ballots faster?
The point is, while everybody would prefer that ballots be counted a little faster, there are costs and tradeoffs involved. And I’m not convinced that the tradeoffs, at least, are worth it.
Choosing the unambiguous postmark date as the deciding factor is the right choice because it puts the option of when to cast the vote in the hands of the voter, just like going to the polls. To do otherwise would open the process to shenanigans, with ballots rejected just because they were “delayed” somewhere along the line.
If the SeaTimes proposes a solution to a problem, I always assume that the opposite solution makes the most sense. It always works. As the editorial board keeps proving, King Frank Blethen is stupid AND greedy.
Someday the Seattle Times may figure out that elections don’t exist merely to sell newspapers or feed editorial egos; that, in fact, those aren’t even the primary purpose of elections. But don’t hold your breath.
Meanwhile, I’d like to know how the poobahs at the Seattle Times expect anyone to determine or prove when ballots are “received.”
How would anyone know whether their ballot would be counted or not?
How would voters prevent their ballots from being “mislaid” and then not counted for being “late”?
This whole idea smacks of the gamesmanship that credit card companies play. Maybe the Times’ editorial board thinks it’s a good idea to conduct elections the way credit card companies cheat their customers.
But nobody else does, except for maybe a handful of wingnuts looking for new ways to game elections.
@2 was posted by Roger Rabbit. I turned my back for 30 seconds and Mrs. Rabbit started fucking with my screen name. She was going to change it to “Ranch Flavored Rabbit.” I think I’d better watch my back for a while down here in my (our) hole under the big tree on the east side of Green Lake Park.
I’ve never understood why a hard and fast date with postmark as validator isn’t the best rule. Remember, even the proposed legislative changes would continue to allow overseas ballots from military folks and others to be counted late.
So, there goes the argument about shortening up the count timeline. That leaves the only remaining argument to be: “Because I want my Maypo NOW!” Pretty lame.
Blethen and Co should chill out. It won’t kill anyone to ensure everyone possible has their vote counted. “I’m in a hurry” is NOT a valid argument.
As the Times notes, Sam Reed floats this dumb idea every year. You’d think that after getting shot down so many times, he’d take a hint.
Less known are the other bad ideas Reed pushes. He wants to put a unique identifier on each ballot, tied to your voter id.
Last leg session, he championed internet voting. Everyone who’s ever looked at the problem has concluded “No way!” But it’s more pork for vendors, so away we go.
Reed also wants to use computers for comparing signatures. Never mind the double blind study done by Whatcom County, showing that it doesn’t work. (Oddly, Reed won’t allow that report to be published.)
Reed is full of bad ideas. I’m struggling to understand how he has any credibility left.
I’ve written about the time it takes to count mail ballots before.
King County officials decide to go vote by mail (all mail balloting).
That means we need all new gear, special highspeed ballot image tabulators from Diebold. Why? So that we will get quicker results.
Results are still no quicker. Because the ballots haven’t been received yet.
So now the fix is to disenfranchise voters.
The only people who want early results are candidates and the media.
Every single voter I’ve ever talked to has said “Take as long as you need, just be sure the count is right.”
Last year, the Washington Association of County Officials, representing the county auditors [*], testified against Reed’s latest attempt to change the rule to “ballots received by election day”.
They argued this change would create the expectation that results would be available sooner. But the auditors know that they’d still be hard pressed to have quicker results.
It’s pretty sad that Reed’s own people oppose him.
[*] Most county auditors are responsible for administrating elections. King County is so big, we have a separate position for it.
Since the suspicious disappearance of Ronald Reagan Rabbit, you’re the only Rabbit here, R, so you thought that the Republicans would be confused. How could you tell?
Maybe we should vote in September, and just open the results on election day. Or better yet, just get rid of the whole messy process alltogether. Then Bruce Ramsay could sleep soundly at night dreaming of an infinite number of markets ach-ach-ach-ACHeiving equilibrium, sound in the knowledge that “lazy folks” won’t be despoiling his glibertarian paradise.
I am not sure why the Seattle Times is so fucking lazy and selfcentered that they are demanding laws be changed to make the columnists feel better about the opinion pieces they put in the can last week.
I like the postmark,like turning in your taxes.
Right on, Goldy. I don’t get how getting more people to vote, and letting their votes count, could be a problem in a democracy, let alone a country that wants to export democracy.
“Since the suspicious disappearance of Ronald Reagan Rabbit, you’re the only Rabbit here, R, so you thought that the Republicans would be confused. How could you tell?”
It doesn’t take much to confuse Republicans (in fact, hardly anything at all; any gibberish that gets passed around by e-mail will do it); in any case, I have to protect my brand name.
@9 I’m not only as lazy as they come, but I do everything possible under the sun to screw up the smooth functioning of markets, because you can’t make money off a rational market in which everything is accurately valued.
@13 If you’re gonna be a capitalist, you gotta be willing to destroy things — jobs, savings, markets, companies, products, even whole countries, etc. — and why bother being a capitalist if you’re only willing to go halfway?
@11 Because the Seattle Times is owned and run by Republicans, and Republicans are against letting Americans vote in their own country, as we see every time they propose “election reform” which invariably consists of erecting more hoops for voters to jump through to combat “voting fraud” that doesn’t even exist.
@15 Take photo ID for example. Many people, especially the poor and elderly, don’t have driver’s licenses or other photo ID and can’t afford to pay the fees to obtain it. It’s fine with Republicans if these folks can’t vote because we all know who they vote for. Yet Republicans can’t come up with a single case where of ID fraud where someone voted under someone else’s name at a polling place. Not one! Yet they act like ID fraud is a major problem. In fact, it exists only in their hyperactive imaginations. Photo ID for voting reminds me of a cartoon I once saw of two scientists in a medical research lab. One hands a test tube to the other and says, “Here, invent a disease for this cure!”
16
Why is there not a bounty on these folks who undermine democracy?
@17 Costs too much because there’s so many of them. But not to worry; a generation or two of goatfucking will eliminate them through natural de-selection.
That guy who had all that rage against the Seattle Police and torched their cars and shot that officer once applied for a job as a Seattle Police Officer and was rejected.
While I’m not suggesting Goldy is capable of such violence, or comparing him to the shooter, I wonder, after reading Goldy’s rants against the Seattle Times day after day, if he similarly applied to the Times and was rejected. I wonder if that’s what’s really behinds Goldy’s anti-Seattle Times rage.
Hmmm.
@19 – Someone should really gather up all the wingnuts and teach them about Occam’s Razor. It might save us from at least a few of their stupid rants.
Here’s how it works, troll. It’s that the simplest explanation for a given situation is likely the correct one. In other words, if someone repeatedly points out another’s incompetence, it is likely because they see examples of incompetence, NOT because they’re secretly jealous and are scheming against them.
I swear, wingnuts seem to have confused soap operas with documentaries on human behavior. The world for them is one melodrama after another. Obama has a secret plot to destroy the country! Liberals likewise hate America, and can’t wait for it to go up in flames! Minorities expect to be taken care of by the government! Homosexuals have a secret agenda to convert straight people! Illegal immigrants come to steal our jobs (yeah, all the best ones–like picking lettuce and mowing yards)!! And on and on it goes.
Now, I use Occam’s Razor when I try to understand some of the crazy shit that comes out of the mouths of wingnuts. On the one hand, I have a hard time believing that people can be as stupid as wingnuts, spouting off as much complete nonsense as they do. I would like to believe that they have a secret agenda to destroy the country with bonus points for annoying liberals along the way. But Occam’s Razor tells me that if a given Righty spouts off ignorant crap that a teenager could see through, the simplest explanation is that the given Righty is just dumb as toast.
See how that works, troll?
@19.
“Monfort’s former landlady when he lived in Southern California 18 years ago, said she believed he applied for a job with the Los Angeles Police Department at the time, but he was never hired.”
Strangely there hasn’t been anything about him applying at the Seattle Police force in any of the news articles I read. Just maybe he applied to Los Angeles if an 18 year old memory is correct.
I would think that the Times would love to have the election results spaced out over the course of a few days, more opportunity to sell papers. Oh, silly me, maybe that’s not their prime objective.
actually there’s no reason why the county can’t pay for workers to stay up all night counting. And really the ballots could all be opened and prepared and left sitting there before election day with video monitoring on the internet to ensure there’s no secret counting going on before the election is over.
My understanding is theey take the security envelope out but don’t open it until after election day. Why not? whatever security risk there is (a massive fraudulent scheme arising when people realize candidate X is behind by 20,000 votes then they go out and fraudulently procure 20001 votes?) doesn’t seem very likely if the video monitor is showing a warehouse of opened ballots and the security guards patrolling them to ensure no secret counting is going on before election day.
We get the point of the post and going on and on about it was rather belabored.
There are two rules it seems, one the day of receipt rule, the other day of mailing rule, both have pros and cons and yes the use of the word absurd was over the top, but give us a beak. All coment
fairness @ 23
The county can’t preparse (and then count) ballots that have not been received. King County Elections is already working full tilt. No amount of extra labor or equipment will hasten election results.
Not quite. Here’s the brief:
Envelopes received, put into batches, privacy flap removed, signatures verified, return envelope opened, those envelopes archived, security envelopes opened, ballots scanned, corrections for voter intent (“electronic adjudication”), tabulation.
There are many, many additional steps for handling the numerous errors that occur. For example, contacting voters when a signature doesn’t match.
oops. hit “submit” too soon.
“prepare”, not “preparse” (a geek freudian slip)
With our new Diebold system, everything but tabulation occurs before election day. Yes, the ballots are scanned and voter intent assessed before election day.
The risk with this approach is the ability to peek at early election results.
Our Secretary of State has decided that pre-counting ballots isn’t “tabulation”. With his deep understanding of computing technology, only running a report is “tabulation”. A fictional distinction.
Boggles the mind.
I could have sworn that there was a lawsuit about 10 years ago over pre-counted ballots. It was either a county or the Secretary of State, and the outcome was that counting could not start until election day and the only thing that could happen before that was signature verification.
Don @ 26
If you remember anything, I’d love to know more. Please email me: jason * jasonosgood ! com
Officials in other jurisdictions have been caught looking at early results. This isn’t about trust; seeing early results shouldn’t be possible.
Jason @ 27
Unless they have changed something since I left no ballots are actually scanned for votes until election day. (I worked as a temporary elections worker for over 2 years)
It would be possible to get early results at KC Elections but it would take a conspiracy of many temporary elections workers working together to memorize votes as they sorted through ballots in the opening, sorting and duplication processes to get any chance of determining the outcome of any race.
SM Taylor @ 28
Thanks for adding your information. Short answer: Procedures are being changed to take advantage of the new Diebold system.
KCE had plans to scan ballots before election day. I’ll have to confirm if they’ve started this practice.
As you know, with the old marksense gear, ballots were manually duplicated when corrections had to be made to mail ballots (to honor voter intent). Duplication has been needed for up to 15% of ballots. This is very laborious and a big bottleneck.
The new Assure 1.2 central tabulation software has an “electronic adjudication” feature. Instead of duplicating ballots, a ballot’s votes would be corrected in the database. (During the certification hearing earlier this year, KCE committed to implement new paper trail processes, as required by law, to address my election integrity concerns.)
The selling point of prescanning and electronic adjudication is that ballot processing will be quicker and more ballots will be ready to tabulate on election day.
I have yet to be convinced this benefit can be realized. Meaning that having these features means that we’d actually have election results sooner. (You can’t count ballots you haven’t received.)
Other jurisdictions already prescan ballots. Such as Chelan County. As I understand it, it’s a big selling point for the Hart/Intercivic system Chelan uses.
Again, thanks for posting. Please correct anything I say as needed.
I agree that mandating that ballots be returned by Election Day versus being post marked by Election Day is a bad, bad, bad idea.
By mandating that voters vote by mail, King County now disenfranchises thousands of voters each election cycle. Thousands of legitimate voters’ signatures are challenged in each election, and most voters are unable/unwilling to make a trip to KCE offices to “cure” their signature issue. I can’t believe candidates, election officials, the state legislature, the Secretary of State Sam Reed and the people of Washington tolerate this systematic disenfranchising of legitimate voters.
Now, Sam Reed and Susan Hutchinson want to disenfranchise even more voters by mandating that all ballots must be returned by Election Day. This mandate requires the voter to estimate how long it will take for their ballot to be delivered by the post office. Once their ballot enters the postal system, the actual delivery date is out of the voter’s control, yet it is the voter who will have to pay the price if the post office takes longer than what the voter estimates.
Furthermore, a voter should not be forced to select a candidate until all information is in, and all information is not in until Election Day. In the days leading up to an election, events may change and therefore a voter’s choice may change. A voter must be afforded the freedom to not make a choice until Election Day.
“That guy who had all that rage against the Seattle Police and torched their cars and shot that officer once applied for a job as a Seattle Police Officer and was rejected.”
Apparently this is the new paradigm in America: People rejected or fired from a job go shoot up the workplace.
Gun control problem? Nah, we don’t have a gun control problem in this country. What we have is a people control problem.
Register people, not guns!
@30 “Furthermore, a voter should not be forced to select a candidate until all information is in, and all information is not in until Election Day.”
I think this is the biggest impact of mail balloting. The flip side is that it defangs last-minute attack ads, because by then many voters have already mailed their ballots.
Another impact of mailed ballots is being touted as an advantage: “You’re able to discuss the issues around the dinner table while you fill out your ballot!”
Great. I thought we had secret ballots in this country, not voting by family consensus.
Goldy, this continues to irritate me. You continually pretend like the Times is a “news”paper. This is really and truly wrong. The Times is at best a propaganda sheet for the rich. At worst, it isn’t even worth saving as toilet tissue because it uses 40 year old printing techniques that leave black on your ass.
There is nothing that is even an imitation of a “news”paper in Seattle, the sooner the Times goes broke the sooner Seattle stops wasting trees that at least cut down on the CO2 production.
The reporters are a sick joke, they could not accurately report the remarks in a church with a printed copy of the sermon. Really, they are so terrified of the “editors” they would write that shit is gold.
All they dream of is Glenn Beck and Limbaugh’s incomes. Please, stop pretending that there is news in Seattle.
Sorry, babe, you’ve got to expand and get area news reporters who are not sold by the ounce for rich man’s gold to lie. You have a shot at it but first you have to realize that you ARE the news bureau in Seattle, like it or not.
I’m a fan but you have to step up.
xxx
I think hell must have froze over. I agree with Goldy. I am someone who has had experience with last minute voting, not by choice but because my ballot arrived later than it should have. I used to live overseas. Most of the time I would get my ballot just before the election. If the arrive by election day would have been in affect my vote would not have counted. (In 1996 I did not get my ballot until AFTER the election. I filled it out and mailed it in out of principal. My votes did not count. It wasn’t even my fault.) I think that we should encourage late voters to use the drop boxes. However, if they get them in the mail by election day there vote should count.
Приветствую! Такой вопрос назрел к вам… Очень хочу реализовать на своём блоге голосовалку в боковой колонке . Ну чтобы читатели выбирали один из вариантов ответов, и далее показывалась статискика голосования. Интересно, это реально как-то реализовать на ВордПрессе??? Скажу честно, во всякого рода скриптах и кодах не силён, хотелось бы какой-нибудь плагин. В Гугле смог найти только нерусифицированные, боюсь что не смогу разобраться.
Друзья, что посоветуете????