Goldy

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.

It is do or die time on healthcare reform, and with Republicans promising not a single vote in favor of the Democratic plan, it is time for us here in the Pacific Northwest to let our Democratic representatives know that if they don’t support us, we won’t support them.

For example, Rep. Kurt Shrader, from Oregon’s 5th Congressional District has recently made it known that he would oppose the House bill, despite consistent polls showing that his constituents support it. Sure, you could just call the Congressional switchboard at 1-866-220-0044, and ask to be connected to Shrader’s office, but that would be easier to dismiss as just run of the mill public pressure. Wouldn’t it make more of an impact to disrupt the day to day workings of his office by calling a more direct line?

Fortunately, I’ve just been forwarded the number of Rep. Shrader’s Legislative Director, Chris Huckleberry. Give him a call at 1-xxx-xxx-xxx, and let him know where we the people stand on healthcare reform, particularly if you live in Shrader’s district.

On a similar note, Rep. Brian Baird, representing Washington’s 3rd Congressional District has also recently stated his intent to vote against the bill in its current form. You can call his office and register your complaint at the following published phone numbers, but if anybody out there has a more direct line into Rep. Baird’s office, I’d be happy to post it here.

Washington D.C. – (202) 225-3536
Olympia – (360) 352-9768
Vancouver – (360) 695-6292

UPDATE:
Rep. Shrader voted Yes, so I’ve removed his legislative director’s phone number. I don’t know if he always planned to vote yes (he never made a public statement), or if constituent pressure persuaded him, and frankly I don’t really care. He voted the right way, and I thank him.

Rep. Baird on the other hand… well, his vote with the Republicans was a mistake, both as policy and as politics.

Details are starting to emerge about suspected cop-killer Christopher Monfort, and not surprisingly, he sounds a little crazy. And as it turns out, he’s also a pretty crappy artist.

Really. Those are images from a 2003 art exhibit of Monfort’s titled “No War” at Highline Community College. Kinda creepy.

From the exhibit’s web page:

Chris Monfort has been seriously painting for two years, and plans to continue throughout his life. He does not believe in any particular set of rules as far as artistic expression is concerned, and his work portrays this freedom. He has a love for color and motion, particularly during long gloomy winters. His apartment is full of colorful paintings. He says, “they give me the energy that’s missing from our sunless winters!”

Monfort plans to complete two degrees before leaving Highline; a transfer degree and a degree in Administration of Justice. He then plans to earn a bachelors degree and possibly head for Harvard Law School. His alternate plan is to earn a Masters degree and teach at a college somewhere warm!

I guess life didn’t turn out quite the way Monfort expected. It rarely does. But disappointment doesn’t lead most of us to cold blooded murder.

King County Elections just dropped another 19,562 Seattle ballots, and these went strongly for Mike McGinn, 53.2% to 46.8% for Joe Mallahan, once again doubling McGinn’s lead to a 2,384 vote margin.

Mike McGinn	85,416	50.31%
Joe Mallahan	83,032	48.91%

Based on today’s earlier drop, I think it’s fair to say that this is the trend we had all expected, and that Mike McGinn has just been elected Seattle’s new mayor.

UPDATE:
What I said yesterday:

With today’s drop, KCE should have finally worked its way through the ballots it had already received and sorted as of 5PM Friday, and while ballots are not necessarily tallied in any sort of chronological order, we can be somewhat certain that the remaining ballots consist mostly of those that were mailed during the final days of the campaign. So if there is a trend, liberal or conservative, for McGinn or for Mallahan, it should start making itself known tomorrow.

And it did. This thing’s over.

Mike McGinn padded his margin by an additional 694 votes this afternoon, more than doubling his narrow lead over Joe Mallahan to 1209 votes:

Mike McGinn	75,657	49.99%
Joe Mallahan	74,448	49.19%

This represents McGinn’s largest numerical lead thus far, and while not conclusive, bodes well for those anticipating a trend toward McGinn amongst late voters.

In this latest drop, King County Elections added 21,691 Seattle ballots to the total, of which McGinn won 51.7% of the vote… his best performance in any of the batches thus far. KCE will drop a smaller batch of ballots later tonight, and that will give us a better idea of whether a McGinn trend is revealing itself.

Regardless, these new numbers don’t look good for Mallahan. McGinn’s margin of victory is now outside the 0.5% range that would trigger an automatic recount, and as the number of ballots outstanding diminishes, so do the odds of a Mallahan comeback. If the turnout projections hold true, Mallahan would have to win about 51.2% of the remaining ballots. This is certainly doable — Mallahan won 51.1% of the Wednesday afternoon drop, his best showing thus far — I just don’t know of any solid reason to suggest a late Mallahan surge.

UPDATE:
And in the county executive race, Dow Constantine continues to expand his lead over Susan Hutchison, who now trails by a nearly 17-point margin. That’s worse than David Irons.

Washington’s best political satire site is without a doubt, Red County, a pitch-perfect, Colbert-esque parody of the angry, deluded, self-denial that tends to fill the right-wing blogs. And it doesn’t get any better than their frenetic mock analysis of the King County Executive race:

The general election result that shattered any hope of Republican resurgence in the state was the King County Executive’s race. Councilman Dow Constantine smashed blue dog, moderate Democrat Susan Hutchinson in that election contest. Republicans in King County now go down in defeat again in their attempt to elect someone other than radical, leftwing, crackpots like Constantine. Many are questioning why the King County Republican Party backed Susan and not a principled conservative in the first place!

Susan Hutchison is a “blue dog, moderate Democrat” who lost because she wasn’t conservative enough? Absolutely brilliant! And delivered with such unwavering deadpan and stereotypically stilted cadence, you can almost hear the (u)SP crowd angrily cheering along.

Funny stuff.

I feel snubbed…

Locally, an iron triangle of left interest groups (e.g. NARAL) liberal media (The Stranger, PubliCola) and the labor left (SEIU) seek to impose ideological requirements while slamming any Democrat who hints at moderation.

What am I… chopped liver?

Other than that, I kinda agree with Joel.

So, how crazy is Susan Hutchison’s letter to supporters, hinting that a U.S. Senate run might lay in her future? Not so crazy that I hadn’t predicted exactly that just a couple weeks back.

A lot of folks deserve credit for the defeat passage of Referendum 71, but when it comes to the underlying strategy that got us this far, it’s hard to argue that anybody has played a bigger role than state Sen. Ed Murray.

Murray says the state’s organizing networks now are stronger as a result of the R-71 campaign. “The vote affirms that the strategy we tried in Washington state was the right one,” he says, referring to passing three incremental domestic partnership bills, each one granting more marriage rights to same-sex couples. “We engage citizens in conversions about what it means, survivor benefits and funeral arrangements, instead of just focusing on one word.”

And it wasn’t just this vote in Washington that proved the strategy right, but the failed vote in Maine that would have approved full blown same-sex marriage there. Maine voters just weren’t quite ready to approve gay marriage, and most likely voters aren’t quite ready to do the same here. But by acting incrementally and forcing a public conversation about marriage equality, our voters have been willing to go further toward marriage equality than voters in any other state.

In fact, ironically, by forcing the issue onto the ballot, the opponents of R-71 have likely advanced the cause of marriage equality in Washington state by accelerating the conversation, and by reassuring legislators that they have the support of the people. In a few years, after more voters have grown comfortable with the new status quo, Washington will be ready to take that last step.

It took a couple decades for Washington to finally pass legislation extending our state’s anti-discrimination laws to gays and lesbians, but only a few more years to achieve “everything but marriage.” And Murray deserves a hearty congratulations for a legislative strategy well executed.

Yeah, I know, there’s a tea party at the Capitol, and a tragic mass shooting at Fort Hood, but still, you’d think the House healthcare reform bill being endorsed by the AMA of all organizations, not to mention the AARP, would be much bigger news.

Whoooo, pretty radical groups there. The Blue Dogs better be careful deciding whether or not they want to join forces with such questionable allies on an idea as unpopular as healthcare reform. Seriously, check out all the fringe groups supporting the bill. Seriously, those wacky pediatricians on on there, and the American Medical Colleges, hotbeds of radical politics that they are. And you know that the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons are communist cells. Don’t even get me started on the Consumers Union or Easter Seals.

I mean, this is the AMA for chrisakes, the organization, historically, that is probably as responsible as any other for killing past healthcare reform efforts. You know, those same doctors who are being asked to deal with all those goddamn government bureaucrats.

But, well, Republicans won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, so I guess healthcare reform is dead.

I know the timing is a bit insensitive, and it will probably piss off some folks for me to go there right now, but dwelling on the tragic mass shooting today at Fort Hood, in which 12 have been killed and 31 injured, I couldn’t help but think about the debate that raged in the comment threads here and elsewhere after the Virginia Tech shootings.

There was an argument at the time, strongly made by gun rights advocates, that the death toll at Virginia Tech could have been dramatically lessened, or even averted, had faculty and students been likewise armed. Virginia Tech, like many schools, was a gun-free zone, and that, gun control critics argued, made the shooter’s defenseless victims less safe.

Fort Hood, on the other hand, is most definitely not a gun free zone. In fact, I’m pretty sure that military bases are filled with men and women who carry arms, and are highly trained in the skills to use them.

And yet… 12 dead, 31 injured before the shooter was finally taken down.

I’m not saying that the Fort Hood and Virginia Tech tragedies make an argument one way or another for gun free zones. Rather, I’m saying the exact opposite.

King County Elections just released their latest results, and of the 27,151 Seattle ballots counted today, Mike McGinn expanded his narrow lead over Joe Mallahan by 54 votes, taking a 515 vote advantage in the mayor’s race, 65,172 to 64,657.

Countywide, KCE dropped a total of 68,507 new ballots today, with Seattle ballots comprising a somewhat disproportionate share. In fact, thus far, Seattle is reporting 36.52% turnout compared to only 34.93% for the county as a whole. As a result, it should be no surprise that Susan Hutchison’s numbers continue to fall, with her now trailing Dow Constantine 58.12% to 41.67%. That’s a better than 16 point margin… you know… David Irons numbers.

Meanwhile, in the one statewide contest with any drama left, R-71 continues to expand its lead, even while King still trails the rest of the state in reported turnout. R-71 is now passing by 61,394 votes, or a 4.7% margin. Looks like my earlier predictions were right on the money.

So what does all this mean in terms of trends? Not all that much yet.

With today’s drop, KCE should have finally worked its way through the ballots it had already received and sorted as of 5PM Friday, and while ballots are not necessarily tallied in any sort of chronological order, we can be somewhat certain that the remaining ballots consist mostly of those that were mailed during the final days of the campaign. So if there is a trend, liberal or conservative, for McGinn or for Mallahan, it should start making itself known tomorrow.

That said, I’m guessing the McGinn camp is breathing a little easier this evening than they were after yesterday’s returns.

UPDATE:
The Seattle Times just reported what the rest of us already knew on election night: “Voters approve Referendum 71“. So I guess it’s official, what with them being the paper of record and all. Time for teh gays to celebrate.

Washington State Republican Party chair Luke Esser explaining Susan Hutchison’s lopsided loss in the King County executive race…

“King County is a tough place to do business if you’re not a left-wing Democrat,” Esser said. “Inside the city of Seattle I could probably bring Abraham Lincoln back from the dead and he wouldn’t win…you’ve got to have a ‘D’ next to your name.”

Though the county executive’s position is now officially non-partisan, Republicans thought they had their best shot at the office in more than a decade with former television broadcaster Susan Hutchsion in the race. Hutchison ran as an independent but has ties to GOP candidates and causes.

Hear that? The state Republican Party chair admits that Republican Susan Hutchison lost because voters figured out she was, of course, a Republican.

Like I said… the most dishonest campaign ever.

And as for Esser’s crack about Lincoln, that brings us to our poll of the day:

Much has been made of the placement of  Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1033 on the King County ballot, somewhat hidden below the instructions on the left-hand side of the page, visually separated from the rest of the ballot questions. I-1033 opponents had raised alarms that this poorly designed ballot layout might depress the vote on the measure in our state’s most populous and anti-1033 county, causing many voters to miss the question entirely. And now that a large chunk of the results are in, it is clear that their fears were well founded.

Indeed, I-1033’s placement on the King County ballot is destined to become a classic case study in how ballot design can dramatically influence election outcomes… right up there alongside Palm Beach County’s infamous butterfly ballot.

In Washington’s 38 other counties, about 2.8% of ballots have thus far failed to register a vote on I-1033, a pretty typical “residual vote rate” for a high profile, statewide initiative. But in King County, a full 9.8% of ballots have thus far failed to record a vote for I-1033, a very statistically significant falloff from the statewide average, and entirely out of whack with the county’s historical performance on other such ballot measures.

The “residual vote rate” measures the total number of ballots for which no vote is recorded in a particular contest due to uncounted, unmarked or overvoted ballots, and as such it is often used to measure the effect of different voting technologies and interface designs on the incidence of lost votes. Of course some portion of the residual vote rate is due to voters choosing not to cast a vote in a particular race, a factor that can be fairly pronounced in low profile, down-ticket races. But voter choice simply cannot explain the extraordinary King County discrepancy.

A quick glance at this and other elections reveals that I-1033’s residual vote rate in King County is not only unprecedentedly high for a top-of-the-ticket measure, its huge variance from the statewide average is absolutely unheard of. For example, the equally high profile Referendum 71, appearing on the same ballot as I-1033, registered a 1.7% residual vote rate in King County, closely matching  the 1.8% rate for the state as a whole. Likewise, 2007’s I-960 — also a government limiting Eyman initiative, that also ran in an off-year election — recorded a 2.9% residual vote rate in King County, right in line with the 3.1% rate statewide.

Historically, residual vote rates for high profile statewide ballot measures simply do not rise much above a few percent, and they certainly don’t vary by more than a couple percentage points from county to county.

Until now.

So what’s to explain the fact that nearly one out of every ten King County ballots fail to register a vote for or against I-1033, a rate nearly two and a half times the statewide average? With 38 of our 39 counties now voting exclusively by mail, and most or all using the same mark sense technology, there can be only one explanation: poor ballot design… a visually confusing layout that inadvertently disenfranchised 7% of King County voters.

To put that in perspective, based on turnout projections, about 42,000 King County voters will have failed to vote on I-1033 simply because they didn’t find the question on the ballot, and with voters here overwhelmingly rejecting the measure 67% to 33%, this ballot-induced residual vote will end up costing the No side about 14,000 votes from their final statewide margin. Had this been a closer race, ballot design very well could have determined the outcome.

Ever since the disputed 2004 gubernatorial election, Republicans have howled in outrage over the bare handful of cases of known ballot fraud, demanding ever more restrictive and onerous procedures on both registration and voting. But as I have argued from the start, the real and present threat to our electoral process comes not from ballot and tabulation fraud — the evidence of which in Washington state is fleeting or nil — but from voter intimidation and suppression, intentional or not.

However pedestrian or accidental the cause, 42,000 King County voters were just disenfranchised, and yet we’ve heard nary a peep from the usual election reform suspects. Makes one wonder how much they really cherish our right to vote?