Goldy

King County just released results for another 70,821 ballots, which broke 67.3% in favor of Patty Murray, compared to 66.7% on 11/3 and 61.8% on 11/2. Murray has temporarily opened up a 3% lead statewide, pending returns from other counties.

UPDATE:
Rep. Rick Larsen has expanded his lead over John Koster to 1,458 votes, though we’re still waiting for reports today from Island and Snohomish counties. Snohomish is the county I’m crossing my fingers on, as there are also a few legislative races hanging in the balance.

In legislative races, Rep. Roger Goodman has closed the gap to under 100 votes in LD 45, while Sen. Rodney Tom has opened up a 600+ vote lead in LD 48. Doesn’t look nearly as promising Sen. Randy Gordon in LD 41, who just isn’t making up the ground he needs.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Larsen now up 1,606 votes with Island reporting. Still waiting on Snohomish; San Juan isn’t reporting today.

Also, interestingly, with today’s ballot dump, I-1100 is now failing in King County.

UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
The Seattle Times calls the US Senate Race for Patty Murray. (Finally.) As does the Stranger.

UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
KUOW just reported that Dino Rossi has conceded. Or maybe they said that Rossi is conceited. I wasn’t paying close attention.

Tip to the Seattle Times: wanna make national headlines, and feel really, really important? Call Washington’s US Senate race already.

You don’t have to wait for the AP or FOX News or NBC to do it. Really. The Oregonian called their governor’s race yesterday afternoon for Kitzhaber, and he was still trailing at the time, yet everybody took it seriously because they’ve got the word “Oregon” in their masthead so folks figured they must know what they’re talking about.

Yeah, I know, there’s still a helluva lot of ballots left to count, but Patty Murray’s ahead by 28,000 votes, King County turnout is through the roof and disproportionately underreported, and the late ballots—you know, the ones that haven’t been counted yet—are clearly breaking hard for the Dems. It’s kinda obvious.

And… well… you’re the Seattle Fucking Times, for chrisakes. You wanna be our state’s paper of record? Act like it.

UPDATE:
Finally.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Oh, and just to reiterate, HA called the race for Murray about five minutes after King County posted its results on election night.

Voters have rejected Initiatives 1100 and 1105, preserving Washington’s State Store system for now, but if not for a well-funded No campaign, and the confusion created by dueling privatization initiatives, one or the other might have passed. So this is no time for the state to sit back and relax in the expectation that its profitable liquor monopoly is safe for the foreseeable future.

There are those who are simply opposed to a state-owned liquor monopoly on ideological grounds, and there is no convincing them. Then there are those handful of business interests who seek to profit from privatization at the expense of state coffers. But there are a lot of folks who wouldn’t support privatization as strongly if the State Stores simply addressed the convenience issue.

So here are just a few ideas off the top of my head.

Step One: more stores with extended and Sunday hours. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from people complaining that they couldn’t buy the booze they wanted on a Sunday, or on a Friday or Saturday night.

Step Two: provide delivery service to bars and restaurants. This may sound a little petty, but there are a ton of restaurant owners who really resent having to pick up their booze themselves, when nearly all their other supplies are delivered. They don’t really expect a privatized system to sell them booze much cheaper, they just expect much better service. Give them that, and they won’t be so eager to put their time and money into the next initiative.

Step Three: modernize! You desperately need a brand new consumer oriented website and accompanying phone app that allows customers to remotely check out inventory at neighborhood stores, purchase their order, and then just drop by and pick it up (check out the Redbox website and app for an idea of what I’m talking about.) Customers could even use these tools to make special orders of items not normally stocked.

And that was just after five minutes of brainstorming. I’m sure if you talk to your employees, they probably have a bunch of ideas too about how to make the State Store experience more efficient and more appealing.

The point is, the worst thing a monopoly can do is behave like one; that’s what pisses everybody off. Innovate or die.

UPDATE:
I posted a link over on Slog, and folks are chiming in with their own suggested improvements. Lots of good ideas. Hey Olympia… are you listening?

Yeah, HA has been down or crawling for much of the morning, and no, I’m not exactly sure why. But I have my suspicions.

I haven’t done too much analysis yet, but it sure does look like the late voters tended to break strongly Democratic, at least around these parts.

For example, at the end of last night, Patty Murray had registered a comfortable 61.82% of King County vote. But in today’s batch of 50,148 votes, Murray scored a whopping 66.7%. Meanwhile, Rick Larsen has taken a small lead in WA-02; we’ll see if that holds up after the Snohomish County vote comes in at 7PM.

Very interesting. And encouraging.

UPDATE:
Matt Baretto of the Washington Poll has a spreadsheet up comparing county by county ballot returns reported on election night, 11/2 to those reported today, 11/3, and it’s kinda stunning. 22 counties reported new results today, and of them, only three—Franklin, Pend Oreille and Spokane—reported higher margins for Rossi. The rest moved in Murray’s direction, sometimes by substantial amounts.

For example, Island went from 51.43 for Murray on 11/2 to 54.42 in the 11/3 returns, Skagit from 47.75 to 48.57, Snohomish from 51.3 to 53.2, and Whatcom from 51.17 to 57.49. And I use these counties as examples, because they constitute the four biggest chunks of WA-02, where incumbent Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen climbed from a 1,400 vote deficit on election day to a 500+ vote lead over challenger John Koster today, based on the latest returns. And that appears to suggest that late voters didn’t just break hard for Murray, but for Democrats in general… which also helps explain a number of legislative races moving in the Dem direction today.

Will this trend hold up? Can’t think of a good reason why it wouldn’t.

Really. Buoyed by almost winning yet another statewide election (and he would have gotten away with it too, if not for King County and that nosey dog), I think that Dino Rossi should immediately set his sights on the 2012 gubernatorial race.

You know… fourth time’s the charm, and all that. Or something.

Come on Dino… that’s your governor’s mansion… you can almost taste it. So you’re not gonna let Rob McKenna just waltz right in there and claim the Republican nomination because he thinks it’s his turn or something, are you? I mean, you should hear the things he says about you behind your back.

So, think about it.

Dear Stupid Fucking Trolls,

Thank you for being so fucking stupid. I counted on you providing a much needed laugh the day after the election, and you didn’t disappoint. In the words of Tea Party darling Sharron Angle:

“You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.

… [T]he nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn’t that they are so distrustful of government? They’re afraid they’ll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways … If we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?”

Sound familiar? Yeah, I didn’t just ape the violent, right-wing, teahadist bullshit… I pretty much block-quoted Sharron Angle. Funny, huh? How the words of a Republican nominee for US Senate suddenly becomes all crazy and dangerous and unhinged when typed through the keyboard of a lowly, local liberal blogger?

No doubt my post, and your predictable, satire-impaired reaction, would have been funnier had Angle actually defeated Harry Reid last night, but… well… I’m willing to make that tradeoff.

Anyway, thanks, as always, for being so fucking stupid. You were a ray of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day.

Love,

Goldy

I just got an email back from King County Elections regarding some discrepancies in reports on ballots received. The update: 114,000 new ballots arrived in the mail this morning, for a running total of about 675,000 ballots received thus far. And since King County reported results last night on 373,941 ballots, that leaves approximately 300,000 remaining on hand.

I emphasize the word “approximately” because there is some discrepancy between the numbers online, the numbers I was given yesterday, and the numbers I’m being given today, and because the ballots received number is always just an estimate. These numbers are also approximate because they represent the total number of ballots received, not the total that will ultimately be found valid; in 2009, our first all vote-by-mail general election, about two percent of received ballots were found invalid.

That said, King County is still projecting total ballot returns of about 720,000. They expect to report results on an additional 45,000 ballots by 4:30 PM this afternoon, with a significantly larger drop scheduled for Thursday.

UPDATE:
King County Elections tells me that the official ballot totals do not yet include any of those collected yesterday from drop boxes. So that’s should add tens of thousands more to the total.

Just before the first polls started closing out East yesterday, I made my predictions:

Patty Murray beats Dino Rossi by five-plus points, Dems lose WA-03, but incumbents hold on in all the other WA congressional districts. Meanwhile Dems hold control of both houses of the Washington state legislature, though R’s make a game of it with the state Senate. Initiatives 1053 and 1107 win, all others lose, but 1100 staggers around in a drunken daze for a week before we know the final outcome.

Nationally, Dems hold Senate with 52 or 53 seats, but lose control of the House, giving up about 50.

So how’d I do? Not bad.

Once all the ballots are in, Patty Murray will go on to beat Dino Rossi by almost three points, not the five-plus I predicted, but that’s what I get for being too specific. It also looks like I nailed the US Senate, the state legislature and the ballot measures. My biggest miss looks like the US House, where Rep. Rick Larsen seems likely to lose, if barely, in WA-02, and the R’s will pick up a handful more seats nationally than I expected.

Otherwise, election night unfolded pretty much as I expected.

Yesterday’s election was not the worst political disaster to befall the Democratic Party and the American people in recent decades. No, the worst political disaster to befall our nation, and the one whose consequences from which we might never recover, occurred December 12, 2000, when the Supreme Court of the United States usurped the right of the state of Florida to conduct its own elections, and appointed George W. Bush as President.

Two failed wars, a collapsed economy and a host of far-right, proto-fascist, corporatist judicial appointments later, our nation is on its way to becoming an authoritarian plutocracy. And if there’s one thing the recent violent outbursts of teahadists should teach us, it’s that if we truly love the Constitution and what it stands for, then sometimes, politics just isn’t enough.

Our Founding Fathers put the Second Amendment in there for a reason, and that was to enable the People to protect themselves against tyranny. In fact, it was Thomas Jefferson who said that it’s good for a country to have a revolution every twenty years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if the Republicans take our nation the way they promise to take it, my fellow patriots on the left are going to start looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and ask ourselves, what can we do to turn this country around? And I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take some Supreme Court justices out.

The right is arming. What are they arming for if it isn’t that they are so distrustful of us? They’re afraid that we’ll fight for our liberty in Second Amendment kind of ways, and so we must be prepared to do exactly that. It is too soon to give up completely on politics, but given what is at stake, if we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?

I, for one, know my rights, and I will never lay down and give my country freely to the corporatist plutocrats and the army of teahadist brownshirts in their employ. At least… not without a fight.

UPDATE

I suppose it’s possible that I-1100 could ultimately pass once the final ballots are counted, though at this point, it doesn’t look likely. While there’re still a ton more ballots left to count in the counties where it’s passing, it’s only barely passing in those counties… which brings me to one of my most self-amusing observations of the evening: apparently, I’m more in touch with the sensibilities of voters in the red parts of the state than initiative author Stefan Sharkansky.

Huh. I guess all those years Stefan spent in the Bay Area must have warped his values.

But then, really, how can you expect a Pelosi-Republican like Stefan to understand the real Americans who live outside his posh, Green Lake neighborhood?

You heard it here first.

UPDATE:
So, let me explain. Patty Murray is winning King County with about 62% of the vote, yet still represents a disproportionate number of the outstanding ballots to be counted. So even though she’ll go to bed tonight leading by only about 15,000 votes, her margin will surely grow as the ballots are counted over the coming days. Yeah, the media will try to spin drama out of this, but there really isn’t any. Patty wins.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Contrary to the numbers on the SOS website, King County Elections tells me that they have received about 675,000 ballots so far (114,000 arrived Wednesday morning). Which means that there are currently about 300,000 uncounted ballots on hand, with maybe as many as another 50,000 more yet to arrive. More here.

Markos hasn’t told me what to think yet, but NBC tells me that Republicans have taken control of the House. Anyway, I’ll use this post for blogging my observations until I feel like doing something else.

6:11 PM
Here’s a question: who’s crazier, KY Senator Elect Rand Paul, or outgoing KY Sen. Jim Bunning? I’d say it’s a toss up.

6:22 PM
Carl and I disagree, on what really ails Democrats. I say that the key to winning is lying, and he says that we just need to do a better job of selling that we’re the party of truth. But my analysis is pithier, so I win.

6:31 PM
Palin-Rubio, 2012!

6:50 PM
More evidence of voter high turnout (and/or low vote handling capacity) in King County, with two-hour lines at the accessible voting centers, and over-stuffed ballot drop boxes. We’ll see.

7:15 PM
I wish I actually did drink liberally. That would make tonight more fun. Or at least, less not-fun.

7:22 PM

Via Slog, that’s a three-hour wait to vote at Union Station in Seattle. King County Elections has said that everybody who is in line to vote at 8 PM will be allowed to vote, so there’s still time to run on over to the accessible voting centers in Bellevue, Tukwila and Seattle. Or, if you’re somewhere else in state, particularly red country, well, fuck you and figure it out for yourself.

7:42 PM
Fuck Wisconsin. Really. Fuck ’em.

7:51 PM
So, if you’ve got nothing better to do, why not head out to Union Station with coffee and donuts or something, and try to encourage folks there to stay in line and vote.

8:05 PM
Money can’t buy you love. And apparently, it can’t buy you the California governor’s mansion either.

Feisty and I had a nice walk. Ran into Knute Berger at Seward Park. We both think Patty Murray will win.

Speaking of which, predictions. Nothing scientific here, and I don’t have access to any inside information, just the same polling data everybody else has plus my gut reaction that there’s just something wrong with it.

Patty Murray beats Dino Rossi by five-plus points, Dems lose WA-03, but incumbents hold on in all the other WA congressional districts. Meanwhile Dems hold control of both houses of the Washington state legislature, though R’s make a game of it with the state Senate. Initiatives 1053 and 1107 win, all others lose, but 1100 staggers around in a drunken daze for a week before we know the final outcome.

Nationally, Dems hold Senate with 52 or 53 seats, but lose control of the House, giving up about 50.

And no, I don’t see a mandate in any of this, except that folks really don’t like the economy.

Just got back from casting my ballot, and that was the view from behind the voting machine at King County Elections’ accessible voting center in Tukwila, WA. There were about a dozen people waiting to use the machines at about 11 AM, with another dozen filling out paper ballots. And remember, this is in a county that conducts elections entirely by mail. (Well, obviously, almost entirely.)

Elections workers told me that I came at good time, as things had been much busier earlier in the morning, and they expected crowds to back up again during the lunch hours. Meanwhile, mail-in ballots continue to arrive at a near-record mid-term pace.

Another 170,000 ballots arrived this morning, bringing King County’s running total up to 580,000, or roughly 54% of registered voters, with another large batch of ballots expected to arrive this afternoon. Typically, Tuesday and Wednesday are the days with the largest number of received ballots.

This leaves county elections sticking to their projected 68% turnout rate, or roughly 720,000 returned ballots, up from a 65% turnout rate and 635,753 ballots cast in 2006, the previous midterm election.

Of course, that’s just a projection, but in an year when Republicans are supposed to benefit from a huge enthusiasm gap, it is interesting to note that dark blue King County’s 68% projected turnout is actually a couple of ticks higher than the 66% rate Secretary of State Sam Reed is projecting for Washington state as a whole. Furthermore, King County elections officials tell me that they’re actually projecting 69% turnout for Seattle proper, with the less Democratic rest of the county coming in at 67%.

Huh.

Again, these are just projections. But they sure do seem at odds with the national narrative.