N in Seattle took a look through candidate filing lists from the Secretary of State and King County today. As he expected, some of the usual suspects showed up—like perennial candidate Mike the Mover.

The real surprise is that Richard Pope turns up as a candidate! It really shouldn’t be a surprise, given that Mr. Pope, like Mike the Mover, is a perennial candidate. But I was surprised because Pope, when asked by Wayne in an HA comment thread if he was running against Chambers (last Friday at 12:47 pm) replied that he “won’t be travelling to Olympia today (i.e. Friday, July 28, 2006).”

Wayne astutely observed that “[y]ou can file on-line now, so you don’t have to go to Olympia. Not that I am trying to give you any ideas, but your non-denial was not necessarily a denial.”

Another way to interpret Richard’s statement is that he had already gone to Olympia (i.e. Thursday, July 28, 2006) and filed. I would be shocked, shocked(!!), I tell you, if Richard had intentionally mislead all of his friends here.

In any event, Richard Pope is running for Position No.2 in King County District Court’s Northeast Electoral District against incumbent Mary Ann Ottinger.

Judge Ottinger received some media attention recently because she was censured by the State Supreme Court:

The state Supreme Court censured a King County district court judge and suspended her without pay for 30 days.

The court’s unanimous order, disciplining Judge Mary Ann Ottinger of Issaquah, came on the recommendation of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct. In May, the commission found a pattern of improper conduct by Ottinger concerning defendants’ rights to be advised of their legal rights.

Why was Pope being so coy about his candidacy last Friday a few hours before the deadline to file? It could be that Wayne’s comment did set off a light bulb in Pope’s head, and he filed over the internet at the last minute. But I suspect that Pope had already filed. He believed that this race would be a cakewalk and didn’t want anyone else to get the same idea. Given Ottinger’s recent bad publicity, Pope felt the race would be his for the taking if he were Ottinger’s only opponent.

In the end, it is not clear how important Ottinger’s censure will be to the outcome of the election. Her violations happened several years ago, and the Commission said that since 2005, Ottinger has run a “model courtroom.” She just needed a little remedial training.

Unfortunately for Richard, a third candidate, Frank V. LaSalata, also filed for this position. There is good news and bad news for Richard Pope about this other opponent: If, as N in Seattle points out, this person is the very same Frank V. LaSalata, it means that both of Richard’s opponents have prior judicial experience. The good new for Richard is that Judge LaSalata also committed errors in discharging his duties as Judge.

Perhaps Richard’s chances will improve if he can get another endorsement like this from Goldy :

For Position 4, I’m standing by my man: perennial candidate and HA regular Richard Pope. Sure, Richard’s a little nutty, and he’s probably unqualified for the job, but he’s got a couple good points to make about the Port being a drain on taxpayers, and what the hell… he doesn’t stand a chance of winning anyway. If you really don’t want to throw away your vote, Jack Jolley’s your man… but I’m voting for Richard.

My question for Richard is this: will you follow McGavick’s lead and promise to run a positive campaign?

I mean, you won’t be going all negative on your opponents now, will you?

Goldy started something of a theme with The Aristocrats, also known as The Greatest Dirty Joke Ever Told. Every comedian tells a slightly different version….

Now, political blogger Dan Conley offers a new Bush-themed twist on this classic joke: The Aristocrat.

Note: Expect language and concepts compatible with a title like “the greatest dirty joke ever told.”

(Source: TG Political Wire.)

Here is your chance to fling some poo. Need some topics to vent about? How about these:

• There was senseless, tragic violence in downtown Seattle today. Daniel and Switzerblog offer some analyses.
• The Boy Scouts of America will be forced to turn over files with information about alleged sexual abuse of Washington state boys.
• Michael “Heckofa job Brownie” Brown—the former FEMA director who was toppled by our very own Goldy—is bound and determined to clear up his “good name.” How does he go about this noble task? He begins by giving an interview to Playboy (excerpts available here), in which he calls U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor (D – MS) “a little twerp” and says “he can just bite me, for all I care.” I wonder how that disaster management consulting business of his is doing?
• Dave Neiwert’s book, Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community has been selected for the next book salon discussion at Firedoglake. The first of two online discussions will be held on Sunday.
• Natasha, photo blogging from Costa Rica, is pretty bugged.
• My Friday night multimedia extravaganza is up.
• As pointed out by MountOlympus, Mike Webb is out of control. So much so that Michael Hood at blatherWatch has gotten a restraining order against him. (I am happy to report that, despite Goldy’s invitation, I’ve gotten no death threats yet.)
• Democrats across the country are hosting “Democratic Reunion” events today (Saturday) in celebration of 100 days to the fall election. As part of it, Darcy Burner will attend a canvassing event in Bellevue, Wash. (Note to Wingnuts: Bellevue is in the 8th district.)

Where does Mike!™ McGavick stand on CAFE standards? Last month, Mike!™ was caught telling a little white lie about both his and Senator Cantwell’s positions on CAFE standards.

In doing so, Mike!™ signaled that he is, apparently, for increased CAFE standards.

But on July 7th during his Open Mike!™ event in Forks, McGavick did a little McFlip-flop on CAFE standards:

Government can put more pressure on Detroit and Tokyo and the other auto manufacturers to raise up the average efficiency of our cars and to make them able to use alternative fuels. The only thing there is we shouldn’t have politicians setting what the number is.

So… Mike!™ was for increased CAFE standards before he was against them.

But then while doing an Open Mike!™ event in Moses Lake on July 22, McGavick was recorded as saying:

But what should the government do beyond investing? It should make sure that Big Oil-first of all we got to get rid of these royalty tax breaks to Big Oil, it makes no sense at all. Put that money into the research and development of these other fuels, and we should make sure Big Oil cannot prevent alternative fuels from getting to market. Right? They’ve got a big infrastructure advantage. They can’t use that to prevent these alternative fuels from being accessed by us, and we should jack up CAFE standards on the auto industry, make their cars more efficient and flexible for different kinds of fuels.

So… Mike!™ was for increased CAFE standards before he was against them, before he was for them.

Stay tuned. It’s no wonder that the Democrats send a guy around to video tape each of his Open Mike!™ events!

Speaking of Mike!™ and flip-flops, the Seattle Times published his position on Social Security. As Joshua Marshall at Talking Points Memo points out “[h]e actually manages to flip-flop within the same statement:”

[McGavick] does not support privatization or a phasing-out of Social Security….He would give younger workers the option of placing their benefits in voluntary personal accounts controlled by the federal government. This would help restore confidence in the system and ensure its solvency.

WTF? Did somebody forget to tell Mike!™ that a mic was on? (Hat tip: Thehim.)

The Secretary of State’s (SOS) office announced today that Lyin’ Eyman’s most recent $30 car tab initiative (or YATDCT—“Yet Another Thirty Dollar Car Tab” initiative) failed the random signature test.

In order to qualify for the ballot, 224,880 valid signatures from registered voters are needed. The SOS office recently documented that Eyman turned in only 266,006 signatures prior to validation.

The embarrassingly low number of signature prompted Eyman to launch into an attack on the SOS office, claiming that the office had lost signatures. Furthermore, Eyman claimed that the SOS office provided him with a receipt for 300,353 signatures on the very day that signatures were turned in. In the end, Eyman’s “evidence” amounted to little more than this scrap of paper.

The SOS office describes the “receipt incident” this way:

On July 7, 2006, the deadline for submitting signatures, the sponsors of I-917 returned and submitted additional petitions to the Elections Division.

After submitting the petitions at the Elections Division offices, Mr. Eyman immediately went to the Capitol Building to hold a press conference in the lobby of the Office of Secretary of State to announce the submission of petitions on I-917.

At that press conference, and while election workers were counting the pages on this initiative a few blocks away, Mr. Eyman presented to the receptionist at the front desk a piece of notebook paper with the number 300,353 handwritten on it and requested that the receptionist date stamp the notebook paper as received by the Office of Secretary of State.

The receptionist did date stamp the notebook paper but because the cameras did not capture that event, Mr. Eyman asked the receptionist to stamp the paper a second time so the cameras could capture the event.

Rather than submitting the document to the receptionist after the stamping process, Mr. Eyman took the document back and turned to the press to announce that the Office of Secretary of State had just verified receipt of 300,353

At the time of the press conference, the Elections Division was in the process of counting the pages on I-917 at the Elections Division. The Office of Secretary of State did not know at that time how many pages or signatures were being submitted that day.

Uh-huh. Who would have guessed…Eyman lying about that original receipt?

The low number of signatures means that, at most, 15.46% of the signatures can be invalid. The SOS office did an initial estimate of invalid signatures using the ‘”random sample” process authorized by state law:’

Election officials examined 10,819 ( or a 4% sample) on I-917. From that inspection, it was determined that the measure had an invalidation rate, including duplicates, of 17.96%.

State law requires that the OSOS now conduct a full check of every signature submitted for Initiative 917. The full check will begin immediately following the completion of the random check of Initiatives 920, 933, and 937.

How likely is it that the full check will result in enough signatures to qualify? Not very. If we can assume that signatures were truely selected at random, a standard statistical test puts the odds at well under 100,000 to 1 that the true signature error rate is less than 15.46%.

Better luck next year, Timmy.

Update: HomerTheBrave has an even better receipt from the Secretary of State’s office.