Please join us tonight for some politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

It’s a good night for some scintillating conversation, a refreshing pint of beer, and a plate full of Resolutions of Disapproval.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2jZonQkTiE[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 337 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to shoot for.

Another family values conservative gets caught “hiking the Appalachian trail”…and without his boots (ick!):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n50ZiCFhIyg[/youtube]

Please join us tonight for some politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

And if you can’t make it tonight, please stay in school, work hard for your goals, and listen to your parents. (I hope nobody’s offended.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSNQpEbtlP4[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 336 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to shoot for.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXpHZaGGfE4[/youtube]

SurveyUSA has released new poll results for the King County Executive race. The poll has Dow Constantine trailing Susan Hutchinson by 43.6% to 46.7%, with 9.7% still undecided:

Hutchison…leads 2:1 among Republicans, conservatives, and those who are not college graduates. Constantine…leads by more nearly 3:1 among liberals and by nearly 2:1 among Democrats.

The poll, taken from 1 September to 3 September, surveyed 557 likely King County voters, giving a ±4.2% margin of error. The difference between the two percentages is not statistically significant—that is, the result is a statistical tie.

Even so, we can explore a what would happen if the election was held today. A Monte Carlo analysis of a million simulated elections, using the observed preferences, and a population of 557 voters, gives Hutchinson 696,575 wins, and Constantine 292,554 wins. In other words, for an election held now, we would expect Hutchinson to have a 70.4% probability of winning. This graph shows the distribution of outcomes from the simulated elections:

Fresh on the heels of the primary, public opinion has two months to evolve until the November election. The process, so far, has mostly favored Hutchison, as she has the most name recognition, and was the only female in the contest. For many voters, Constantine is that guy who came out on top in the pack of guys. It will be interesting to see how the undecided 10% break, and what happens as Constantine gets better name and position recognition.

For now, consider this the score for the first few minutes of the first quarter of the game….

Speaking of Dan Savage…

He joins Keith Olbermann to discuss the hijacking of the Republican Party by right-wing religious extremists:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3HjIrA5OOQ[/youtube]

The podcast emerges from it’s summer hide-away in the San Juan Islands for a special one-on-one edition with Washington State Senator Ed Murray. Goldy kicks off the podcast asking Sen. Murray about his decision not to run as a write-in candidate for Seattle Mayor. The mayoral topic naturally leads to the proposed deep-bore tunnel replacement for the viaduct and other regional and statewide transportation issues. The discussion touches on the status of the SR520 floating bridge replacement, that other tunnel idea, and transit over the bridge.

Sen. Murray then offers his reflections on Referendum 71, and what needs to happen to ensure passage of the referendum that will preserve the “everything but marriage” law. (Please visit Washington Families Standing Together to find out what you can do to help.)

The show is 21:26, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_sep_01_2009.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

Please join us tonight for some politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

Rumor has it that Washington Sen. Ed Murray will make an appearance to tell us about not running for mayor.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ3Q0Z2d8Do[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 335 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to shoot for.

The latest R-71 data release shows that the signature verification process is all but complete. A total of 137,881 signatures have been examined (a little more than the 137,689 they thought they had).

Total of 121,617 signatures have been accepted, giving a margin of 1,040 signatures over the 120,577 needed for the referendum to qualify for the ballot. I don’t believe all of the third-stage checks have been completed, so the number of valid signatures may increase some more.

Some 16,198 invalid signatures were found, for an cumulative rejection rate of 11.75%. The invalid signatures include 12,710 that are not found in the voting rolls, 2,093 duplicates, and 1,395 that did not match the signature on file. There are also 66 signatures still pending, so the number will change a bit.

The certification is scheduled for Wednesday.

What this means is that R-71 will (almost certainly) be be on the ballot, asking Washington citizens to confirm or deny the “everything by marriage” law that was passed last session.

In other words, if you want the law to take effect, you would vote YES on R-71. A NO vote is a vote to scrap the domestic partnership law.

There is one snag that may keep R-71 from the ballot. There is a pending lawsuit challenging two aspects of the signature verification process:

Arguments by supporters of the new law centered around the acceptance of over 35,000 signatures without a full declaration on the petitions signed by the signature-gatherer, and whether it is valid to accept signatures of people who signed up to become voters at the same time they signed petitions. The Elections Division has accept signers who are found on current lists of registered voters, and has not rejected voter signatures on petitions without the full declaration by the solicitor.

A ruling is expected on Wednesday morning.

An interesting thing about this case is the lawyers involved. The challengers are being represented by David Burman. You may remember him as one of the lawyers representing Gov. Gregoire in the 2004 gubernatorial election contest. Or maybe you recall him from the 2008 senatorial election contest in Minnesota.

The lawyer representing R-71 sponsors is Stephen Pidgeon. Last year Pidgeon represented a group that sued Sam Reed challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility to be President. The case (Broe v. Reed) was dismissed by the Washington State Supreme Court in early January.

I don’t think these particular successes and failures have much bearing on the success or failure of the R-71 court challenge, but they sure spice things up!

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-01) held a town-hall meeting in the North Kitsap High School in Poulsbo earlier today. Kos diarist Pen gives a brief write-up:

The usual suspects were there with their “keep the feds out of my healthcare” signs and their baby killer signs. They were perhaps 25% of a large crowd that filled North Kitsaps auditorium full.

I was immediately handed a flier about ‘Death Panels”. I took it, perused it, then said to the woman handing them out: “So you really believe there are death panels?”

“Not yet,” she told me, “But there will be.”

“Oh, there ARE death panels right now, “I assured her, ” and since Obamas been president, the health insurance industry has presided over the deaths of 18,000 Americans.”

I handed her flier back and didn’t stick around to listen to her blathering as I walked away. I had seen the fear in her eyes when I brought up the REAL death panels going on today. It’s the talking point that literally destroys the right wings platform.

Read the whole thing.

Tomorrow Inslee holds another town-hall meeting at the Woodway High School in Edmonds from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Attendees are asked to RSVP by email at inslee.rsvp@mail.house.gov or by phone at 206-361-0233.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5QaIRZuf1I[/youtube]

Today’s release of R-71 data has the total signatures examined at 117,069 (85.0% of the total). There have been 13,815 invalid signatures found, for an uncorrected rejection rate of 11.80%.

The invalid signatures include 11,178 that are not found in the voting rolls, 1,477 duplicates, and 1,160 that did not match the signature on file. There are 56 pending signatures. With 1,477 duplicates, we expect a duplication rate of about 1.82% for the petition.

The V₂ estimator gives the projected number of valid signatures as 121,129, a surplus of 552 signatures over the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot. The overall rejection rate for the total petition is now expected to be 12.03%.

A few more details can be found after the fold.
[Read more…]

I wasn’t able to post these results yesterday, but today’s batch of R-71 data has been released. The number of signatures examined is now 110,288, (about 80.1% of the total signatures). There have been 12,983 invalid signatures found, for an uncorrected rejection rate of 11.77%.

The invalid signatures include 10,580 that are not found in the voting rolls, 1,314 duplicates, and 1,089 that did not match the signature on file. There are also 44 signatures “pending” that I am simply ignoring.

Great big caveat: A new third-stage check is now being conducted using the most current voter database on signatures not found in the older database. They have made it through volume 220 of the 510 completed volumes. This means that some of the 10,580 “not found” signatures will be found in the next few days.

The 1,314 duplicate signatures suggest a duplication rate of about 1.82% for the total petition.

Using the V₂ estimator, and ignoring the third-stage check, the number of valid signatures is projected to be 121,070, giving 493 signatures over the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot. The overall rejection rate should end up at 12.07%. Of course that third stage check will likely add another 500 valid signatures to the total, making qualification highly likely and the rejection rate lower.

Here is a crude history of the projected totals since August 11th. The vertical bars give 95% confidence intervals for the projected number of signatures. The red line shows the minimum number of signatures required to qualify for the ballot.

For some unexplained reason, the rejection rates were increasing through the 20th (leading to a decreased projected number of signatures). The third-stage checking started on the 20th, and I would have expected to see a decreasing rejection rate from that, leading to in increase in the number of valid signatures projected for the petition. Instead we see a flat line for the past three analyses. Perhaps an increasing rejection rate is being canceled by the third-phase check. Who knows.

Whatever the reason, if there are no last minute surprises left to perturb the pattern, R-71 will qualify for the fall ballot.

Please join us tonight for some politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

Perhaps tonight we can all bring our bound and gold-foil bordered copies of “Your Life, Your Choices: Planning for Future Medical Decisions” and group-plan our grizzly Jonestown-style mass suicides for the next time one of us gets depressed or an ingrown toenail.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0dz1e-Wo88[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 335 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to shoot for.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA0GG-mIW90[/youtube]

(There are more media clips from the past week in politics posted at Hominid Views.)