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.