Once again the Seattle Times editorial board is arguing for moving the ballot deadline from postmarked by election day to received by election day, and once again they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
Reed’s other proposal is a perennial, because lawmakers are immune to change. Ballots in Washington take forever and a Sunday to tally because the state foolishly allows voters to postmark them by Election Day. A better idea is to have ballots received by Election Day. Then Washington can join the rest of the country reporting useful results that week.
Yeah, well, except, as I’ve explained again and again, the bottleneck is not the ballot deadline, but rather the ballot processing capacity:
This bottleneck is perhaps best illustrated by comparing the 641,658 ballots King County reported tallied by the close of business Monday, to the 619,485 mail-in ballots it had received by the time the polls closed last Tuesday. As you can see, it took nearly an entire week for King to finally catch up with its election night backlog, and to start counting those ballots that arrived thereafter. And the county still estimates about 120,000 ballots remaining, not much less than the 147,616 ballots that arrived last Wednesday, 11/3, just a day after the election.
With a peak processing capacity of little more than 75,000 ballots a day, the 373,941 ballots King County tallied on Tuesday night barely exceeded the 349,670 ballots it had received as of the Friday before the election. Indeed, by the time the elections center opened its doors Monday morning, its staff had already fallen hopelessly behind.
With 98% of valid ballots arriving by the day after election day, the ballot deadline simply cannot be the cause of our week-plus-long vote-counting vigils. It’s simple math. Indeed, the only way to dramatically speed up ballot counting is to dramatically expand ballot processing capacity. But the Times won’t advocate for that, because that costs money.
So for the Times to attack lawmakers as “foolish” for refusing to make a change that cannot achieve the promised result, is foolish in itself.
The Times is not concerned about how long it takes to count votes – they see an opportunity to make voting a bit more restrictive a bit easier to screw up, and therefore a bit easier to disenfranchise some – their hope, Democratic – voters.
Liberal Scientist @1,
What really frustrates me about this is that they make this claim again and again, and never back it up. They just feel like they don’t have to, dispute the fact that I’ve provided some pretty compelling data to suggest that their assertion is bullshit.
It’s easy to demagogue the issue, as it is not well understood by the general publicto the degree you’ve educated us about the actual mechanics of the process.
It’s very easy to portray this as more “government ineptitude” coupled with an insinuation that the process is being hamstrung by the coddling of lazy voters acting at the last minute. I thinks there’s a sneaking, unstated implication that the “right people” would vote sooner and be organized enough to plan ahead and make the time and be sure to get their ballot received by a deadline.
It’s much more natural and efficient and favoring of maximal participation to set a firm deadline for peoples’ actions – putting the ballot in the mail – rather than a fuzzy deadline that is determined by the recipient of the ballot, and therefore the voter has to contend with when precisely they need to act by – and this is just another obstacle that would cause some number of voters to be disqualified – either by not participating, or getting the slightly complicated calculation wrong.
And as a consequence, disenfranchise many WA voters.
All because they want a better who’s winning headline for the paper
What an awful idea.
@4
I don’t think they care about the headline – I think they stopped caring about the quality of their product long ago – that seems obvious. What they want are outcomes that favor their agenda.
The Seattle Times always gets into pot/kettle territory when it characterizes any other organization as inept.
I certainly hope, Goldy, that once you’re at the Stranger full-time, we can look forward to your calling them out on this shit as often as you are doing now.
Or, as House Speaker Frank Chopp asked about 40 of us in frustration last month: “Why is anybody spending even a nickel on that rag?”
Their position has the purpose of limiting votes, which always helps Republicans. If that is their real intent, then it can easily be proven that it WILL work.
So, the problem isn’t convincing them that it won’t speed up ballot counting, is it? It’s a given that they alresdy know that.
The progressive stance should be a long range plan to discredit them as a news provider.
Which ‘news’ station just won 125 Peabody awards for proving that highly skilled Ferry Mechanics can make good money?
That’s where news is at. It’s been there since the late 60’s — : 60 minutes was the model.
The Republican Times is merely parroting the GOP meme that seeks to disqualify as many ballots as possible. These guys don’t believe in democracy. They believe in perpetual rule of the working class by a moneyed elite by any means, including guns and violence if necessary, according to some recent Republican candidates. The public should reject this editorial as mere feather-plucking by lightweight editorials who have no respect from the Constitution or our democratic traditions.
I don’t think that the Times’ has thought this through. Say the legislature required that ballots must be received on or before election day. So voters would mail in their ballots even earlier, afraid that they wouldn’t be counted. You can bet that the Times’ political ad revenues would plummet during the final week before the election as campaigns realize their ad purchases are wasted.
They did a great job of counting votes in nov. I1053 yes, roll back the candy tax, yes, no add on sales tax, yes, cut the crap outta gov, yes