King County Elections dropped the first batch of ballots shortly after 8PM, and… well… blow me down:
| Mike McGinn | 16810 | 26.56% |
| Joe Mallahan | 16334 | 25.81% |
| Greg Nickels | 15859 | 25.05% |
That’s a three-way statistical tie in the Seattle mayor’s race with 17.3% of registered voters counted. Can’t get much more dramatic than that… except for, you know, the excruciating wait over the next week or so as the other half of the ballots slowly trickle in to elections headquarters. (KC Elections still projects a 33% final turnout.)
No doubt the McGinn camp is feeling awfully damn pleased with themselves right now about their grassroots efforts, while the mayor’s folks… well… I suppose they’re feeling kinda sad. As for Mallahan’s folks, well, I’m still not sure there are any Mallahan folks who aren’t actually on payroll.
As for the rest of the King County primary results, there aren’t many surprises. In the executive race, Susan Hutchison leads Dow Constantine 37% to 22%, while Ross Hunter, Fred Jarrett and Larry Phillips are battling it out for a distant third. Meanwhile in the Seattle City Council races it looks like Sally Bagshaw will face off against David Bloom, Nick Licata will go up against Jesse Israel, and Mike O’Brien will take on Robert Rosencrantz.
And of course, the Bag Fee initiative is failing, 58% to 42%.
More later.
For those who want it over on election night, the wait will be excruciating. Maybe we should go to the Oregon way, and the ballots have to be in by election night, not just post-marked.
As for the bag fee, it may have been a bad idea, but the people pushing it should have brought up where a lot of the city’s trash ends up. A landfill in Oregon, and it is hauled by train, most likely Union Pacific, as except for the BNSF branch to California that passes through Bend, there is nothing much else in Eastern Oregon. Now maybe we already move so much that UP gives them a good rate.
I think the 20% or so undecided voters in most of the King County Executive pre-election polls were undecided on which of the four Democrats they were going to vote for. Susan Hutchison is still a bit under 40% — basically the same level she was at when 20% of the voters were undecided in the earlier polls.
I wonder whether we will see a McGinn vs. Mallahan runoff in November? Seems like the challengers will increase their percentages as the later deciding voters mailed in their ballots. But very hard to tell.
Where is Ivan with his easy-victory-for-Nickels mantra? Of course, I recall Goldy chanting the same mantra earlier. Wonder if Stefan has climbed out of seclusion to opine on these results on (u)SP?
@2 And I doubt Hutch’s 38% will improve much in November when there’s only 1 Democrat on the ballot. Ooooo, silly me, I keep forgetting this is a nonpartisan race!
@3 (continued) “Wonder if Stefan has climbed out of seclusion to opine on these results on (u)SP?”
He’s in seclusion? I thought he was in Acapulco spending the taxpayers’ $225,000.
@5 (continued) I checked Sucky Politics a few minutes ago … they’re so fucking lazy they simply linked to a Seattle Times editorial.
I can already see it happening. Stefan sues King County because they give him only a free room, a full-time county staffer, and 600,000 documents. The county’s Republican prosecutor pays a nuisance settlement of $225,000. Stefan buys a condo in Acapulco with the taxpayers’ money and he and his missus and their rowdy kid begin frequenting local eateries. His kid disturbs other patrons by raising hell and the next thing is Stefan and his corporate lawyer wife get half a dozen Mexican waitresses fired for trying to shush him. There’s no other work in Mexico so the next thing is they cross the border looking for work and voila! half a dozen more illegals in the U.S. …
My stockbroker had an experience with a corporate lawyer once. A colleague of his was driving in downtown Seattle minding his own business when a stupid dog runs out in the street and gets squashed flat by his car. Well, the stupid dog owner who let her stupid dog run loose downtown was a corporate lawyer working for one of the downtown law firms. This leash-law-challenged bitch harassed that poor guy for six months — threatening letters, nasty phone calls, ugly e-mails, the whole works. She wanted money, of course, a fucking mercenary, just like Stefan vis-a-vis the taxpayers. So he finally paid her several thousand dollars for her stupid dog to get rid of her. It wouldn’t have been worth more than 25 cents at a rendering plant.
All dogs should be sent to rendering plants asap. They’re not only stupid, they’re useless! All they do is shit on the park grass and chase rabbits.
at least some of the Seattle voters showed a brain by voting down the useless “bag tax fee”. What’s next, a referendum to force Martians to become Seattle citizens if they want to continue to visit us in their space ships?
I’m shocked, tho, that even 26% of 17% will vote to just strangle the city with a looney tunes candidate who doesn’t even know what office he’s running for does… but wants to see the grass grow on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd avenue because it would be so kewl!
Going from an incumbent who is too incompetent for words, and has NO transportation policy of any sort, to one who has an ANTI- transportation policy… yeah, that’ll do some good … how Seattle!
I hear crow tastes like chicken. Just a little gamier :)
@1
Washington’s way is more democratic if not less satisfying for political geeks like me.
@1 – EvergreenRailfan
A well known side-effect of vote by mail is (further) delaying results. So the fix is to disenfranchise voters?
Munro and Reed have been floating that idea for a long time.
Very interestingly, the assoc of county auditors testified AGAINST changing the deadline rule last leg session. Their rationale was that it’d create the expectation (by voters, media, pols) that counties would have speedy results. An expectation they knew they couldn’t fulfill, even with a rule change. (I’m glad someone involved in election administration called a spade a spade. We’ve had enough magical thinking.)
Every time Washington voters have been asked about changing the rules, it’s been shot down. But Munro/Reed keep getting another bite at the apple. And each time they’re shocked, shocked that voters don’t agree with them.
@ 7. Roger Rabbit spews:
“I can already see it happening. Stefan sues King County…”
The neighbors are going to think I’m a little nuts with the screaming laughter. SOME things never change. Roger Rabbit, you are still one of the funniest critters I’ve ever encountered in cyberspace!
The next two days are going to be hairy, white knuckle watching! My best friend (both of us retired City Lighters) were trying to figure WHO might best beat Nichels (we both went for Mallahan). We’ve BOTH had enough of Bill Allen steering this City via Nichels.
Wouldn’t it be rather embarrassing if, after Nichels has been selected Conference of Mayors President, he weren’t able to make it through the Primary (even with the largest campaign war chest spent)? I think that slippery vote on the Tunnel/NoTunnel pretense election may come back to bite him in the arse.
@3
Stefan’s failboat has since sailed far far away, why would anyone care about his lame opinions? Besides, I’m sure he’s perfecly satisfied to let Jim Miller, Pudge, and the rest of the SP “brain trust” to step all over their own dicks now.
Hehehe… See Goldy, money is everything.
I do see some drawbacks to the election night deadline. Even worse, Pierce County last year botched introduction of Instant Runoff Voting. San Francisco did a better job of educating voters on the new system, and it pretty much worked. Although they had to go to a hand-count because the special software was not certified by the California Secretary of State, but the effects of using it the first time in 2004 were interesting. Several supervisor races that would have gone to a runoff in a month were decided that night.(They needed a majority, although I know this is a primary). When Washington Voters approved Top Two, they pretty much did not know IRV existed. I would rather have seen it be Top Three.
A good example of IRV is Australia. The two main conservative parties, the Liberals and Nationals, co-exist within a coalition, that survives even when they are out of power. They can’t do anything in the House of Representatives, but they can make the Labor Party dependent on the Cross-Bench(minor parties) vote in the Senate.
http://www.australianpolitics......tial.shtml
What led to Australia adopting IRV was too many conservative, anti-labor candidates split the right-wing vote, and the Labor candidates won with a minority, in Conservative areas. We adopted one other Aussie Electoral innovation, the Secret Ballot. Their compulsory turnout rule(which the punishment is so lax that there are some who stay away), was adopted because turnout dropped once to 50%. There are some elections here that 50% would be an improvement. The Proportional Represntation in their Senate,
because of an electoral wipe-out with all seats going to one party. We just do superficial reforms.
A mayoral three-way with Greg Nickels? The horror.