HorsesAss.Org

Well, I can gleam one great piece of news from Tuesday’s election, and that is that initiative campaigns in Washington state just got quite a bit more expensive.

To qualify an initiative for the ballot you need a number of valid signatures equal to 8% of the votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election. For the past four years that number came to about 198,000 signatures. Due to fraud, duplicates and other errors, campaigns generally shoot for a cushion of about 20% over the minimum, so 240,000 has been the magic number.

The bar just got higher.

The final count isn’t in, but it looks like approximately 2.85 million votes were cast for governor on Tuesday, resulting in a qualifying threshold of about 228,000 signatures. Add a 20% cushion, and campaigns are looking at a qualifying target of over 273,000.

Long gone are the days when signatures are gathered by an army of energized volunteers. Tim Eyman pioneered reliance on paid petitioners in Washington state, and no campaign has successfully attempted an all volunteer effort in years.

My impression is that Tim’s core base of support is limited, and shrinking. There is a ceiling on the number of volunteer signatures the true believers will gather for him… so those extra 35,000 signatures are going to cost him $1.50 to $5.00 a pop.

It’s been three years since Voters Want More Choices has raised near enough money to qualify an initiative for the ballot — both I-807 and I-864 fell well short of the mark. Depending on the language, Tim’s proposed “performance audits” initiative may not actually be terrible policy… but it certainly won’t be exciting enough to generate the necessary influx of $200.00 contributions.

Throughout the I-864 signature drive Tim told his supporters he needed $400,000 to reach the ballot. He raised a little more than half that. Add the expense of another $100,000 in signatures, and it looks like Tim’s “populist” days are over.

I’m not writing Tim off. He’s done a great job selling himself as a professional initiative whore (and if you ask I-892’s major financial backers, they’ll tell you they’ve been royally screwed.)

But it is ironic that a man who made his career railing against powerful special interests is now entirely beholden to them.

As my regular readers know, I have spent a fair number of pixels reporting on the shady business practices of the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, owner of four Seattle-area mini-casinos. For the most part, the local media has caved to threats of a Canadian libel suit, and refused to report on allegations of loan sharking, profit skimming, prostitution, mob connections, drugs, rape and other crimes at their casinos in B.C. and abroad.

One reporter even privately pooh-poohed my efforts to brand the recently defeated I-892 a “Great Canadian Initiative.” He said I was “reaching.”

Well, reach for this:

Great Canadian Gaming will analyze the outcome of initiative 892 and will plan a course of action for its operations in the State.

That’s from a press release issued by Great Canadian, discussing the results of their initiative. An initiative that — according to reliable sources — came about after Tim Eyman met with Great Canadian Executives.

Tim is already talking about a sequel:

On I-892, Eyman said it’s clear voters had concerns about the measure, and he intends to address those in a new initiative that “maintains 892’s positive aspects” and addresses the concerns.

I suppose that means that son-of-892 won’t legalize slot machines?

Not bloody likely. We all know that initiative whore Eyman fronted this gambling initiative for the money. And we all know that there is so much money to be made off slots, that Great Canadian is not going to let this issue die.

So I’m not going to let the story about pimping, loan-shark-infested Great Canadian die either. In fact, the story keeps getting better and better.

This week, Texas-based Allegiance Capital is up in Vancouver preparing to file their racketeering lawsuit in Canadian courts… and they don’t appear to be too worried about the libel suit Great Canadian has filed against them.

See, under Canadian law, the burden of proof is on the accused. And let’s just say that Allegiance won’t find it such a burden.

I’ve got the dirt on Great Canadian — including allegations of loan sharking and dealers cheating at their Washington state casinos. And I’m going to enjoy sharing it with you as I verify the details.

I’ve been meaning to comment on Tim Eyman’s brilliant post-election analysis. In referring to the overwhelming defeat of both I-892 (Slots for Tots) and I-884 (Education Trust Fund), Tim made the following remarkable observation.

“I think voters really liked half of both the proposals. If we could lower property taxes and increase funding for education, clearly we’d have a major winner.”

Well… duh-uh!!!

But then, doesn’t that just epitomize the rhetorical philosophy that has characterized all of Timmy’s initiatives… offer voters something for nothing.

In fact, there is a way to dramatically improve performance at our public schools while simultaneously cutting taxes, which I outlined last year in a modest proposal: “Cut Taxes to Improve Schools.” Though I suppose the fact that it involves eating the stupider children, might turn off a few voters.

The point is, both I-892 and I-884 failed for the same reason… when voters understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch, they tend not to vote for a free lunch.

I hope you will all excuse my delay in posting some post-election observations, as I spent the day sitting shiva for our democracy. I will for the moment ignore the national elections, except to once again respectfully ask my fellow Americans… are you out of your fucking minds?!!!

Apparently so.

Anyway…

On to the results from the less-insane Washington, where it turns out my predictions (made without the benefit of polling data) were pretty damn close. “Damn” being the operative word.

In fact, I correctly picked the winning candidate in every race. I think.

The governor’s race is still up in the air, but the absentee ballots look somewhat encouraging for Christine Gregoire. There are slightly more absentee ballots left to count from pro-Rossi counties than from pro-Gregoire King County, but Gregoire’s margin of victory in King is quite substantial, so they should tend to even out. We’ll know a bit more tomorrow afternoon.

Perhaps the best news is that the Democrats will likely control both houses of the Legislature. It could be a week or more before we get the final count, but it looks like the D’s picked up 3 seats in both houses.

The other statewide races went pretty much as expected. Patty Murray trounced political midget George Nethercutt, and the apparently unlikable Deborah Senn lost to the clearly unqualified Rob McKenna for attorney general. If the D’s aren’t careful McKenna will be Governor or a Senator someday.

All the statewide incumbents won.

As to the initiatives and referenda, of course, the big news was the overwhelming failure of I-892. And it was overwhelming… a greater than 60-40 defeat.

Now Eyman has been running on about all the money spent opposing the initiative, but for the most part, the No campaign’s ads were honest… they simply explained to voters that I-892 would put slot machines in our neighborhoods. And voters clearly don’t want slot machines in their neighborhoods.

The gambling industry had hoped that the Eyman brand would masquerade I-892 as a tax cut initiative. It didn’t work.

I’ll talk more about the other initiatives later, but the only real surprise was the margin of defeat for I-884. And the only reason I find it surprising, is that I would have thought its sponsors would have done a better job on focus groups and polling before financing this desperately need measure with a wildly unpopular penny hike in the sales tax.

More comments tomorrow, including some new tidbits on loan shark infested Great Canadian Gaming Corporation.

Dear Fellow Americans,

Are you out of your fucking minds?!!!!

Sincerely,

Goldy

I worked so hard over the past year to defeat Tim Eyman and his dangerous initiatives, and I should be enjoying a victory celebration. I-892 is going down to a huge and embarrassing defeat. And I-864 didn’t even qualify for the ballot.

I’m not claiming the credit for myself, but I know I made an important contribution. (And more of a contribution than Tim knows.)

But it’s hard for me to gloat right now, when I’m watching my nation go down in flames.

I never accepted the legitimacy of W’s first administration and I will never accept the legitimacy of his second. At this moment, I cannot imagine being convinced that this was a free and fair election. Quite simply, I fear for our democracy.

I also fear for the future of the Democratic Party, nationally, and in Washington State.

The fact that Eyman has so clearly been revealed for the paper tiger that he is, is little consolation at this moment. But it’s all I have.

It has been suggested that I report WA results instead of focusing on the national election, like I have most of the day. I should point out that WA results have only just become available, and you can check them out by linking to:

http://vote.wa.gov/general/

I should note that the state is not at this time reporting results from King County, so don’t get too excited.

The networks are too chicken to call it, but I’ve looked at the county-by-county returns, checked with my family back home, and I’m calling Pennsylvania for Kerry!

You heard it here first.

The last of the exit polls before the real thing starts coming in, courtesy of dailyKOS:

    Kerry Bush
 PA 53    46
 FL 51    49
 NC 48    52
 OH 51    49
 MO 46    54
 AK 47    53
 MI 51    47
 NM 50    49
 LA 43    56
 CO 48    51
 AZ 45    55
 MN 54    44
 WI 52    47
 IA 49    49 

Crossing my fingers….

4pm (eastern) exit polls, courtesy of dailyKOS:

                 NV   CO   NC   PA   OH   FL   MI   NM   WI
 Kerry         48   46   49   54   50   50   51   50   51
 Bush          50   53   51   45   49   49   47   48   46

Again, take them with a grain of salt.

Early exit poll numbers from MyDD via dailyKOS:

         AZ  CO  LA  PA  OH  FL  MI  NM  MN  WI  IA  NH
Kerry    45  48  42  60  52  51  51  50  58  52  49  57
Bush     55  51  57  40  48  48  47  48  40  43  49  41

I can’t vouch for their accuracy, or meaning. But I’d rather have meaningless, inaccurate data in Kerry’s favor than in Bush’s. History shows that early numbers tend to favor Republicans, but clearly, Kerry is not going to win PA by 20 points, so take these numbers with a grain of salt. And a couple aspirin.

One other interesting thing to note is that Zogby now shows Virginia a dead heat!

All this bodes well.

Still waiting for some definitive exit polling leaks, but Norm Ornstein just reported on the Al Franken Show that “we have never seen turnout like this before.” He refused to reveal more than that, but past experience would say that is good news for Kerry.

One good sign that Republicans expect to lose this election is that they’re already casting aspersions on its legitimacy. I was particularly amused by the Drudge Report rumor that voting machines in Philadelphia already had thousands of votes on them before the polls opened.

Now, I grew up in Philadelphia, and worked as a polling official during several elections while in college. And the Democratic Machine there had a well deserved reputation for electoral tricks.

But rigging the machines was not one of them.

Each polling place has a Judge of Elections, a Majority Inspector, and a Minority Inspector… and we inspected the machines together before the polls opened, recorded a preliminary count together after the polls closed, and officially sealed the machines… together. Furthermore, the number of votes recorded on the machine must match the number of voters we recorded on our rolls. There’s no way to jigger those numbers.

So what about those thousands of votes already recorded on the machine? Well there are two odometers on the machine… one records the total number of votes cast in this election, and the other records the total number of votes cast during the life of the machine (in truth, I believe it is reset after major overhauls.) We recorded both numbers before and after.

So when poll watchers claim there are votes already recorded on these machines, it’s the lifetime odometer they are looking at. If these poll watchers (I’m assuming, paranoid Republican Minority Inspectors) had bothered to go to the training sessions (the city actually pays polling officials to go to a half-day session) they would have understood how these machines worked.

A tidbit from the USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll seems to suggest the vote breaking towards Kerry in Florida:

In Florida, 30% of registered voters said they already had cast their ballots, using early voting sites and absentee ballots. They supported Kerry 51%-43%.

And Ralph Nader?

The independent candidate who helped swing the 2000 election to Bush isn’t much of a factor this time. Among 1,573 likely voters, he was backed by 9.

But…

Let’s see, 51% for Kerry plus 43% for Bush plus about 0.5% for Nader… that comes to 94.5%. Soooo… what? Gallup’s telling us that 5.5% of people who have already voted are still undecided?

But then, this is Florida, so anything could happen.

Earlier today I flattered myself by posting my endorsements in the most important and competitive races in Washington state. Now I’m going to tell you how to vote on the various initiatives and referenda.

Really. You have to vote exactly as I tell you. Or else.

I-892: No to Slot Machines!

It should be clear to even the most casual reader that Tim Eyman and I don’t see eye-to-eye on the issues. And that I think he is a lying, thieving, blowhard.

So I want to make it absolutely clear that my opposition to I-892 would be just as strong even if Tim had nothing to with it. I-892 would put 18,225 slot machines into over 2000 neighborhood bars, restaurants and bowling alleys scattered through nearly every community in the state, dramatically expanding access to the most addictive form of gambling ever devised.

This is a greedy, deceptive, money grab, pure and simple. I-892 would turn Washington into a poor-man’s Nevada, and in return, homeowners get maybe $29 a month on a $100,000 home, tops.

Of course, another really good reason to vote No is just to stick it to Tim.

Prediction: Eyman has more relevance with the media than he does with voters… No 62%, Yes 38%.

I-872: No on the Louisiana primary

“Waaahhhh! I want my blanket primary!”

That’s pretty much what voters and editorialists have been crying ever since the Supreme Court threw out Washington’s odd “blanket” or “open” primary.

Well get over it!

Besides, contrary to popular belief, I-872 does NOT restore the blanket primary… instead it replaces it with the equally odd but decidedly more stupid “Louisiana-style” top-two primary. Yes, I-872 gives you more choice in the primary, but it does so by giving you less choice in the general election… and that, after all, is when the majority of people actually vote.

Prediction: baby wants its blankie… Yes 71%, No 29%.

I-884: Yes to the Education Trust Fund

To be honest, I have a lot of trouble with this initiative. Our children desperately need the extra billion dollars a year it raises for education. But a 1 cent increase in the sales tax hurts those families who can afford it least. Washington already has the most regressive tax structure in the nation, and I-884 will make it worse.

I’m following Ron Sims’ lead on this. He supports I-884 as a stopgap measure to deal with our growing education funding crisis now. And like Ron, I promise to work as hard as I can towards real tax reform that will provide real relief to middle- and low-income families, while assuring an adequate tax base for the services the vast majority of citizens demand.

In real dollars, we are now spending over $500 less per student per year compared to 1993. Anybody who has a child in the public schools has seen the impact, and knows that something has to be done now. So please vote Yes on I-884, and then join me in working for a fair and adequate tax system.

Prediction: I’ll let my optimism get the better of me here… Yes 52%, No 48%.

R-55: No to Charter Schools

I agree 100% with message of R-55’s TV ads… we need to make our schools better. That’s why I’m voting Yes on I-884.

But R-55 gets a big fat NO, because what R-55’s TV ads never mention, is that it authorizes charter schools.

It’s not that I have anything against charter schools… in theory. But in practice, the vast right wing conspiracy is just using charter schools (and vouchers) as a tool to defund public education. In WA, charter schools will be used to bust the teachers unions. Yeah… that’s exactly the way to improve education… pay teachers less.

Charter schools are being driven by a belief in the “free market” that has taken on a religious fervor. Thus it’s not surprising that a large number of charter schools in other states include a religious curriculum.

We need to spend our public education dollars in our public schools. Vote No.

Prediction: once again, WA voters will reject charter schools… No 54%, Yes 46%.

I-297: Yes to cleaning up nuclear waste

Truth is, I don’t know all that much about this initiative, but I’ve been assured by people who know what they’re talking about that I want to vote Yes on this. So take my word on their word.

Not enough? Read the Ballot Summary:

This measure would establish additional requirements for regulating mixed waste (radioactive and nonradioactive hazardous substances) sites, such as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The measure would set standards for cleanup and granting permits, would prohibit waste disposal in unlined soil trenches, and require cleanup of tank leaks. Permits would not allow adding more wastes to facilities until existing contamination was cleaned up. Additional public participation would be provided and enforcement through citizen lawsuits would be authorized.

Can’t argue with that.

Prediction: voters can’t argue with that… Yes 55%, No 45%.