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Mayor Nickels has conceded, and gracefully. (And no, he’s not all that fat; I just liked the pun.) More later.

UPDATE:
I’m back home now, after conveniently riding light rail back and forth to City Hall (you know, the light rail line Mayor Nickels staked his political capital on building), and while I’m waiting for some video to load, I thought I’d just add a few more observations.

As I initially wrote, Mayor Nickels’ concession was quite graceful, but it was also self-effacing, forthright, and at times both funny and touching. There’s no doubt a lot of of folks don’t much like the mayor—Tuesday’s election was a testament to his unpopularity—but had more voters seen this downright likable side to Nickels, I wonder if he would have been giving a concession speech this morning?

I for one thought this race would in the end come down to competence, and thus I never really believed Nickels would lose in the primary, as despite the incessant whining about snow removal and a few bad curbs, he’s proven to be a pretty damn competent mayor, with no hint of personal corruption. In terms of basic infrastructure—roads, rail, schools, fire stations, parks, play fields, etc.—Seattle is a better city than it was eight years ago, and so I guess I never really took seriously public discontent with the mayor himself.

I guess I should’ve known better.

Voters elect people, not issues, and apparently, not enough primary voters liked the mayor enough to get him through to the general. Perhaps if his campaign had done a better job of defining Nickels as a human being, the results might have been different. Or perhaps it was already too late.

Whatever.

I can think of a lot of reasons why one might want to kick out the mayor. I just come away thinking he was kicked out for the wrong reasons.

Word on the street, and from multiple sources, is that former Western Wireless CEO John Stanton has been telling folks he’ll raise a million dollar “independent” expenditure on behalf of closeted-Republican Susan Hutchison in this November’s race for King County Executive.

In addition to Stanton, you can expect the usual Republican suspects to pony up (Kemper Freeman, Skip Rowley, the various McCaws, et al). And don’t be surprised to see a big chunk of change from the normally apolitical Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi, who has long had a strangely close relationship with the former KIRO-7 anchor.

I’m one of those who strongly believes that demographics and party alignment strongly favors Dow Constantine in the race, but I’m also one who believes in the power of money to sway votes, especially in the face of our weakened political media. So as bizarrely unqualified and out of step with mainstream King County values as Hutchison really is, we can’t afford to be complacent, especially with R-71 potentially bringing conservative voters out to the polls in force.

This is an open thread…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gCUufJKAKE&feature=channel[/youtube]

Perhaps there are lessons from the 1960’s to be learned for today’s leftists: policy is nothing without passion and creativity, although in the case of the video above a laundry list of fantasy grievances set to canned guitar chords may not be the way to go.

While there are many aggravating things about today’s conservatives, none are as aggravating as their attempts at artistic expression.

If you’re going to make a policy issue about culture, you should make sure you have some.

(Stumbled upon at the site of Ethan Persoff, who also hosts a web version of the “Official Pogrom” for the 1969 Chicago Conspiracy Trial.)

Today’s R-71 data have been release by the Secretary of State’s office.

The total signatures examined has reached 88,191, which is 64.1% of the total petition. To date there have been 10,510 invalid signatures found, for an apparent rejection rate of 11.92%. This rate underestimates the rejection rate for the entire petition because it doesn’t account for the increasing rate of duplicates found as more signatures are examined.

The invalid signatures include 8,822 that were not found in the voting rolls, 867 duplicate signatures, and 821 that did not match the signature on file. There are also 44 signatures “pending” that I’ve ignored. The 867 duplicate signatures found thus far, gives a projected total duplication rate of about 1.90% for the petition.

Using the V₂ estimator, the number of valid signatures on the petition is projected to be 120,519 leaving a shortfall of 58 signatures from the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot. This projection assumes that the signatures examined so far reflect a random sample of all signatures on the petition. As I discussed yesterday, this isn’t the case. In the last several days, there appear to be an unexplained, systematic increase in the rate at which signers are not found in the voting rolls.

If we correct the apparent rejection rate of 11.92% for duplicate signatures, the total rejection rate for the petition should be about 12.47%.

The extent of uncertainty in the outcome of R-71 can be seen from the results of a Monte Carlo analysis of 100,000 simulated petitions using the rates observed through today. The red bars show the mass of failed petitions and the green bars show the mass of petitions that made the ballot:

In the simulations, the petition qualified 41,520 times and failed 58,480 times, suggesting that, if today’s rates hold, R-71 would have a 41.52% chance of qualifying for the ballot. But, as we have seen for several days, the rejection rates aren’t holding—they have systematically increased.

Finally, here is the big picture over the last couple of weeks. The blue symbols are projected median numbers of valid signatures for the petition and 95% confidence intervals. The red line is the number of signatures needed to qualify for the ballot.

If the rejection rates were constant over time, the blue line would be mostly straight (bouncing around a little). What we actually see is a decline in the projected signatures suggesting the rejection rates are increasing.

Why are the error rates increasing with time? It is hard to know. Yesterday I mentioned the possibility that there could be temporal correlation, so that signatures collected later are being examined later. Dave Ammons (communications director for Secretary of State) suggests it isn’t so. I’m not completely convinced.

Whatever the reason, R-71 has now made the transition from qualifying to failing. Sure…it’s just barely failing, but should the rejection-rate trend continue, it will soon transition to a “safe fail”.

At least until the rate trends reverse….

Update: And then there is this. A substantial number of “not found” signatures are now being located in a more current voter roll. This third phase check has upped the uncertainty….

Not much good news for Greg Nickels in this afternoon’s ballot drop, with the gap between him and second place finisher Mike McGinn growing, if only slightly, to 1170 votes. I suppose it ain’t over until the fat mayor sings, but with about three quarters of the expected ballots already counted, and the trends not going in his direction, it sure does look like Mayor Nickels will be entering the private sector come January.

One thing I can say for certain is that the Seattle Times editorial board will have an easy time endorsing Mallahan. (Think tunnel.) As for me, I guess I’ll have to start paying closer attention to McGinn and Malahan as opposed to just complaining about their awfully uninspiring campaigns. (And really, all around, this his been a truly disappointing campaign thus far on the part of all the candidates.)

In other election not-quite-news, it looks like the late ballots haven’t trended quite so well for Susan Hutchison as the early ones, with her lead over second place finisher Dow Constantine shrinking from 37-22 on election night, to 34.6-25.0 after today’s drop. I guess the more you get to know Hutchison, the more you, um, know her.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b46ZCMx-RGQ[/youtube]

The Seattle Times this morning asks the question, “Bag fee: bad idea or bad timing?”

Huh. Well, I suppose it could be one or the other or both. Or, and perhaps I’m reaching here, but just maybe Referendum 1’s failure had something to do with the chemical industry outspending the Yes campaign by fifteen to one, an astounding $1.4 million to $95,000 margin? I mean perhaps, if the American Chemistry Council hadn’t spent about twenty bucks a piece for every No vote it would ultimately win, the vote might have been a little closer?

Or maybe I’m crazy, and money has no influence whatsoever on elections?

Of course, the reason the plastic bag industry was willing to spend so much money in a city initiative had nothing to do with lofty ideals or even the plastic bag market here in Seattle. It was to head off a cascade of similar measures in other cities should the Seattle bag fee had gone into effect, and proven to be, well, not so bad and not so unpopular. So here’s what I would do if I were on the Seattle City Council: pass the bag fee ordinance again.

And again. And again, and again and again.

Just keep passing that sucker, forcing the chemical industry to pump a million and half dollars or so into our local media economy year after year after year. It’s good for business and good for our democracy. And it sure would feel good to give the American Chemistry Council the finger.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

You know things are changing with respect to marijuana laws when the former police chief of a major American city writes the forward to a book about how marijuana is safer than alcohol. Here’s former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper in the introduction to a new book called Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink:

In all my years on the streets, it was an extremely rare occasion to have a night go by without an alcohol-related incident. More often than not, there were multiple alcohol-related calls during a shift. I became accustomed to the pattern (and the odor). If I was called to a part of town with a concentration of bars or to the local university, I could expect to be greeted by one or more drunks, flexing their “beer muscles,” either in the throes of a fight or looking to start one. Sadly, the same was often true when I received a domestic abuse call. More often than not, these conflicts–many having erupted into physical violence–were fueled by one or both participants having overindulged in alcohol.

In case you might be thinking my observations are unique, let me share the results of some informal research I have conducted on my own. Over the past four years, out of a general interest in this subject, I’ve been asking police officers throughout the U.S. (and Canada) two questions. First: “When’s the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana?” (And by this I mean marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause; they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or thirty years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask, “When’s the last time you had to fight a drunk?” They look at their watches.

This past weekend, another Hempfest came and went. Several hundred thousand people flocked to Myrtle Edwards Park, most of whom got high, and the most serious altercation was Dominic Holden being removed from the VIP area.

As Stamper points out, anyone remotely familiar with people who drink and people who smoke pot know quite well which category is more likely to be violent. Yet we continue to regard alcohol as the safer drug. Politicians of both parties have continually told us that we can’t legalize marijuana because of the message it would send to our kids, yet alcohol advertisements are everywhere. For those of us who grew up with this nonsense, we got the message loud and clear. Our drug laws don’t make any sense.

All day Thursday is a book bomb for the aforementioned book from Mason Tvert, Steve Fox, and Paul Armentano. Drug law reform groups are hoping to get the book to #1 on Amazon. I have my own copy already but haven’t had a chance to read it yet. The book is largely an extension of the work that Tvert has done with SAFER, a Colorado-based organization that has made some waves in that state already. You can grab it from Amazon here.

Yesterday I took a break from my all-too-frequent analyses of the R-71 signature counts. I didn’t even look at the numbers until this morning. When I did look, a Spock-esque twitch afflicted my left eyebrow. “Curious”, I though. “But maybe it’s just a one-time fluke….”

The analysis of yesterday’s data showed the probability of NOT making the ballet increased from a nearly impossible 0.04% to an almost-interesting 0.91%. In fact, this slow increase in the probability of not qualifying has continued a trend begun after 13 August.

Well, if you like that result, hold onto your sou’wester, because today’s result will blow you away. I’ll present the results in three parts. First, the basic results for today, then we’ll explore the trends in the daily data dumps. Finally (and below the fold) we’ll look at the micro-level volume data to divine what this trend suggests.

Today’s R-71 data release has the signature count up to 79,195, (about 57.5% of the total). There have been 9,208 invalid signatures found, for a cumulative crude (non-duplicate-corrected) rejection rate of 11.63%.

The invalid signatures include 7,805 that were not found in the voting rolls, 703 duplicate signatures, and 700 signatures that mismatched the signature on file. There are also 38 signatures “pending”; I’ve ignored them in the analyses. The 703 duplicate signatures suggest a final duplication rate of about 1.90% for the petition. This continues the trend we’ve seen this week of the projected duplicate rate growing faster than the mathematical predictions under the assumption of random sampling.

Using the V₂ estimator, the number of valid signatures is now expected to be 120,777 leaving a thin surplus of only 200 signatures over the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot. From the cumulative data to date, the overall rejection rate is projected to be 12.28%.

A Monte Carlo analyses consisting of 100,000 simulated petition samples suggests that the measure has an 80.48% probability of qualifying for the ballot, assuming the only “error” is statistical sampling error.

Here is the distribution of valid signatures relative to the number required to qualify.

The red bars on the left show the times R-71 failed to qualify among the 100,000 simulations; green bars show the counts of signatures in which the measure qualified. Compare this to the results from just two days ago. Quite a difference!

Let’s examine the history since the SoS office started releasing accurate data a week and a half ago:

The red line shows the number of signatures needed to qualify, and the blue symbols show the daily projections of valid signatures, surrounded by 95% confidence intervals.

Clearly, since the 13th of August, the projected number of signatures has declined–and, as of today, declined more than we could expect by chance alone. Something is going on.

Tomorrow will be interesting…if the trend continues, success of the measure may dip below a probability of 50%.

The analyses I’ve done here are based on two assumptions: (1) that the signatures evaluated so far are just like signatures that remain to be evaluated, and (2) that the signature validation process is “stable” (the people validating signatures are not changing their standards over time). Today we see some pretty good evidence that one (or both) of these assumptions is (are) violated.

The supporters of R-71 will, no doubt, focus on the second assumption. If the measure fails, Secretary of State Sam Reed will likely take much abuse from fringe homophobes for “personally pushing a homosexual agenda.” To me, the simplest explanation is that the volumes being examined in serial order are chronologically correlated with the signature collection order. ( I don’t know if this is true; but, I cannot rule it out either.)

My thinking is that later-collected signatures (and therefore, later volumes) should have a higher duplication rate, just because there is an increasing chance with time early signers forgot whether or not they signed earlier. Additionally, with the last push of getting as many signatures as possible with an approaching deadline, it seems plausible that errors would increase. I’m thinking errors like collecting more out-of-state signatures, underage signatures, and signatures from people not active on the voter rolls.

Below the fold, I examine the fine-level data to see just what types of errors are increasing as the process proceeds. If you are still interested, click through…

[Read more…]

From The Spokesman-Review:

(Rep. Cathy) McMorris Rogers spoke at All Saints Lutheran Church to about 50 people representing the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association and the AARP, the national advocacy group for people 50 and older.

Although the media were not allowed to attend, a few people who did said afterward that health care was the primary topic of discussion and that a woman in the audience who spoke in favor of the public option received the loudest applause.

Which personally I think is fine. Members of Congress should have meetings with members of appropriate groups in their districts. How interesting that the loudest applause was for the public option, too. I guess when you actually put folks who are likely to be most immediately interested in a room, they get real.

It wouldn’t even really be worthy of note, except for the deliberate insurance industry-GOP strategy of fostering anger and deception at other member’s town halls. To her credit, McMorris Rodgers has decried some of the worst of the nuttiness.

Sure, it would have been nice for McMorris Rodgers to have a public town hall in Spokane, since some tradmed outlets have declared them mandatory for Democrats. But hey, we’re pretty used to the double standard by now. I’m sure the howls of outrage from right wing talkers about facing constituents will echo across Eastern Washington tomorrow.

Normally, a sound first place finish in a nonpartisan primary would pretty much assure a candidate frontrunner status, but since the race for King County Executive is nonpartisan in name only, not-so-secret Republican Susan Hutchison shouldn’t start measuring the drapes just quite yet.

On the one hand, 37% in an ostensibly five-way race is pretty darn good, especially when you consider that the runner up is trailing far behind at 22%. But that’s not really all that much better than Will Baker numbers, the bare minimum an uncloseted Republican can expect to draw around these parts, and with 57% of voters choosing avowed Democrats, the D to R ratio is actually pretty damn respectable.

So what percentage of these non-Constantine Dems can Hutchison expect to lure in the general? Some, sure, but I’d hazard not nearly enough. Constantine is by far the most qualified candidate remaining, and the only Democrat. And if voters understand that in November, that should be enough to put him well over the top.

Public Policy Polling (PDF:)

One poll question indicative of how difficult it is to gain public understanding on a complicated issue asked if respondents thought the government should ‘stay out of Medicare,’ something inherently impossible. 39% said yes.

Sometimes I really think we should just repeal Medicare, look over at the Republicans and go “there.” We won’t, of course, because it would be inhumane to millions of our fellow citizens, but still…

(Props to Think Progress.)

The Columbian: has a roundup of primary night down here.

Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard faces a heated battle to keep his job in November after waging a neck-and-neck struggle with Councilman Tim Leavitt in Tuesday’s primary.

Preliminary tallies released Tuesday night show Pollard with 43.1 percent of the vote, followed by Leavitt with 42 percent.

A third candidate, citizen activist Charlie Stemper, had 14.9 percent and will not advance to the Nov. 3 general election.

This should be a very interesting race to watch. As the article notes, Pollard is a 14 year incumbent, and the blunt former military officer has only once received less than 60% in a general election. Leavitt is campaigning on “change,” which is evident if you check out his web page. Remind you of anyone else’s?

There’s a generational component at play, with Pollard generally receiving backing from many long-time establishment figures. But Leavitt has secured some pretty impressive endorsements as well, including some union locals, various civic and community groups and of course, the Building Industry Association, the local BIAW affiliate.

Perhaps as importantly, Leavitt is endorsed by county commissioners Marc Boldt and Steve Stuart, whose party labels read “Republican” and “Democrat” respectively, but who in reality are both solidly in the BIAW camp.

There are long-standing frictions over growth between the county and the city, and one way to view Leavitt’s run is as an attempt by the pro-developer forces to take over the city government as well. The bubble may have burst, but the local bidness guys and gals are busy planning for the next one, and it would be great for them if the city doesn’t give them any trouble.

While there are the usual assortment of hyper-local issues, like redevelopment of Vancouver’s waterfront, the big regional issue at play is a new bridge over the Columbia River, ie the CRC project. This might wind up being a key factor in the race, with Pollard sticking to his vision of a completely revitalized downtown replete with waterfront, new bridge, capped freeway and light rail.

Leavitt has been pretty vocal about resisting tolls on any new bridge, which makes for good populist fodder, but doesn’t really match up with existing federal, state and local budget realities. Without tolls there won’t be a new bridge, as federal transportation funds aren’t what they used to be and there is strong political pressure in Oregon on the issue of cars coming in from the Washington side.

So to boil it down, the long-term incumbent and former military guy is the one with the vision for the future, including light rail and a more viable urban landscape, and the “change” guy endorsed by the BIAW is the one pecking around the edges, with the support of some Democrats, campaigning to stop a new bridge, even if he doesn’t say so explicitly.

It’s not that there aren’t real issues to address, and there are legitimate beefs with the city over where to put resources. The arts community is supposedly quite unhappy with Pollard over what they perceive as a lack of support, and many downtown merchants got their dander up early on about the possibility of light rail disrupting their businesses. Sprawl and traffic on the east side of town is as bad as ever, although over the last decade the city has made significant improvements in services delivered to that area.

The real issue, I suppose, may actually turn out to be the lack of funding for municipalities in general, and just how much less in basic services people want. There’s never any shortage of people to complain about taxes, and in this economy that would seem to work in Leavitt’s favor. This could wind up being the race of Pollard’s career.