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Apparently, the Seattle Times thinks this is news:

The American Nazi Party has lost its litter-control sponsorship of a stretch of local road after it failed to clean it up.

The other day I received an email from the infamous Lawyer X, who suggested I may have got it wrong in implying that registering at a PO Box is necessarily improper, as the GOP contends. He pointed me towards the WAC:

Registering to vote — Nontraditional address. No person registering to vote, who meets all the qualifications of a registered voter in the state of Washington, shall be disqualified because of a nontraditional physical address being used as a residence address. Nontraditional addresses may include shelters, parks or other identifiable locations which the voter deems to be his/her residence. Voters using such an address will be registered and precincted based on the location provided. Voters without a traditional address will be registered at the county courthouse, city hall or other public building near the area that the voter considers his/her residence. Registering at a nontraditional address will not disqualify a voter from requesting ongoing absentee voter status provided the voter designates a valid mailing address.

Let’s parse this, shall we?

The first sentence is absolutely clear that a voter may not be disqualified for using a “nontraditional physical address” as a residence address. The second sentence defines nontraditional addresses as “identifiable locations which the voter deems to be his/her residence.” I don’t think there’s much of an argument there.

But it’s the third and fourth sentences that are key to understanding the GOP challenge.

Voters using such an address will be registered and precincted based on the location provided.

It doesn’t take a legal degree to dissect this sentence, just a basic understanding of grammar. “Will be registered” is in the future progressive tense, whereas “location provided” is in the simple past tense. Thus, these instructions can only be understood to be directed at elections workers, acting in the future, based on information provided by voters in the past.

You see, voters don’t register to vote (let alone precinct themselves)… they merely fill out forms applying for registration. The actual act of registering and precincting the voter is then conducted by elections workers, based on information provided by the voter on the form. This brings us to the fourth sentence, the one that the GOP relies on to disqualify many of the challenged voters.

Voters without a traditional address will be registered at the county courthouse, city hall or other public building near the area that the voter considers his/her residence.

In the context of the previous sentence, the future progressive “will be registered” can only be understood as an instruction to elections workers, not voters. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose of this particular provision is — perhaps its merely an accommodation to the computer systems — but the failure of a voter with a nontraditional address to be registered at a public building is not a failure of the voter. Take a look at the voter registration form as defined in WAC 434-324-050: nowhere on it is any mention of nontraditional addresses, or registering at public buildings… or even, an explicit instruction to the voter that he cannot list a mailbox number or storage facility as his address.

Upon close reading, the WAC simply does not require voters with nontraditional addresses to list the address of a public building as his residence on the voter registration form. Indeed, it would be impossible do so, as the form does not accommodate both the address of the location he deems to be his residence and the address of a nearby public building on the same line. If the WAC requires the voter to be registered at a public building, fulfilling this requirement would clearly be the responsibility of the election worker who processed the registration card… and an election official’s error is not sufficient reason to toss out a ballot from an otherwise qualified voter.

Thus, according to Lawyer X, challenged voters like Terri Carpenter and David Combs, who both have nontraditional addresses, are free to register at a PO Box, if that is the location they deem to be their residence… regardless of whether they can physically reside inside.

Residency is a state of mind, not pinned to an exact location. This is particularly true where the person has no other residence. When you are dealing with a homeless person, and where the GOP has made no effort to show the person has any other residence, the residence has to be the address provided by the voter. Every citizen of the state is entitled to vote. They can’t have it taken away because they do not own or lease property. Unless someone shows a voter has some other residence, the one the voter provided is it.

In this context it becomes all the more clear why the challenge statute requires the challenger to provide the actual address of the voter in question, because without it one can never truly determine that the location provided, whatever its dimensions, is not in fact the location the voter deems to be his residence. And so it seems likely that should the canvassing board follow the letter of the law, voters like Carpenter and Combs will survive the GOP’s challenge, as will other voters for whom the Republicans cannot prove, by clear and convincing evidence, their actual address.

And once again, the only thing the GOP will succeed in proving, is that administering elections is a lot more complicated than they pretend.

Andy MacDonald over at (un)SoundPolitics doesn’t like Seattle Monorail Board chairwoman Kristina Hill’s choice of words:

She then proceeds to give a profanity-laced interview, using the s-word three times and variations on the f-word no less than six. This is the behavior of the person the monorail board has chosen as their leader.

I can understand that Hill is angry after losing a battle she has fought for several years. But an employee of a public agency should not be cursing in interviews to the press, especially not the head of an agency. Civil servants — in which I include elected and appointed officials — should always strive to be exactly that: civil. A lowered standard of civility in public discourse has a corrosive effect on democracy.

What a fucking load of shit. This was The Stranger she was talking to, for Christ’s sake, a publication whose writers long ago traded in their stodgy, old Roget’s for a dog-eared copy of Glenngary Glen Ross. Hill gives an honest, in-depth, 3000-word interview, and we should just dismisses the entire thing, because she uses the “f-word”…? What the fuck?

I betcha Andy still refers to his penis as his “pee-pee.”

As my regular readers know, I occasionally exercise some of the more colorful features of the English language, and so I’ve grown accustomed to critics flinging that “civil discourse” crap my way like so much monkey shit. But it’s especially galling coming from the folk over at (u)SP. I suppose calling Ron Sims “the Robert Mugabe of Washington politics” raises the standard of civility in public discourse, huh? And relentlessly accusing King County Elections of fraud and corruption, without providing a single scrap of evidence… that doesn’t have a corrosive effect on democracy, does it?

Personally, I’ll take a shitload of “fucks” over (u)SP’s politely phrased lies, any day of the week.

It’s open. It’s threaded. It’s Friday.

My good friend Stefan and I had a bit of a rapprochement yesterday. I parked my car next to his at the voter registration challenge hearing — his personalized plates and David Irons bumper sticker were a bit of a giveaway — and apparently, neither of us slashed the other’s tires. We even exchanged a few pleasantries, though he claimed not recognize me, saying I have a common looking face or something. (Yeah… us whiney, bearded, 40-somethingish Jewish guys all look alike.)

Anyway, I could only hang around for part of the first session — in which only one of fifteen challenged voters actually showed up — but I think Stefan neatly sums up the subtext of yesterday’s hearing, and indeed, the entire GOP-manufactured election integrity controversy:

It’s conceivable that not all of the no-shows are real people.

Yes, it is conceivable. It’s also conceivable, I suppose, that each and every one of the no shows belongs to the contingent of North Korean soldiers I keep quartered in my basement. Or perhaps, they’re just average citizens, otherwise eligible to vote, who may have innocently, but improperly, registered at a rented mail box. Or, they may have been wrongly challenged, but busy.

The point is, nearly all the allegations of fraud and corruption that Stefan and his GOP cohorts have been flinging about for over a year, are, in fact, conceivable. But what the GOP has consistently failed to do is provide actual proof.

No doubt, at any one time, the voter registration rolls are filled with errors; erroneous registrations are being added and corrected every day. As a case in point, in the few weeks between the time Sotelo “personally” compiled her list of allegedly improper registrations, and the time she filed her Oct. 26 challenge, at least 126 of the voters on the list had already, unprompted, and on their own initiative, fixed their voter registration.

So it is important, when looking at this trumped up controversy, to focus on what exactly the problem is that the GOP hopes to solve? Are there hundreds of King County voters (out of 1.1 million) improperly registered at non-residential mailing addresses at any one time? Most likely, yes. Is there a scrap of evidence that any of these individuals are otherwise ineligible to vote? Well, if the GOP had actual evidence of fraud, you can be damn sure they’d let us know. So what is the problem?

These voter registration challenges are typical of all the other GOP allegations of fraud, which together amount to a collection of hearsay and conjecture intended to undermine the public’s faith in our electoral system. And like all of the Republican sponsored election “reforms”, the solution they propose is intended to fix a problem that doesn’t exist… disenfranchising innocent voters in the process.

For example, I’m told that the GOP’s original list of 1944 challenges includes the name of a prominent, local musician who registered at a mail box to protect his privacy. One’s voter registration is a public record, and unable to qualify for the address confidentiality program available to victims of domestic violence and sexual crimes, the musician has now apparently opted to no longer vote. Lori Sotelo has forced him to choose between his franchise and his privacy… and he chose the latter. Hardly a victory for the democratic process.

Another example is Terri Carpenter, the single voter who showed up at the 4:30 session to defend her ballot, a woman of unsteady means, whose one link to stability has been the Redmond mailbox she’s rented for the past 15 years. At the time she rented the mailbox, she had been living in a trailer on a nearby parking lot, and has resided, on and off, in various nearby locations ever since. Currently she is living on “recreational property” near Carnation. Should Sotelo succeed in casting out her ballot, we will have achieved little more than stripping the most basic right of citizenship from a woman, who despite her difficult circumstances, made the effort not only to vote, but to defend that vote before a roomful of strangers and a gaggle of media.

And then there is the story of David Combs of Issaquah, who, suffering from severe illness, has become homeless, living in his car, sometimes at the parking lot of the mailbox store he uses as an address. He came to the 6:30 session to beg for his vote, and upon leaving, flipped a picture of his 12-year-old daughter at his GOP accusers, demanding that Sotelo explain to her why her father doesn’t have the right to vote.

Yes, in all three cases the voters were improperly registered, and perhaps Sotelo will succeed in having their ballots disqualified. But to what end?

Out of the nearly 2000 voters that the Republicans challenged — hundreds of them wrongly — less than 184 ballots are expected to come before the canvassing board. All of the challenges may be denied due to the GOP’s failure to meet statutory requirements, though dozens would survive a challenge regardless. But there will not be a single scrap of evidence presented that a single one of these ballots was fraudulently cast by an individual not otherwise eligible to vote.

If the Republicans were truly interested cleaning up the voter rolls, they would have cooperated with King County Elections, and provided their list before the rolls were frozen, rather than filing a sloppy challenge just days before the election. But the problem that the GOP is trying to solve has nothing to do with electoral integrity, for the GOP’s problem with elections is its growing failure to win them in a county and state that continues to trend Democratic.

The GOP is willing to win elections by hook or by crook — by unfairly destroying the public’s faith in Democrats, or by disenfranchising tens of thousands of Democratic voters. That is what this dispute has always been about, from the day it became apparent that the Gregoire-Rossi race was headed for a recount.

King County Elections will hold the first of its voter registration challenge hearings today at 4:30 PM, for the 48 voters who cast challenged ballots at the polls on election day. Um… actually it’s only 36 voters, as Lori Sotelo withdrew another 12 challenges once she saw the list.

Hearings are also scheduled for Monday and Tuesday of next week, for the 168 challenged voters whose absentee ballots have been processed thus far. Additional challenges may be scheduled for absentee and provisional ballots that have not yet been processed… but it doesn’t look like there could be too many outstanding.

So… out of the original 1944 challenges filed with much fanfare by Republicans on Oct. 26:

• 76 were duplicates;
• 126 voters had changed their address prior to Sotelo’s Oct. 26 challenge;
• 116 voters changed their address by the Nov. 5 deadline;
• 152 have been withdrawn by Sotelo;

That leaves only 1,474 challenges left standing, and of these, only 204 ballots have been processed. That’s, um… about 0.04% of total ballots counted thus far.

And that number is bound to shrink, for as the Seattle Times reported yesterday (“Voter-challenge errors mount“), the challenge list includes many more errors of the type the GOP has already withdrawn.

Vance said Sotelo and other King County GOP officials now are reviewing each challenge “with a fine-tooth comb,” and expect to withdraw more. There won’t be many, he added

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Common sense won out in Congress Wednesday, when lawmakers killed plans to spend $230 million to build the “Bridge to Nowhere,” a span that would have connected Ketchikan Alaska to an island populated by about 50 people.

In retaliation, powerful Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens immediately announced plans to personally pilot a single-hulled tanker, and run it aground in an environmentally sensitive area of the Puget Sound.

Not much consolation for the anti-government folk, but at least Initiative 912 campaign manager Brett Bader gets a guest column in today’s Seattle Times.

I can honestly say that the elation I-912 supporters felt after the historic qualification of the measure in July was matched, at the opposite end of the spectrum, by the deep disappointment we experienced after the tax-cut initiative’s failure at the polls on Nov. 8.

Yeah… well, I appreciate your honesty, Brett. There’s a first time for everything.

The rest of his column is the usual bullshit. “Will WSDOT be able to rebuild trust with voters?” Bader asks, a particularly amusing query coming from a guy who has made a career out of destroying the public’s trust in WSDOT. And a high paying career at that; as of the last disclosure report, Bader’s consulting firm had received over $97,000, nearly one-third of all the campaign’s expenditures.

My question is, will Bader ever be able to rebuild trust with reporters, who by now must be awfully tired of the lazy spin he constantly tosses in their direction? Take for example his closing dig at WSDOT and the gas tax hike:

Now that gas taxes have been raised 14.5 cents a gallon and billions more will be flowing from the new diesel tax and new license and weight fees, we can see if things, instead, start to get better.

But, with news that an $800,000 bike lane in Moses Lake will be the first project built with the rescued tax, I won’t hold my breath.

Oh no… an $800,000 bike lane! How scandalous! But if you actually bother to look at the details of this “bike lane” it reveals a cost-effective project coming out of a healthy political process.

Bader is apparently referring to the Potato Hill overpass in Moses Lake, which replaces the last under-height bridge over I-90. This project was funded in the Nickel Package passed by the Legislature in 2003, and WSDOT had scheduled to advertise it for construction in October 2005 at a cost of around $3 million.

Everything was on schedule until the City of Moses Lake found they couldn’t afford to build a nearby pedestrian overpass, and Republican state Senator Joyce Mulliken came upon the bright idea of combining the two projects together. By adding 12 feet to the width of the Potato Hill overpass, locals would get a twofer: the Nickel overpass plus the pedestrian overpass in a single, less costly project.

Sen. Mulliken managed to get an additional $700,000 or so included in the 2005 Transportation Package to add a pedestrian/bike lane to the Nickel overpass already slated for construction… a smart move, and a net win for taxpayers.

WSDOT held the project to see if it would survive I-912, and now that it has, the twofer contract will be advertised on Monday. The project will build the already slated Nickel highway overpass, but with sufficient shoulder for a pedestrian/bike lane, courtesy of the 2005 package… saving Moses Lake a pile of cash they didn’t have, while delivering a sensible overall improvement.

This is exactly the type of smart, nimble resourcefulness we want from our government, delivering necessary improvements for the least amount of money. But in the misleading soundbites of somebody like Bader, it gets twisted into a prime example of WSDOT’s lies and misplaced priorities.

And of course, attacking WSDOT’s priorities is one of Bader’s biggest lies of all, for WSDOT doesn’t set priorities, the Legislature does. You want to know what WSDOT will build, and when? It’s all laid out in the transportation improvement package passed by the Legislature last spring, and approved by voters last Tuesday.

So if Bader has a problem with this bike lane, I suggest he take it up with Sen. Mulliken… though I’m guessing the citizens of Moses Lake are pretty damned pleased with the fine work she did on their behalf.

UPDATE:
The Seattle P-I editorial board chimes in tomorrow morning, chiding Bader for his dishonest attempt at a “gotcha”:

Thanks to state Sen. Joyce Mulliken, an Ephrata Republican, a deal was struck to use money from the new gas-tax increase to add the bike-pedestrian lanes to the soon-to-be-rebuilt Potato Hill Bridge. The result: a new bridge able to accommodate auto, pedestrian and bike traffic and capable of being expanded later to accommodate four lanes of auto traffic — which local officials say will be needed — for less money and in less time.

Mulliken called the combined project “government efficiency at its best.”

That’s hardly the post-election poster child the would-be tax repealers were hoping for.

As election workers tally the last of the late absentees, the Republicans’ failure in last Tuesday’s election has become more and more pronounced.

The anti-roads Initiative 912 — considered a sure thing back when the state GOP officially endorsed it — is now losing by over 9 points… a stunning reversal of fortune. Of course, the sore losers on the right initially tried to dismiss this as yet another example of socialist Seattle forcing its will on the rest of the state — a silly excuse considering we cast votes by the person, not the square mile — but when all the ballots are counted, I-912 will fail in 10 to 12 counties.

So here’s some perspective: if the GOP had succeeded in randomly disenfranchising 9 out of 10 King County voters… I-912 still would have failed statewide.

Meanwhile, back in King County, Executive Ron Sims continues to stretch his lead over mechanic David Irons. A few days back, our friend Stefan pointed towards Sims’ meager 13 point margin as a hopeful trend, but I wonder how buoyed he feels now that it has grown to nearly 16 points, and Irons’ has dropped below the magic 40 percent mark?

You want perspective? At 39.9 percent of the vote, Irons’ — who had about $800,000 of campaign and independent expenditures on his behalf — polled only 3 points better than HA favorite son Richard Pope did in his last countywide race, spending nary a dime. (Say what you want, but on a cost-per-vote ratio, Richard kicks ass.)

Just a little perspective.

UPDATE:
To be fair to David Irons, as Roger Rabbit astutely points out in the comment thread, he’s apparently slightly more popular than cigarette smoke.

King County vote totals:
David Irons - 194,804
No on I-901 - 172,844

Way to go, Dave.

As reported in today’s Seattle P-I, the Democrats are challenging the bogus voter registration challenge-cum-intimidation scheme the Republicans trod out just days before last Tuesday’s election.

Democratic lawyer David McDonald said Monday state law requires the challenger to supply the actual address at which the challenged voter resides — something Sotelo did not do.

“The law is pretty clear,” he said, adding that the challenges should be dismissed out of hand.

I’ve obtained a PDF of McDonald’s letter to Dean Logan, but the gist of his legal argument is a fairly simple one. RCW 29A.08.830 clearly states that “the person filing the challenge must furnish the address at which the challenged voter actually resides.” If that’s not clear enough, the Voter Registration Challenge Form, as defined by WAC 434-324-115 restates that requirement twice:

If the challenge is based on residence, RCW 29A.08.830 requires the challenger to provide the address at which the challenged voter actually resides.

Yet the Republicans made absolutely no effort to verify the challenged voters’ actual residences. Instead, they just creatively enhanced the Challenge Form, adding on a new check box:

Pretty sneaky, huh? Too lazy and irresponsible to do the work necessary to provide the voter’s actual address, as required by law, the Republicans simply concocted a new category for challenging a voter’s registration, and tacked it onto the end of the form. Go check out WAC 434-324-115… there is no sixth check box! Sotelo & Company made it up!

I checked with King County Records & Elections; the form the KC GOP used was not the standard form provided by the state or the county. Thus there can be absolutely no possible way to chalk this up to human error or an innocent misreading of the law. Knowing that they had not done due diligence, and had not met the requirements of the voter registration challenge provisions, the Republicans intentionally modified the challenge form to suit their needs.

Thus Lori Sotelo’s affidavits were not only perjurious… they bordered on fraud.

Why would the Republicans file nearly 2000 bogus voter registration challenges when they knew they would likely not hold up in court? I can think of only two reasons: a) this was part of a campaign of voter suppression and intimidation the GOP has been pursuing nationwide, and b) it was a desperate, last minute PR stunt… the death-cry of their yearlong campaign to discredit KCRE, and by association, Ron Sims and the Democrats.

If it was merely the latter, it explosively backfired. Due to the GOP’s unwillingness to do the work required by law, hundreds of voters were wrongly challenged, either through dumbfuck errors (like apartment buildings Sotelo claimed not to exist) or through a cynical misrepresentation of state law. Many of the challenged voters live in house boats or in commercial buildings… “nontraditional” addresses WAC 434-208-100 clearly contemplates:

No person registering to vote, who meets all the qualifications of a registered voter in the state of Washington, shall be disqualified because of a nontraditional physical address being used as a residence address. Nontraditional addresses may include shelters, parks or other identifiable locations which the voter deems to be his/her residence. Voters using such an address will be registered and precincted based on the location provided.

Just because an address appears to be nonresidential does not mean it is an invalid registration address. That is why the law requires the challenger to provide evidence of the voter’s actual address.

Ironically, McDonald concludes his letter by citing the precedent set by Judge Bridges in the GOP’s failed contest lawsuit.

As a result of the recent close Gubernatorial election, this State has recently undergone extensive litigation concerning the meaning of its election laws. One of the clearest judicial results in that exercise was the decision by Judge Bridges that voters could not be stripped of their votes (or registrations) based on just such assumptions. […]

Those principles were not enshrined by the Legislature and recognized by Judge Bridges simply to make it difficult to challenge elections or voter registrations. It shouldn’t be easy for a private party to challenge a voter’s registration and our state’s law plainly imposes specific and high standards. A challenge which fails to include essential, statutorily-required elements is patently insufficient to meet those standards.

In relentlessly attacking KCRE, the Republicans hope to add weight to the myth they’ve perpetuated, that Democrats somehow “stole” the 2004 gubernatorial election. But there’s a reason why they cannot find a single auditor to support their allegations that KCRE is rife with fraud, corruption and incompetence… why a Republican Secretary of State and a Republican County Prosecutor have dismissed their charges while Republican federal prosecutors refuse to investigate… and why a cherry-picked, elected judge in a Republican county dismissed their case with prejudice. It has no merit!

The Republicans hope that if they puff out a thick enough smokescreen, voters will eventually see fire. But I think voters are smarter than that, for rather than discrediting KCRE, stupid, cynical stunts like this one end up discrediting the accusers.

What the GOP has proven here is not that there are thousands of illegal registrations, or that KCRE refuses to do its job, but that GOP leaders are more than willing to disenfranchise innocent voters for the sake of a cheap, publicity stunt…. or worse. Every “reform” the Republicans champion is intended to suppress the vote, and whether you believe this is based on a cynical electoral strategy or a sincere philosophical difference, the result is the same. Should the Republicans have their way, thousands of legal, WA voters would be purged from the roles, while tens of thousands more would have their ballots discarded as unreadable by the vote counting machines.

Our state elections laws strike a delicate balance between preserving the integrity of the voter rolls, and protecting the franchise of eligible voters. Given the opportunity, the GOP would clearly tip this balance steeply in the wrong the direction.

UPDATE:
A week after the election, Sotelo today rescinded 12 more challenges.

I’ll be joining Lynn of Evergreen Politics and Andrew of Northwest Progressive Institute in a panel discussion on blogging at this evening’s meeting of the 43rd District Democrats. The meeting starts at 7:30pm, University Baptist Church, 4554 12th Ave. NE. The discussion will be moderated by N in Seattle; more details on his blog, Peace Tree Farm.

Afterwards, a bunch of us plan on heading over to the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally, which meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. We’ll be a little late at DL, but all the more thirsty.

All are welcome at both events, so please join me for a fascinating discussion on the growing influence of the progressive blogosphere, followed by some more post-election gloating and an icy-cold pint of Manny’s Pale Ale.

I was just looking at my stats and noticed that sometime earlier today, HA recorded it’s one millionth page view since I started tracking with Site Meter back in September, 2004.

I’m not sure if this is any kind of a meaningful milestone, but I just thought I’d take the opportunity to say to all my readers out there, who for some reason keep coming back… um… thanks.

Last week, in retaliation for Sen. Maria Cantwell’s proposed amendment to remove ANWR drilling from the Senate budget bill (it barely failed), Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens proposed lifting the 30-year old Magnuson Amendment that limits supertanker traffic in the Puget Sound. Sen. Cantwell responded with a clearly worded letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist:

Mr. Majority Leader, this is a state specific issue, and I have heard loud and clear from my constituents that they strongly oppose any efforts to overturn or erode this critical protection. Therefore, if any attempt is made to move forward on S.1977, I will use every procedural option granted to me as a United States Senator to stop this unfortunate and misguided legislation from becoming law.

“Every procedural option”… that means filibuster.

It’s not clear exactly how this will play out, through it’s hard to see Stevens pushing though such an unpopular amendment, especially at this time of oil industry profiteering. Still, Sen. Cantwell is urging you to sign a petition, demanding that Sen. Stevens drop his amendment.

While you’re at it, remind Sen. Stevens that the GOP won’t hold the Senate forever, and what goes around, comes around.

I’ve been struck down by that nasty cold that’s going around, and so last night the dog and I crawled into bed early and flipped on the TV, just in time to catch images of the White House being torn apart by a massive tornado.

There wasn’t much useful to learn from “Category 7: the End of the World”, other than the obvious fact that it was a really crappy movie. But since Hollywood is in the business of wish fulfillment, I did find two of the screenwriter’s plot devices rather interesting: a) in the event of a major catastrophe, what we need is not only a woman FEMA director, but a really hot one… and b) it was a happy ending, because although the White House was totally destroyed, sucking evil staffers high into the funnel cloud, the Capitol Building was left totally unscathed.

I appreciate the anti-Bush sentiment, but I’m guessing that Congress won’t fare so well during the political storm that strikes next November.

Of course, “2006 is a long way off” and “a lot can happen in a year” and “off year elections are not reliable harbingers of the future” and all those other precious pearls of political wisdom… but if things don’t get much better for the Bush administration between now and then, they can’t help but get a helluva lot worse.

Here in Washington state, the anti-Bush backlash already played a role in the 2005 election, with one of the most effective direct mail pieces in the high-profile King County executive race featuring the relatively undefined Republican challenger, David Irons, standing on a street corner sporting a crooked smile and a Bush-Cheney placard. Expect to see similar images in races around the nation next year.

No question, this was a terrible election for WA Republicans, up and down the ballot, losing not only the coveted KC executive race, but also crucial seats on several county councils. And of course, the biggest issue in the 2005 election was the GOP-endorsed Initiative 912, which failed by over seven points… an astonishing margin for an anti-tax initiative. Even the GOP cheerleaders on the right wing blogs were reduced to feebly touting Republican victories in non-partisan races.

A reliable harbinger for 2006? Maybe not. But the Democrats’ newfound confidence certainly bodes well.

Out East in the 5th Congressional District, Republican first-termer Rep. Cathy McMorris could face a tough challenge from Okanogan County rancher and former state agriculture director Peter Goldmark. Pundits have this labeled a safe Republican seat, but this is the district former Speaker Tom Foley held for many years, and Spokane, its population center, is only slightly tinged red. According to Progressive Punch, McMorris ranks as one of the most conservative members of the House… having voted with the discredited leadership nearly 97.5 percent of the time. McMorris isn’t just out of step with the nation, she’s out of step with her own constituency.

Under the right circumstances, with the right candidate, this is a winnable seat for Democrats… but even just making it competitive would be a huge strategic victory. If Republicans are forced to spend resources defending “safe” seats like McMorris’s WA-5, imagine the problems they’ll face in WA-8, where fellow first-termer Dave Reichert is already struggling to keep his grasp on a largely suburban district that has been steadily trending blue for years.

Yeah, I know, I know… the GOP holds a huge numerical advantage in the Senate, and Congressional redistricting has made it nearly impossible for huge swings in the House. Thus it will take a nearly perfect political storm for Democrats to seize control.

But Republicans are blind if they don’t see the storm clouds on the horizon.

[Cross-posted at Daily Kos]

Way back in July, days after the signature deadline, I predicted that “I-912 will fail, if the media does its job.”

I was disappointed, though not entirely surprised, to see the anti-roads initiative, I-912, turn in 420,000 signatures on Friday. Barring historically massive signature fraud the measure will surely qualify for the November ballot. But I will not join the gloom-and-doom coming from some opponents, for its passage is no sure thing, and there is an attainable strategy towards defeating I-912: the media must simply do its job.

I don’t mean that it is the media’s job to defeat I-912… I mean that their job is telling voters the truth about what the transportation package means to their local communities. It will take a lot of work and a lot of research, but it’s their responsibility as journalists. And if voters across the state understand exactly what their communities will lose if the transportation package is repealed, then I-912 stands a reasonable chance of being defeated.

Well… I-912 did fail, and much of the credit should go to my friends in the MSM, whose coverage was somewhat less thorough than I had hoped for, but considerably more than I had expected. While reporters generally eschewed the emotional angle I had urged, they also avoided relying on the usual political horse race schtick, and in many cases did an admirable job of laying out the facts behind the gas tax increase and what it paid for. Meanwhile, editorial boards throughout the state nearly unanimously opposed the initiative, and were not shy about repeating themselves during the months and weeks leading up to the election.

But no editorial board was more relentless than that of the Seattle P-I, who embraced a Hearst-like crusade against the initiative, publishing daily “no on I-912” editorials during the final two weeks of the campaign. While it can be difficult to measure the effect of editorial endorsements, there can be no question that the P-I had an impact in King County, where the initiative failed by a stunning 33 percent margin.

The P-I should be unabashedly proud of their efforts, but the crusade seemed to have sparked a little crisis of conscience for editorial page editor Mark Trahant, who asks today, “which is a higher journalism value, fairness or truth?”

I start with fairness as a given; it’s deeply embedded in my character. I want to play fair. I often seek dissent or give weight to opinions that challenge what we’ve written in an editorial. In general, the voice of dissent helps me understand my own arguments.

But is that always the right approach — especially when it comes to opinion?

My thinking evolved during this election. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board decided to crusade against I-912. We wrote daily “no on I-912” editorials beginning Oct. 23, outlining why we thought the measure was a terrible idea. We tried to keep our readers’ attention focused on this issue.

We did print letters from readers who disagreed with us and printed a couple of opposing views on the Op-Ed pages. But not many. The fact is we were not, strictly, fair. We had an opinion — a strong one at that — that was repeated daily, and countered by faint balance.

I think we did the right thing. It’s also worth remembering that when we started the daily “no,” we thought — at least most of us — that it was a done deal. We had no doubt that the supporters were getting their message out to the public. In fact, we expected voters to pass I-912 easily.

In fact, voters defeated I-912 easily, and part of the reason why is that the P-I did indeed do the right thing.

Trahant goes on to discuss global warming, and the way overwhelming scientific consensus is often overwhelmed in an MSM, that in the interest of fairness and balance, employs a kind of he-said/she-said methodology that tends to give equal weight to dissent, no matter how marginal.

The story becomes one of conflict. The scientists said this, while the critics said that. The conflict overwhelms the research, reducing it to a sentence or two, reported without context.

Perhaps fairness (or what passes for fairness) wins. But what about the truth?

Too often the truth is lost to a tried and true PR strategy that exploits the MSM’s lazy love affair with balance, to create the impression of debate where none exists. This is the strategy the tobacco industry followed for decades, to absurd extremes, producing fake science to refute the obvious dangers of smoking. And this is exactly the strategy that The Discovery Institute has brilliantly executed in their astoundingly successful efforts to use theocratic quackery like “intelligent design” to not only publicly challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus supporting evolution, but as a wedge to undermine the scientific method itself.

It is the MSM’s feigned and futile “objectivity” that is often it’s greatest weakness. It is a weakness that sometimes gives credence to outright lies, in a misguided effort to equally present all sides of an issue. But some sides are simply more credible than others.

Trahant concludes that “the highest journalism value must be truth,” a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly concur, but without the same degree of self-reflection… for while I make every effort to be truthful, I have never once claimed to be either fare or balanced.

That of course, is the advantage us bloggers have over traditional journalists. I wear my bias on my sleeve, present the facts as I see them, cite my sources, and then leave it to the reader to make up his or her mind. There is a context to everything I write on HA… that of an aggressively liberal blogger with a distinct political agenda. Those who whine in my comment threads about my lack of objectivity or my refusal to cover Democratic foibles with the same vigor that I cover those of Republicans… are pissing into the wind. It’s not my job to provide balanced news coverage. Indeed, the only balance you should ever expect from me is that with which I countervail my counterparts on the right.

As to Trahant and the rest of the “real” journalists out there, admittedly, they’ve got a much tougher job. And many of them deserve some kudos for performing it so well during their coverage of I-912.