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The state Senate Democratic Caucus just released its recommendations for committee chairs, elevating Seattle Sen. Ed Murray to the top position on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. And according to a statement released through the caucus, this leaves Ed very, very humble.

“I’m humbled to be considered for the role of Ways & Means chair.

I don’t come with any illusions about the challenges facing our state budget. But I believe my experience working across the aisle to write a budget well prepares me for the significant task ahead.”

I dunno, Ed’s never struck me as particularly humble, but he is the kinda a guy who will occasionally show up at Drinking Liberally and argue with dirty bloggers, so I’m cheered by the news.

So congrats Ed. And if you stop by DL tonight and join us for a frosty brew, I’d be happy to tell you how to solve the budget crisis.

Given this year’s losses, I was wondering if State House Speaker might see a challenge from within his party… and just a few minutes ago, State Rep. Mark Miloscia (D-30) issued a press release announcing yup…

“It is not enough for Democrats to win close elections; we must actually improve people’s lives. We only won because the voters recognized the Republicans also offered no solutions. The truth is that Democrats are failing the middle class and the voters don’t believe that government works for them. The people of this state have sent a clear message that a new direction is needed from our state leadership. Unlike our Governor (“I don’t have a path forward, to be honest..”) and the current leadership, I do have a plan that will involve more legislators and citizens engagement, take us in a new direction, and bring responsibility and prosperity to our state.”

For the past two years, Miloscia has been highly critical of the Democrat’s leadership’s proposed solutions, mostly consisting of gimmicks, big tax hikes combined with “a hope and a prayer.” Miloscia stated that the voters last week completely rejected the proposed Democrat Leadership’s solutions to our crisis (Income Tax, Eliminating 2/3 Vote for Taxes, Building Bonds, Soda Tax, etc) and party leaders are struggling to come up with something new. “I didn’t come to Olympia to watch the destruction of our education and human service systems. I came to chart a new path.”

Uh-huh.

I think Mioscia is a decent, well-intentioned guy and all that, I’ve long found some of his accountability proposals intriguing, and I don’t particularly mind seeing a leadership challenge… but I was kinda hoping for a challenge from the progressive side of the caucus. And besides, I think Miloscia is misreading this election.

But in any case, this should at least be fun to watch.

Just to be clear, not all Republicans are entirely incapable of losing graciously:

Republican nominee Tom Foley has just conceded the Connecticut gubernatorial race to Democrat Dan Malloy. And he went the extra mile at his press conference, too, telling all of his supporters that despite some irregularities and errors in the vote-counting process, Malloy positively did win the race by a narrow margin. And as such, he will not legally contest the election…

“Once all this information was available to me this morning, deciding what to do was easy,” Foley said. “I have told my team that I am not willing to pursue a legal challenge to exclude photocopied ballots. Despite their irregularity, I believe that they do represent the will of well-intentioned voters, and should be included in the results.”

Foley further explained that the election was a genuine victory for Malloy, “And this result should not be questioned. I hope my supporters will accept my word on this. As soon as I am done with this press conference, I will call Dan Malloy to congratulate him on winning the election, and wish him good luck.”

That’s what my people call being a mensch.

And had Dino Rossi been similarly gracious after his heartbreakingly close loss back in 2004, there’s a good chance he might be governor today, instead of just a three-time statewide loser. As I wrote back in 2005, just after his election contest had been dismissed, Rossi missed a golden opportunity to lead by example, and ultimately reap the rewards:

Had he bowed out gracefully in early January — at a time when the GOP’s most inflammatory allegations were at a fever pitch — he could have assumed the mantle of a martyr who sacrificed his own personal ambitions for the good of the state. Disenfranchised military voters, shady “enhanced” ballots, mishandled provisionals, and felon, dead, and double voters would have forever clouded the results of this election. But now with the charges “dismissed with prejudice” by a cherry-picked judge in conservative Chelan County, voters will be rightly suspicious of any attempt by Rossi to brand himself as a victim of corrupt Democrats. To the swing voters — mostly Democrats — who made this race closer than it ever should have been, the allegations are no longer merely unproved… they are disproved.

And it was Rossi’s inability to recapture the crucial support of so-called “Dinocrats” that ultimately doomed his two subsequent statewide races before they started.

California’s Proposition 19 failed at the polls last night, gaining only 46% of the vote. Here are some observations and thoughts [Thursday Updates below]:

– Despite the vote result, recreational marijuana users in California will still be able to purchase and consume high-quality marijuana. With the current system California has now, recreational users just have to visit any one of the doctors around the state who are willing to take their money in return for a medical authorization card. Technically, that makes them “medicinal” users, but the reality is that many of the people who hold medicinal authorizations are either suffering from rather superficial things or completely making it up. Once you have that card, however, you can buy marijuana at any of the state’s many dispensaries. And for those who haven’t taken the time to get a medical authorization, a sizable black market outside of the dispensary system continues to exist.

If anyone in California went to the polls yesterday thinking that their vote on Proposition 19 would have an impact on anyone’s ability to buy or consume marijuana, they were mistaken (the one exception to that is minors, who will still be able to purchase marijuana without having to show proof of age). What Proposition 19 would have done is to establish regulations for the overall industry. Proposition 19 was much more about the back door of the dispensary than the front door. It would have allowed for local and county governments to establish rules and regulations for production and distribution. As it stands now, dispensaries still supply themselves from unregulated growers without any oversight. For now, the DEA has backed off a bit on trying to take down these growers, but supply chains are still largely secret, and a certain percentage of the suppliers are tied to organized crime. The defeat of Proposition 19 was a very clear victory for the drug cartels in Mexico, who would have had an extremely hard time competing in a regulated marketplace.

– It’s not entirely clear how much of an impact Proposition 19 had on the rest of the ballot, but there are some strong signs that it helped California Democrats across the board. Democrats won every single statewide office in the state, from Governor to Insurance Commissioner. People tended to be focused on looking at the youth vote when assessing the effect of Proposition 19, but that was only part of the picture:

But judging by exit polling, which shows a strong conservative tide elsewhere in the country, the conservative surge did not materialize in California. This year’s electorate ended up looking a lot like 2006, according to exit poll data from both years.

Conservatives made up 33% of the California electorate this time around, according to preliminary results from this year’s California exit poll. Four years ago, the figure was 30%. Liberals made up 27% this time, compared with 25% four years ago. The percentage of self-identified moderates dropped to 40% this time, compared with 44% in 2006, the exit poll showed.

A similar pattern showed up when the exit poll asked voters what party they usually identify with. This time around, the results were 42% Democratic, 31% Republican and 27% independent. That compares with 40% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 25% independents in 2006.

While the 18-29 turnout in California was only modestly above average (13% vs. 11%), the enthusiasm of Democratic and liberal voters of all ages seems to have been greater in California than elsewhere. It may not have been enough to get Proposition 19 passed, but it appears to have helped negate the Republican wave in that state.

– One of the more interesting subplots of the initiative was the opposition coming from folks within the existing medical marijuana community. Even Dennis Peron, the man behind California’s initial medical marijuana law, opposed Proposition 19 using some rather bizarre reasoning. Other opponents of Proposition 19 were small growers who feared that legalization would lead to bigger corporations eating into their market share. In fact, the initiative got under 50% in the two rural counties notorious for growing much of the state’s marijuana, Humboldt and Mendocino. In response to this circular firing squad, one Proposition 19 supporter is now compiling a boycott list.

The sources of support and opposition for Proposition 19 were never as simple as potheads vs parents. The reason it went down had less to do with people’s moral views of pot (surveys have long shown that legalization in general has well over 50% support in California) than with discomfort over the specifics of this particular attempt at establishing regulation. Newspapers across the state, as well as the major politicians in each party, came out against the measure, finding enough gray areas (and inventing others) to defeat the measure and postpone the inevitable for a few more years. And as Kevin Drum points out here, California’s initiative-driven economic mess is only going to get worse, making it even more urgent for the state to figure out how to collect tax revenue on all that money being made by marijuana growers – many of whom were quite content to see Proposition 19 fail.

UPDATE: A few more items from Thursday:

– Matt Yglesias has some really sharp analysis here and provides a graph showing the demographic breakdown differences for all ages from 2008 to 2010.

If the demographic breakdown would have been like it was in 2008, the initiative would have still failed, but with a much closer margin (48.4% vs. 51.6%).

– Jeffrey Miron, the Harvard Professor who’s done a lot of great work on the economic impacts of drug legalization, has some self-serving concern trolling here. While I thought that Miron’s criticisms of some of the economic hyperbole of Prop 19 supporters were very valuable, anyone trying to win a statewide initiative effort should probably ignore most of what he’s saying. He gives very good advice for winning a policy debate with your wonky friends, but winning a statewide initiative campaign is a different beast altogether. Sometimes, if not most of the time, using hyperbole rather than reason is the better strategy. I don’t necessarily like this, but it’s the truth.

I think the campaign against I-1100 proved this. The fiscal reasons to vote against I-1100 were far more solid than the public safety issues, but the campaign hammered on the latter while largely ignoring the former. And that strategy appeared to work. People were largely scared at what would happen if access to alcohol was expanded, even though there’s little evidence to show that expanded access has any measurable detrimental effects. Miron believes that marijuana legalization campaigns should focus on the personal liberty aspects of legalization moreso than the public safety aspects. I think that would be a huge mistake.

– Steve Elliott has more insight into the widespread opposition to Proposition 19 from the marijuana growers themselves, who feared that they would lose their foothold in the current unregulated supply chain for the state’s dispensaries.

Just before the first polls started closing out East yesterday, I made my predictions:

Patty Murray beats Dino Rossi by five-plus points, Dems lose WA-03, but incumbents hold on in all the other WA congressional districts. Meanwhile Dems hold control of both houses of the Washington state legislature, though R’s make a game of it with the state Senate. Initiatives 1053 and 1107 win, all others lose, but 1100 staggers around in a drunken daze for a week before we know the final outcome.

Nationally, Dems hold Senate with 52 or 53 seats, but lose control of the House, giving up about 50.

So how’d I do? Not bad.

Once all the ballots are in, Patty Murray will go on to beat Dino Rossi by almost three points, not the five-plus I predicted, but that’s what I get for being too specific. It also looks like I nailed the US Senate, the state legislature and the ballot measures. My biggest miss looks like the US House, where Rep. Rick Larsen seems likely to lose, if barely, in WA-02, and the R’s will pick up a handful more seats nationally than I expected.

Otherwise, election night unfolded pretty much as I expected.

Um, here’s the thing Piper… you may think you’ve somehow stuck it to Rep. Geoff Simpson by reprinting his allegedly “profanity-laden” response to your email thread with Sound Transit’s Geoff Patrick, but the truth is, you are “a paid shill of the right-wing,” you are a “prostitute,” and judging from the “sick voyeurism” of your inquiries, you most certainly are a “piece of shit” and an “asshole.”

And in fact, that’s one of the traits that so endears Rep. Simpson to many of his supporters: his willingness to discard politics as usual, and speak the plain truth to right-wing, paid-shill, piece-of-shit assholes like you.

Oh. And by the way. If you’re going to reprint Geoff’s email, for the sake of full disclosure, shouldn’t you also reprint the entire email thread that ultimately prompted his response, so that your handful of readers on the EFF blog can judge for themselves what kind of right-wing, paid-shill, piece-of-shit asshole you really are? I mean you wouldn’t want to look like a hypocrite, would you?

So as a public service I’ve reprinted it for you after the break. I mean, the EFF is all about full disclosure, right?

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If voter fraud is as rampant in Washington state as Republicans like to say it is, then Secretary of State Sam Reed might want to rethink his enforcement priorities.

From: Ammons, Dave
Subject: `Voting service’
To: blatherwatch-mail@yahoo.com
Cc: “Blinn, Katie”, “Handy, Nick”, “Zylstra, Brian”
Date: Monday, October 25, 2010, 11:06 AM

Please take down your blog post on Voting Service. I assume this is satire, but our Elections Division reminds that you could be charged with a crime:

This is illegal:

RCW 29A.84.610 Deceptive, incorrect vote recording.
A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who knowingly:
(1) Deceives any voter in recording his or her vote by providing incorrect or misleading recording information or by providing faulty election equipment or records; or
(2) Records the vote of any voter in a manner other than as designated by the voter.
Such a gross misdemeanor is punishable to the same extent as a gross misdemeanor that is punishable under RCW 9A.20.021.

We are pretty sensitive about talk of ballot selling, etc. And of course the ballot would never be counted, because the signature would not match the one on file for the voter. But attempted vote fraud can be penalized by a prison sentence and a big fine.

If you have any questions, please contact Katie Blinn, assistant director of elections and an attorney, 360-902-4168.

David Ammons
Communications Director
Office of Secretary of State

Um… really Dave? The most pressing threat of voter fraud in Washington state is a satirical blog post lampooning Republicans’ hyperbolic claims of voter fraud in Washington state? For this you send an email threatening legal action?

I don’t doubt Ammons when he writes that his office is “pretty sensitive about talk of ballot selling, etc.,” but he should remember that most if not all of this talk has come in the form of bogus charges from Republicans… charges that can only stem from either a genuine (if loony) belief in massive, endemic, Democratic voter fraud, or from the fact that the accusers are a bunch of cynical, democracy-hating liars. So if Ammons and Reed really believe that intimidating bloggers is the best means of protecting the integrity of our elections system, rather than harassing BlatherWatch, perhaps they should focus their lawyers’ attentions on the vicious, hate-spewing, voter-fraud-conspiracy-spinning, paranoid propagandists at Sound Politics and Orbusmax?

(And again… really Dave? You’re gonna take your cues from a sociopathic, delusional,  wingnut who calls himself “The Orb”…? … A proto-fascist, shooting-spree-waiting-to-happen, who Michael aptly describes as “a rightie blogger whose political agenda requires he not get the joke,” and who ironically considers me “frightening,” “treasonous” and “a danger”…? Really?)

The truth is, elections in Washington state are extraordinarily clean, resulting in only a handful of voter fraud prosecutions, even in the wake of the hotly disputed 2004 gubernatorial election contest. In fact I asked Ammons for an actual count of recent voter fraud cases, and he responded, “None that I’m aware of…”

We do want to be hypervigilant about potential fraud. There is a lot of misinformation out there – urban myths, if you will – that keep roiling in some quarters, including some media outlets.  It’s something our Elections folks take seriously, to the point about not joking about it.  Too many people don’t get the humor and think it’s really possible to do such shenanigans, or worse.

No doubt. But I’m not convinced that pandering to the baseless fears of humorless conspiracy theorists is the best communications strategy.

Indeed, as a sometimes-satirist myself, I’d argue that the best remedy against the slanderous ravings of the likes of Stefan Sharkansky and Jim “The Orb” Walker, is to heap even further ridicule upon them. And in that noble public service, BlatherWatch deserves an official thank you from the Secretary of State for a job well done.

It is one thing for the Seattle Times to miss a story happening in its own backyard; that sorta thing happens all the time these days, what with the devastating newsroom cutbacks suffered industrywide over the past few years. But it’s another thing to fill that gap by credulously running an AP piece that totally mischaracterizes the underlying story, and under the misleading headline “In Washington, illegal immigrants canvassing for Democrats.”

Hear that…? Those dirty Democrats are at it again folks, this time using illegal immigrants to help steal another election. Or at least that’s the spin that’s prompted news outlets to pick up this provocative headline nationwide.

But in reality, that spin couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the real story here, the one which truly deserves the headlines, is the story about how Seattle-based OneAmerica Votes has put together a team of enthusiastic volunteers to canvass immigrant voters throughout Washington state. It is an inspiring story about how our region’s newest Americans have passionately embraced their adopted nation’s grassroots democratic traditions.

Instead, the AP cynically cherry-picks its lede:

When Maria Gianni is knocking on voters’ doors, she’s not bashful about telling people she is in the country illegally.

She knows it’s a risk to advertise this fact to strangers — but it’s one worth taking in what she sees as a crucial election.

The 42-year-old is one of dozens of volunteers — many of them illegal immigrants — canvassing neighborhoods in the Seattle area trying to get naturalized citizens to cast a ballot for candidates like Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who is in a neck-and-neck race with Republican Dino Rossi.

As a writer, I can’t argue with the storytelling; admittedly, that’s a damn compelling lede. But as a journalist, AP reporter Manuel Valdes (or maybe, his editor) has selectively mischaracterized the nature of these outreach efforts, doing both his subjects and his readers a great disservice.

According to director Pramila Jayapal, OneAmerica Votes has recruited a team of over 150 volunteers, only four of whom Valdes interviewed. And of those four only Gianni told the reporter she was undocumented. That’s one out of four out of 150. So I’m not sure where Valdes conjures up the assertion that “many of them” are “illegal.”

“I have my suspicions,” Jayapal told me when asked how many volunteers were undocumented, “but we certainly don’t ask people about their status.” And while she’s “proud” of Gianni for the personal risk she is taking, Jayapal insists that whether it’s one or a handful or a dozen, the media’s focus on undocumented volunteers entirely misses the point.

“The exciting story here,” (and one, by the way, that starkly contradicts the prevailing national narrative), “is that even people who cant vote are energized about this election, because they understand that it’s their future that is at stake.” Indeed, many of OneAmerica Votes’ volunteers can’t vote, not because they are undocumented, or even non-citizens, but because they are simply underage.

“We have an amazing group of high schoolers who are canvassing with us,” Jayapal told me, “who say to me ‘Wow… I just woke up to politics.’ That’s very exciting to watch.”

As are the results. Over the course of this election over 162,000 immigrant voters throughout the state have been contacted by OneAmerica Votes, including over 41,000 homes canvassed by phone and/or at the door by volunteers. That’s a huge chunk of the 230,000 registered immigrant voters who make up over 7.5% of the Washington state electorate.

And far from this being the Democratic GOTV effort the AP headline implies, much of  OneAmerica Votes’ efforts have focused largely on the many initiatives cluttering the November ballot, with the organization translating voter guides into six languages, and inviting proponents and opponents alike to initiative forums in neighborhoods with large immigrant communities. That’s a unique, grassroots voter education effort that should be celebrated, not vilified.

“It’s a shame,” Jayapal lamented. “The way that this whole story has been spun is scary.”

And ironic, especially considering that at the same time the FOX News crowd frets over a 13-year, tax-paying undocumented resident urging her fellow immigrants to exercise a precious right she doesn’t have, our media has for the most part shrugged off as politics as usual the tens of millions of dollars of out of state money pouring in to influence our local elections, many of the contributors undisclosed, and some of them even foreign.

Is it any wonder then that the most intelligent commentary on this latest manufactroversy comes from a satirist, the website Wonkette?

Does this make you feel bad about being a lazy Yuppie/voter? Well it should. Because it’s sort of sad that the only people willing to “get out the vote” are the people who can’t vote and also that these same people are hunted like feral animals by douchey government agents.

In the end, I understand the national media picking up this AP story, and lazily inferring the worst from its misleading headline and selective lede; that’s the way the wire services work.

But the Seattle Times has no such excuse. This is a story unfolding in its own backyard, and they could’ve just as easily picked up the phone and talked to Jayapal as I did. In fact, far from reprinting the AP story unchallenged, as Seattle’s sole surviving daily, and the largest newspaper in the state, I’d argue that the Times has a unique obligation to debunk it, thus setting the record straight.

So yeah, I’d say the Seattle Times owes OneAmerica Votes and our local immigrant communities a followup story… if not an outright apology.

I’ve been meaning to get to this topic for a while, but with the G.O.P. currently predicted to take control of the U.S. House, if not the Senate, I plan to join the folks over at Campaign for America’s Future and focus a bit of my energies over the next week or so talking about Social Security… and what the Republicans and their wealthy patrons plan to do to it, should they be given the chance.

Of course, it’s one thing to be against something — like the privatization “reforms” nearly every Republican congressional nominee in Washington supports, even if they refuse to clearly say so on the record — but I thought it best to start out by stating some core principles that I would hope all of the Democratic incumbents and challengers in this year’s election would support:

Social Security has a surplus of $2.6 trillion, which it has loaned to the federal government. Social Security did not cause the federal deficit. Its benefits should not be cut to reduce the deficit.

Social Security, which has stood the test of time, should not be privatized in whole or in part.

Social Security is insurance and should not be means-tested. Because workers pay for it, they should receive it regardless of their income or savings.

Social Security is fully funded for more than 25 years; thereafter it has sufficient funds to meet 75 percent of promised benefits. To reassure Americans that Social Security will be there for them, Congress should act in the coming few years outside the context of deficit reduction to close this funding gap by requiring those who are most able to afford it to pay somewhat more.

Social Security’s retirement age, already scheduled to increase from 65 to 67, should not be raised further. That would be a benefit cut that places the greatest hardship on older Americans who are in physically demanding jobs, or are otherwise unable to find or keep employment.

Social Security, whose average benefit is $13,000 in 2010, provides vital protection against the loss of wages as the result of disability, death, or old age.  Those benefits should not be reduced, including by changes to the cost of living adjustment or the benefit formula.

Social Security’s benefits should be increased for those who are most disadvantaged.  The benefits, which are very important to virtually all workers and their families, are particularly crucial to those who are disadvantaged.

You can read more about these Seven Principles at StrengthenSocialSecurity.org.

Also at the website you will find a list of the 136 members of Congress who have already signed on to the Grijalva-Conyers-Maffei Letter to President Obama, pledging their strong support for the principles above. FYI, Seattle’s own Rep. Jim McDermott is the only Washington state representative to sign the letter thus far.

I hope to change that.

But mostly I plan to use these posts to expose our state’s Republican congressional slate’s plans to undermine and weaken Social Security in the cynical name of “fixing” it.

[Disclosure: Campaign for America’s Future is paying me a small stipend in exchange for cross-posting at their site. But everybody who knows me knows that I only advocate for candidates, campaigns and issues that I believe in.]

The city of Tacoma has decided to crack down on its medical marijuana dispensaries. There’s an ongoing debate about the legality of dispensaries in this state, and Chris Legeros explains it well right here:

The city’s claim, detailed in a letter sent out to the co-ops last week, is that the co-ops are acting illegally by dispensing marijuana to more than one person. The city claims that under state law, a designated provider of medical marijuana can only help one patient at any one time.

“…In these businesses, that’s not the case; it’s a business supplying it to many patients,” said Rob McNair-Huff a city spokesman.

But Jay Berneburg, a lawyer for The C.O.B.R.A. Medical Group, one of the co-ops targeted by the city, has disputed that claim and said the co-op is complying with both the letter and the intent of the law.

Every patient who comes in to C.O.B.R.A. signs a form designating C.O.B.R.A. as their provider, Berneburg said. After receiving their marijuana, the patients immediately sign the form again, removing C.O.B.R.A. as their provider.

“And that means the designated provider who can only be a designated provider to any one person at a time is now available to be somebody else’s designated provider,” Berneburg said.

Dispensaries around the state have been relying on this creative interpretation of the law in order to operate, but after a review, Tacoma warned eight such establishments in the city that they’re breaking the law and will be shut down. In response, there’s a rally planned this evening outside the Tacoma City Council meeting. I’m planning to head down there shortly and might update this post later with additional info and/or photos.

UPDATE: There are about 100 protestors here, along with some news media. I spoke briefly with James Lucas from Tacoma Cross, a dispensary that opened in April and is under threat of shutdown.

His employees are here wearing their corporate logoed shirts. Lucas tells me that he’s licensed with the city to operate his business and he pays all federal, state and local taxes required of any business.

UPDATE 2: There are now roughly 200-250 protestors here and it appears that their presence has made a difference. Douglas Hiatt and other patient representatives just came out of the Tacoma Municipal Building and it appears that the city will allow the dispensaries to continue to operate until the legislature has an opportunity to fix the law in the next session.

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Washington state voters are, seemingly, under a polling blitzkrieg. Today another poll is released in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D) and real estate salesman turned foreclosure opportunity seminar motivational speaker Dino Rossi (R).

This poll comes from Public Policy Polling (PPP) and shows Murray leading Rossi 49% to 47%. The poll was taken from 14th to the 16th of October on a sample of 1,873 likely Washington voters. The margin of error is 2.3%.

PPP makes an interesting observation about the race (emphasis added):

There’s a pretty strong argument that the Washington Senate race is the most stable in the country: PPP finds Patty Murray leading Dino Rossi 49-47, basically identical to our July poll of the race that found her ahead 49-46.

The reason for the stability is that voters know these candidates, they know what they think of them, and nothing they’ve heard during this campaign has changed those opinions in one direction or the other. In July Murray’s approval rating was 46/45. Now it’s 47/48. In July Rossi’s favorability was 43/48. Now it’s 44/49.

Compare this with yesterday’s Rasmussen lede (emphasis added):

Democratic incumbent Patty Murray is barely ahead of Republican challenger Dino Rossi now as the lead seesaws again in Washington’s neck-and-neck U.S. Senate race.

The fact is, Murray has now led in the last seven of the eight polls taken in October with margins from +1 to +13 and with an (unweighted) average of just over +5%. Take a look at the entire polling history:

Note to pollsters and reporters…that meme about how close and back-and-forth this race is? Yeah…that last’s month meme based on a tiny blip in the data.

Note: The graph in the first version of this post included a poll by DSCC. I’ve reposted the graph without that poll.

Update: At Hominid Views I do some statistical analysis of the poll and further examine the differences between robopolls and live-interview polls in this race.

Last month I wrote about Attorney General Rob McKenna’s cynical effort to reinterpret Washington’s voter-approved minimum wage statute, so as to avoid an increase this year. And as predicted, this week L&I announced that it would ignore McKenna’s opinion, by raising the minimum wage another 12 cents an hour.

Labor & Industries spokeswoman Kim Contris said the state ultimately made the decision to raise the rate “based on how we believe a court would interpret the law.”

“We really wanted to correctly implement the law,” she said. “We recognize there could be confusion and additional cost if we made a mistake and the court overturned the decision.”

That’s right, the state ignored its own attorney’s opinion because they were concerned about the legal cost of following it. Huh. Perhaps the state should fire its attorney?

No doubt there are policy arguments to make in favor of keeping the minimum wage flat during a time of slow job growth and high unemployment — for example, the stupid, arrogant and profoundly anti-worker arguments made by the Columbian — but the problem for McKenna is that the legal arguments just weren’t there. The law is clear: L&I is instructed to adjust the minimum wage “by increasing the current year’s minimum wage rate by the rate of inflation,” and since inflation went up this year, however slightly, so will the minimum wage.

To ignore the plain meaning of the word “by” in the service of fabulating alternative formulas may be creative lawyering, but as L&I rightly determined, it wasn’t likely to hold up in court. Which in the end, not only calls into question McKenna’s abilities as an attorney, but as a politician as well.

I posted the results earlier today of the Washington Senate race based on KPLU’s news reports. At noon today, the KCTS/KPLU/Washington Poll top lines were released for public consumption.

In that all-important race between the single most powerful mom-in-tennis-shoe in the Senate & nation, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), and the single most sought-after motivational speaker on the foreclosure profiteering seminar circuit, Dino Rossi (R), we find Sen. Murray leading 50% to 42%. This makes five polls in a row that has Murray in the lead.

This poll surveyed 500 people from October 5th to the 14th. Hence, it overlaps every one of the other five October polls. Here is summary of all the polls this month:

	Start	End	Samp.		%	%	%
Poll	date	date	size	MOE	Murray	Rossi	Diff
WA Poll	05-Oct	14-Oct	500	4.3	50	42	D+8
SurveyUSA	11-Oct	14-Oct	606	4.1	50	47	D+3
CNN/Time/OR	08-Oct	12-Oct	850	3.5	51	43	D+8
Elway	07-Oct	11-Oct	450	4.6	51	38	D+13
Fox	09-Oct	09-Oct	1000	3.0	47	46	D+1
Rasmussen	06-Oct	06-Oct	750	4.0	46	49	R+3

What does this poll tell us by itself? A Monte Carlo analysis using the observed sample size and percentages gives Murray 902,830 wins to Rossi’s 92,001 out of a million simulated elections. That is, the poll provides evidence that Murray would have a 90.8% probability of beating Rossi in an election held now.

But we can pool the results from all six of the polls shown in the table. This gives us a total of 4,156 “votes”, of which 3,890 of them go to either Rossi or Murray. Murray gets 48.9% to Rossi’s 44.7% (or, if we look at just the votes for Murray and Rossi, Murray is up 52.2% to 47.8%). A simulation analysis finds Murray beating Rossi with 975,049 wins to his 24,332 wins.

The new KCTS/KPLU/Washington Poll has added a bit more certainty to Murray’s lead. Yesterday, this same analysis using all but today’s poll gave Murray a 94.5% chance of winning. Today, with six polls, we find that Murray would have a 97.6% chance of beating Rossi in an election right now.

Finally, let me address a meme about this race that has been quite prevalent in the recent media. There is an idea the the polls are “all over the place.” Maybe. But not really. Let’s look at results of polls taken in September and October:

Since these polls are taken on a sample of the underlying voting population, there is some uncertainty about the results. The vertical bars on the poll results show the plausible range that the voting population could have, given the margin of error inherent in the poll. (Other problems can lead to biased estimates; the margin of error only incorporates uncertainty reflecting the size of the sample.) And even then, by chance, we expect the true value to lie outside of the plausible range in about one in twenty polls.

Looking at the recent polls, it seems the last five polls mostly overlap, suggesting that the truth lies somewhere near a 54% Murray, 46% Rossi result. We also see this in early September. From mid-September to early October, Murray appears to do significantly worse.

Remember the discussion with the Elway poll last Tuesday? Elway was compelled to justify his noticeably higher numbers for Murray, and suggested that there was a difference between robopolls and live-interview polls. (Of course, if we consider the plausible range, the Elway poll fits right in.) The polls released since Tuesday support Elway’s suggestion.

Elway did not offer a hypothesis why robopolls would turn in different results than the live-interview polls, but I did. Via Goldy:

As Darryl suggested the other night at Drinking Liberally, what if the enthusiasm gap we’ve all been hearing about is largely manifested in who is or is not willing to give up ten minutes to interact with an automated poll? I know I’ve hung up on a couple robo-polls this year, but find it harder to do so with a real live person. Interesting hypothesis.

This looks right for all the recent polling. We see that the three live-interview polls (Elway, WA poll, and CNN) all post numbers on the high side and the robopolls (SUSA, Rasmussen and FOX News) all come in on the low side. That big dip in the middle is formed from six robopolls taken in a row. In fact, Rasmussen and FAUX News both use the same company—Pulse Opinion Research–to do their polling. It may not be chance that FOX New and Rasmussen both give Murray her worse performance in this series. And this would explain the question I posed in August, “What the hell happened to Survey USA?”

The robopoll/live interview/enthusiasm gap hypothesis was offered Tuesday before the three most recent polls were released, and I am now pretty confident that this is what is happening in the Murray—Rossi race here in Washington.

I am less confident about other House and Senate races nationally, but if it can happen here, it might well be happening elsewhere. I think there is a fair possibility that robopolls will systematically underestimate the performance of Democrats nationwide, which will make for a pretty darned interesting election night!

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

When Dino Rossi was asked about his stance on abortion during his first gubernatorial campaign back in 2004, he blithely quipped that “I’m not running for Supreme Court,” and everybody laughed and gave him a pass.

In 2008, during his second shot at Chris Gregoire, he pretty much offered the same non-denial denial in response to charges he was anti-choice, and once again reporters and editorialists pretty much shrugged.

And in 2010, sensing the Republican primary electorate shifting even further to the far right, Rossi grudgingly acknowledged that he opposes legal abortion except “maybe” in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at stake… but repeatedly emphasized that he’s “not running on that issue” in refusing to discuss it further.

So the question is, with the election only weeks away, and Rossi this time running for the U.S. Senate at a time when the Supreme Court is a mere pubic-hair-on-a-coke-can away from overturning Roe v. Wade, will our local media call Rossi on his obfuscation, and finally explain in detail where he stands on abortion and other women’s health care issues?

We may find out today at 3PM, when Gov. Gregoire and Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards hold a joint press at the Women’s University Club of Seattle to “highlight what’s at stake for women’s health care this election, including where the candidates stand.” If the cameras and reporters show up, and feature their comments on the evening news and in tomorrow’s papers, then we’ll know that the local news media is finally taking women’s issues seriously. But if they don’t, well, it’s another free ride for Dino Rossi on a position I’m sure he holds genuinely, but which separates him from a large majority of Washington voters.

To be clear, this isn’t just another press conference. This is the governor, for chrissakes, taking time out of her day to take questions from reporters. And since she’s not running for anything, likely every again, you just know this press conference is mostly about Rossi.

That’s news. But only if, you know, the press decides to report it.

The record is clear. Rossi opposes abortion, opposes funding to reduce teen pregnancy and opposes access to emergency contraception. He’s voted to oppose requiring insurance prescription plans to include contraception, and twice voted to deny family planning services through Medicaid. In 1992, he even spoke in favor of re-instituting “homes for unwed mothers” as an alternative to abortion. Most reporters know that.

But the fact that the latest SurveyUSA poll shows Rossi still earning 29% support from self-described pro-choice voters, is clear evidence that the public isn’t nearly as well informed.

This is an opportunity for our media to make up for six years of looking the other way. I’ll be interested to see if they take advantage of it.

Over on Slog, I do a little myth-busting, pointing out that despite all the credit Dino Rossi gets for balancing the state budget in 2003, he really didn’t do much budget writing at all. In fact, according to contemporaneous news reports at the time:

The Republican budget has much in common with the all-cuts plan that Democratic Gov. Gary Locke unveiled in December. In fact, Rossi opened a press briefing yesterday with a PowerPoint presentation titled: “Following the Governor’s Lead.”

The truth is, Rossi wrote the 2003-2005 state budget much in the same way that Dave Reichert caught the Green River Killer, in that he didn’t. Though just like with Reichert’s claim to fame, that hasn’t stopped the media from parroting Rossi’s revisionist narrative unchallenged.