Julie Wise, not a politician
Last week I told you for whom I am voting for city council. (Awkwardly formal phrasing, but you try flipping that sentence around.) So with the ballots arriving this week I thought I’d also mention that I’m voting for Julie Wise for King County Elections Director.
Why? For the exact same reason why I opposed making the office elected in the first place: This is a position that demands a professional who knows how to run elections, not a politician who knows how to run for them. And with 13 years working in King County Elections, deputy director designee Wise is that professional.
Nothing against the two Democrats running for the office. I know and like Zach Hudgins, and from everything I hear, Chris Roberts is a great guy. But neither of them have any experience running an elections office, let alone the largest all vote-by-mail jurisdiction in the nation. For them, this office would be a mere stepping stone to something bigger—maybe Secretary of State. But for Wise, this is her career. And I feel a lot more comfortable with a career technocrat running this office than just another politician.
I cut my teeth as a blogger following the controversially close 2004 gubernatorial election, but we haven’t heard much in the press about King County Elections in the years since. That’s because it’s being run great. Let’s keep it that way. Vote for Wise.
We wouldn’t have heard much about King County Elections in 2004, either, if the likes of Chris Vance, John Carlson, and Dino Rossi’s incompetent lawyers hadn’t ginned up a lot of bullshit about a “stolen election” that wasn’t. And let’s not forget how Stefan Sharansky, the proprietor of now-defunct (u)SP, played the public records system to take King County taxpayers for $225,000, not counting the costs in staff time and overhead expenses to provide him with over 600,000 pages of documents. Yes, we need a professional running our county elections department, but we had that in 2004, too, and it didn’t keep the GOP and their propagandists from trying to manipulate and discredit the whole election process.
Last week I told you which candidates for city council I was supporting…?
@2: http://horsesass.org/editorial.....y-council/
@2 Yeah, I guess that would work.
We wouldn’t have heard much about King County Elections in 2004, either, if the likes of Chris Vance, John Carlson, and Dino Rossi’s incompetent lawyers hadn’t ginned up a lot of bullshit about a “stolen election” that wasn’t.
While their actions were uncivil and dishonest, each performed his duties per our system. Vance was head of the WSRP; his job was to help get Rossi elected governor. Carlson was a propagandist for the WSRP, and so faithfully spouted the Party line. The lawyers did the best they could, but had no case. Once they’d lost the final recount and the court case, they should have accepted the results. Their failure to do so showed their bad character, and people now understand why we were lucky not to have such bad actors in power.
Or:
Last week I told you which candidates I am supporting for City Council.