The Stranger’s Eli Sanders has been on top of the Danielson-Gonzalez Supreme Court race for a long time now. In fact, I think he deserves some of the credit for raising awareness that led to an election result in which a highly qualified candidate with the Hispanic surname defeated the highly unqualified candidate with the lilly-White surname.
But even in victory, Eli has an important point to make about failure:
The results are now clear: rural voters, for the most part, pick the white guy over the Latino guy.
If Gonzalez hadn’t spent over $260,000 to combat this dynamic—and if urban Washingtonians hadn’t sounded the alarm—then we’d now have a Justice Bruce Danielson.
This is a disgracefully ignorant and dangerous way to pick our supreme court justices.
There is another point to make here as well.
The deal is this. Every single county East of the Cascades went for the white guy. Most of them did so by 60% or more, including Adams and Douglas counties that went for Danielson by over 70%.
The counties with the highest proportion of Hispanic population (from 2010 census data) are Franklin (63.8%), Adams (57.9%), Yakima (45.6%), Grant (39.5%), Chelan (27.5%), Douglas (26.7%), Walla Walla (21.4%), Okanogan (19.2%), and Benton (18.0%).
All of these counties but Benton voted for Danielson in excess of 60%. That’s right…Franklin county, with a 63.8% Hispanic population went for Danielson by 64.3%. And Adams county, with a 57.9% Hispanic population went for Danielson by 70.6%.
Now, there may be several reasons why counties with a high proportion of Hispanic individuals have voters that overwhelmingly vote Republican and vote against a highly qualified individual with a Hispanic surname running for Supreme Court.
The Hispanic population may be younger, so that many are not old enough to vote. A certain proportion may be non-citizens. A lower rate of English literacy among Hispanic voters may suppress voter turn-out. Hey, there may even be some fraction of Hispanic voters who really believe it’s in their best interest to vote Republican (yeah…right!).
What we can say is that the interests of the considerable Hispanic population in Washington state for whatever reasons are not being served by our electoral system.
I find that disgraceful!
I don’t know what the story is behind this failure. Frankly, this looks like a failure on the part of Democrats to conduct effective registration drives, voter education efforts, and put GOTV operations into the field in these counties.
Whatever the reason, it needs to change!
This might indeed be very disgraceful, but in order to convince me of that you’ll have to not at the % of latino population, but at the % of latino registered voters.
Continued… HA’s not letting me edit my posts.
Are they not getting registered? If they are registered, but they’re not turning out to vote is that anyone’s fault but they’re own? With mail all mail in ballots it would seem that it would be hard to block registered voters from voting.
people only have themselves to blame if they dont vote.
its not like voting time is a secret or that its hard to do – no matter what the leftist propaganda machine says.
I still get a chuckle at people who’s theory of how the world works always comes down to race or gender…
you have the wacky racists on side of the coin who think everything should be centered on their race…….., and on the other you have the over-sensitive types who think that representation must exactly equal the percentage of women or races in a given area, and all the wrongs in life come down to race.
I think the two groups were made for each other, and deserve to suck each other off and see who pops first.
Not if they’re being prevented from voting. But, it’s pretty hard to see how that would be the case right now in Washington.
@3 “its not like voting time is a secret”
This would help make it less secret.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....elections/
I don’t understand how the Ds haven’t made more inroads into a county like Yakima. I go through there often, and the latino culture is heavy. But, we get no votes there. Is it a failure on the Ds’ part to get out the vote?
Before getting to hot under the collar about this, I would really like to know if there are census data on the populations in those areas by citizenship and, then, by registration?
If this is a result of a large non citizen class, then we have a very, very different problem .. on that is more serious. That problem is akin to apartheid.
In the era before the ANC, South Africa had two classes based on a large immigrant community of Bantus and Zulus who lived as separate and unequal life in a Dutch and English country.
The same sort of two class citizenship exists today In countries with large immigrant worker groups .. among these are Israel and Germany. If the farm workers in Okanagon actually live there, then haw long can that go on before we recognize their rights as citizens?
The Washington State Democrats bear a significant part of the blame. Nowhere on the WA Dems website is there any hint that there might be a Spanish version. I’d assume, then, that they don’t have one.
I vaguely recall that the WSRP used to have a Spanish website. Might have been when they were led by Chris Vance or maybe Luke Esser. No sign of one these days.
@N: Note Darryl said Hispanics aren’t served by our electoral system.
Darryl, you’re the math guy. Do the Hispanic jurisdictions even matter electorally speaking except on a local level?
If not why should the state Ds be playing there?
What’s up with the locals? Including the local Hispanic citizens.
I’d like to know a lot more about the demographics of the Hispanic population before I made any judgements about who should do what with whom — my take is mostly undocumented and connected to ag which nobody fucks with, except that the Ds try to mitigate the worst of it and we get to struggle with the heavily subsidized “rugged individualists” they send to the leg.
A couple more house seats would be nice. Ds used to win there. Inslee came from Yakima if you recall. I’d take big ag on in a second, but that’s just me. I’d need to know if there was any point, though.
@6
I’ve worked on a lot of political campaigns, but I’m not a part of the Democratic party. Every encounter with I’ve every had with anyone above a PCO in the WA Dems has been a pain in the ass and most of the time I’ve been treated rudely. You’d think that since I’m trying to get their guy elected that they’d be friendly and helpful.
The worst is when you’re working a call sheet trying to get people to come to an event and one of the sponsors of the event accidentally gets left on the list. You call them up and they blow a gasket. “Do you know who I am?” Um… Yeah you’re an asshole.
Zotz @ 9,
“Do the Hispanic jurisdictions even matter electorally speaking except on a local level?”
The nine counties I mentioned in the post make up 12% of the state population (in 2010). And the Hispanic populations in those counties are a little over 4% of the state population. That’s not ignorable for statewide races (although the eligible voting population is well under 4%).
For any race at or below County level, increasing the Hispanic participation could have huge consequences for elections.
SJ @ 7
“Before getting to hot under the collar about this, I would really like to know if there are census data on the populations in those areas by citizenship and, then, by registration?”
I don’t know if the census releases county level data that includes citizenship and ethnicity. But Washington state does not collect information on ethnicity on the voter registration form.
“If this is a result of a large non citizen class, then we have a very, very different problem .. on that is more serious. That problem is akin to apartheid.”
The Constitution requires enumeration of all persons for the purposes of allocating Representatives. So, even if non-citizens cannot vote, they still have a person who is THEIR representative as well as many, many other rights.
What we have in parts of Eastern Washington is a large ethnic group (indeed, a majority in Adams and Franklin counties) who are electorally invisible.
…bigot… @ 3,
“people only have themselves to blame if they dont vote.”
Bullshit.
A blind person cannot be blamed for failing to vote, unless he/she receives a ballot with a braille label indicating a ballot is enclosed, receives a braille ballot and receives voter information in an accessible format (audio or braille).
Except for the recent possibility of using screen-reading software with an on-line voter’s guide, none of these things are available to blind voters in Washington state. Essentially, they are forced to rely on a sighted person for assistance with voting. That isn’t always easy, and doesn’t provide the same voting privacy.
Likewise, many Hispanic voters may not be able to vote without Spanish-language material, beginning with the voter registration form.
If any of these things fail—inability to find/fill out registration form, inability to recognize a voting packet from the outer envelope, inability to read the ballot, inability to access voter information (which is available…if you have a computer), then Hispanic voters will be underrepresented in our election outcomes.
WHAT? So the US Constitution enumerates illegal aliens for Representation? Golly I guess I missed that in civics class on the 14th Amendment and Article I Section I Clause 3 as amended by Section 2. And Article 1 specifically sez
The People as specified are US citizens, born or naturalized peeps, not illegal aliens. What part of citizens is missing? It’s Obummer’s census department that is moving away from the traditional count of US citizens only to count illegal aliens too. And don’t hoist that slavery crap on Puddy because they weren’t called illegal aliens. They were called slaves. They could not vote and they were 3/5’s a man or woman.
This fallacious would affect the electoral college represenataion in states where illegals love the DUMMOCRAPT. They can’t vote unless you follow Francine Busby’s call so now let’s count them anyway?
Man you libtards love to change facts when you all see your power eroding.
The right wing trolls in this thread of course show total lack of reading comprehension..
Being right wing is a brain damaging disorder.
@13
Darryl,
Do you really think that there is no spanish language voters registration paperwork in places like Yakima?
really? do you really think that? cmon dude..
As a side note, you seem to be making a strong argument for English as the national language, and requiring everyone to be proficient at it.,,,but thats another subject…
as for the blind and voting – fine, I will accept that point – but if the blind population is what you are resting your argument on, then I think you have a huge hill to climb.
Maybe….just maybe…Spanish speaking voters in eastern WA arent buying the bullshit that the urban democrats in western WA are trying to sell them…
just a thought….
Jesus Spuddy, you work far too hard at being dumber’n a sack of horseshit.
THAT is the interpretation. THAT is how it was written, and been ruled upon by the Supreme Court every single time a 14th Amendment related issue has come before the court.
Any Person. That is what it says. As long as ANY person is residing in the United States, they are subject to the jurisdiction of our nations laws, barring diplomatic immunity which is covered by separate international treaties.
All of them. Any Person.
Besides, I thought you TeaPottyists didn’t recognize any Amendment after the Tenth. Certainly thats been Bachmanns whole schtick, and Palins, And Gohmerts. That’s been Bobby Jindhals whole premise his entire political career. FOX Propaganda Network says it right out in plain view every single day. That is what the TeaPottie has been all about, that there are no legitimate Amendments to the Constitution since the 10th was ratified. Joe the “plumber” said it flat out, as did Sarah Palin.
You Tealibangelical nutballs ate that shit up and swallowed it whole, and begged for more, down on your knees and tickling that little furry bag for more. Your little nickle-and-dime Fascist revolution has been long since revealed for what it is, and the only people holding onto to the idea are the intellectually challenged, chronic alcoholic, uneducated and demented people who hate the idea that Citizens are allowed to make decisions outside of the Corporate structure. That Citizens can resist the wants of the wealthy, and refuse them their desires.
Although I am repeating myself, this seems just one more opportunity to point out how ridiculous it is to have a judge, much less a Supreme Court judge, elected by popular ballot. The candidates themselves are prohibited from talking about anything touching on the issues which MIGHT come before the court in the future, except in the most general terms. Few citizens have personal contact with judges, except for the country-club set and those appearing before a specific judge in a civil or criminal case. This leaves only the lawyers or fellow judges having sufficient information with which to rate a candidate’s suitability for office – unless the candidate goes “off the reservation” and makes crazy comments which will hurt him more than help him.
The appointment of judges also has problems – as Pres. Eisenhower found out with Chief Justice Earl Warren, past performance is no guarantee of future results once the nominee has his lifetime seat. It also hasn’t prevented justices such as Clarence Thomas from performing even more badly than our worse-case scenario at the time of nomination.
But for the better part of a half-century, there have been some alternatives, most based on the rough outlines of the “Missouri Plan”, where the governor appoints the justice (subject to Senate confirmation), and then the justice has to come up for vote every few years, with the sole question being “should Justice xxxx be retained?”. No opposing candidates, just yes or no. If the justice is voted out, then the nomination process repeates itself.
Why can’t we even consider such a common-sense approach?
Thank you.
Any Person? Or any naturalized or born American?
It’s the whole sentence you moron Fraggy! CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES!
CITIZENS – what part of that word don’t you comprehend Fraggy?
You see how you libtards take true meanings and twist them for your own benefit. And Lib da schmuck chimes in right on time.
Clearly the solution is a Spanish-language version of HA.
Seriously, voter registration info isn’t available in the Spanish language?
Puddy, you’re being obtuse again. see that semicolon?
As written, and as backed up by case law, there are citizens and non-citizens. The Government does not have to allow non-citizens all the accommodations of citizens (voting being the case here) but the state can not abridge the basic unalienable rights of ‘any person’ including non-citizens.
Per your interpretation, a foreign tourist accused of any sort of crime does not have the right to a trial. In your view, a non-citizen can be asked by law enforcement to empty their pockets or submit to fingerprinting by the simple fact that they are not U.S. citizens. In your view a non citizen who is mugged and the attacker apprehended has no equal protection of the laws so the mugger can go free.
Really Puddy? That’s how it works in Puddyland?
How is it twisting the words? It says it in plain english.
Any person.
czechsaaz @ 23 has it right. Only Citizens can vote, for good reason. But non-citizens are subject to the same set of laws and protections accorded by those laws as any citizen of the country. That most especially includes the laws contained in the US Constitution.
Any Person. That is how it was written, and how it has always been meant to be enforced. There has never been exclusion of rights toward non-citizens under the rights accorded under the United States Constitution. Non-citizens have the same rights as citizens, exclusionary of voting rights.
This applies to the entirety of the Bill of Rights.
@24
We’re saying the same thing except for Puddy being right. Reading @23, he appears to be arguing that the inclusion of “Citizens of the United States” in the first clause of the sentence negates “any person” in the latter.
Yes, my examples are intentionally ridiculous to illustrate that point. Look back at his post, “Any person? Or any natural born citizen?”
“It’s the whole sentence…” Why yes, it is. And the whole sentence quite definitely answers Piddly’s original question, but not in the way he thinks. “Citizens – what part of that word don’t you comprehend…”
@ 25
Spuddy has never retracted any lie, nor has he ever allowed himself to be corrected and accepted that correction. Spuddy is a liar. Thats all he is. Thats all the TeaPottie is, a rather loose but extremely well-financed group of reactionary, pathological liars. The pathos runs very deep.
Its just the latest iteration of the Silver Brigades. 30 years ago they called themselves the Moral Majority. 50 years ago they were calling themselves the John Birch Society, 30 years before that they called themselves the Silver Brigades, 25 years before that they called themselves Ku Klux Klan.
It’s always the same, always the same racist, Jingoistic, reactionary rhetoric. No education required and facts be damned.
Puddy .. you miss the point, as I understand it, the census does not count citizens, it counts residents. The situation is rather like slaves .. where the southerners wanted to have votes based on the number of YOUR ancestors.
Look at it this way, If a CD has 200,000 population but only 50,000 citizens, should that CD still get the same number of votes as a District with 200,000 citizens?
@27
Clearly they should be counted as 50,000 + 3/5(150,000)
http://90days90reasons.com/
90 essays, one a day until the election, on why you should vote for Obama. Neat site.
…Bigot… @ 16
“Do you really think that there is no spanish language voters registration paperwork in places like Yakima?”
No. I suspect there are some. But read the rest of what I said and cogitate on it a little.
“As a side note, you seem to be making a strong argument for English as the national language, and requiring everyone to be proficient at it.,,,but thats another subject…”
Umm…no. You can stop being retarded now.
“but if the blind population is what you are resting your argument on, then I think you have a huge hill to climb.”
My argument is not “resting on the blind population”. That was an analogy.
Person playing Puddybud,
“So the US Constitution enumerates illegal aliens for Representation?”
Yes it does.
The Census enumerates, for the purposes of apportionment, all persons whether citizen or not. Certain exceptions are given in 14th amendment (“Indians not taxed”) but subsequent law and court decisions have largely eliminated the exceptions.
“Golly I guess I missed that in civics class”
I guess you did!
Bob @ 22,
“Seriously, voter registration info isn’t available in the Spanish language?”
It may be. But re-read and think about my comment @ 13.
@30…a false analogy.
Logically, ethnicity played a role in this election. There are far more voters prejudiced against Hispanics, than are prejudiced against Anglos, as well as far more voters prejudiced in favor of Anglos than are prejudiced in favor of Hispanics.
But you also assume the vast majority of voters were totally ignorant about the election, which is giving serious discredit to voters.
The county voter patterns largely followed the traditional red-blue patterns. Danielson won heavily in counties that traditionally favor Republicans, and Gonzalez won very heavily in counties that traditionally favor Democrats.
Gonzalez did spent a LOT of money in this election, and the newspapers and other media had more coverage of the race than normal (especially due to fears of a dark house doofass winning the election due to voter ignorance). So voters were aware that Gonzalez was recently appointed by Gregoire (and backed heavily by Democrats and liberals), and that Danielson had supposedly conservative views on matters. The county voting patterns seem to mirror that.
King County sort of stands out, with an over three-to-one victory by Gonzalez over Danielson. But a lot of that is “hometown” advantage, which is especially strong in a judicial race (assuming the candidate is at least likeable). We had McKenna and Dunn/Pidgeon getting in the high 30’s, but Danielson only polling about 24%.
People in King County know and trust Gonzalez, with a dozen years on the Supreme Court bench, and other prior positive history here. For Danielson’s part, his law practice is in King County, and he probably hasn’t impressed too many people here. Also, a lot of King County Republicans endorsed Gonzalez, which didn’t happen too much in other counties. And probably a higher percentage of King County voters cast votes for Supreme Court, than in other counties, due to coverage of the election and knowledge of the candidates (especially Gonzalez).
Just look at hometown advantage in the Supreme Court open seat election. Bruce Hilyer has been on King County Superior Court for many years, and carried King County with a substantial margin (the only county he won). This may get Hilyer into a closely fought battle for number two to get into the general. John Ladenburg, long time Pierce County prosecutor and county executive, carried Pierce County — the only county he won.
If hometown folks don’t like you so much, less of a hometown advantage. Danielson ran for superior court judge and county prosecutor in Kitsap County where he lives. He polled in the 40’s each time — including 48% for prosecutor in 2010 (running without party preference). They said Russ Hauge was unpopular enough in 2010 that any credible attorney could have beat him (and many people wished someone else had challenged Hauge). Anyway, Kitsap County has a sort of mixed opinion of Danielson, so he got only 44.69% — not totally horrible, but definitely not a hometown advantage either.
Anyway Darryl, on the statistics, aren’t there some statistics (most likely survey or polling data — certainly NOT censuses) on the percentage of various ethnic groups that are U.S. citizens? The percentage of non-citizens is much higher among Hispanics, due to a high percentage being immigrants who have not obtained citizenship (many of whom are not even eligible for the permanent residency that is a prerequisite for naturalization).
Also, the data would have to be adjusted for voting age population. Anglos in America don’t like to have children so much anymore (maybe 1.8 children per family), so a very high percentage of Anglos are 18 and older. Hispanics have a somewhat higher birthrate (maybe 2.4 or so children per family), and with a large immigrant population, more of the adults are in their child-bearing years (while Anglos have a much higher percentage of older families and individuals without minor children — either never had them, or they have grown up). All in all, a much higher percentage of minor children among the Hispanic population.
I think voting age population can be specifically determined in each county with the census data, while citizenship percentages would have to be estimated using nationwide survey-type data.
I think you would find a LOT of Hispanic voters in all these eastern Washington counties, but nowhere near their percentage in the general population.
Richard,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Yes…one can get voting age by ethnicity in the census data. I didn’t find simple tools for doing that, so I mentioned the higher proportion of children in the post.
“I think you would find a LOT of Hispanic voters in all these eastern Washington counties, but nowhere near their percentage in the general population.”
I suspect you’re right. But there is certainly no signature of a Hispanic vote–even in the 2 or 3 counties where the majority are Hispanic (I think Yakima became majority Hispanic in 2012). My hunch is that many, many registered Hispanic voters end up not voting. This is, in part, a failure of the state–as of a year ago, only 4 counties had Spanish language ballots. But it is also a failure of Democrats, who should be in the “field” with information, registration forms, and GOTV drives.
kim @ 33
“@30…a false analogy.”
Is not.
@38
Is too.
:-P
@34:
But Richard, how would those totally-uninformed voters have known which candidate was a “Republican” and which was a “Democrat”? Judicial elections are strictly nonpartisan. If a voter wasn’t aware of the candidates’ platforms and positions (as there was no Voters’ Guide) and wasn’t aware of which organizations had endorsed which candidate, how could he/she determine the party orientations of the names on the ballot?
I think we are almost forced to infer that an uninformed voter would (unconsciously?) use stereotypes. Whether that means that the thought process was {Latino = Democrat, and I don’t like Democrats} or {Latino, and I don’t like Latinos}, it’s still an indictment of the ridiculousness of electing judges. And perhaps of inherent ant-Latino bias.
@27, @31:
You are correct that the Constitution specifically states that the Census counts residents, not merely citizens. I think it’s quite possible that the person who plays Puddy knows that, but of course the character he’s devised always tries to muddy the waters.