HorsesAss.Org

Just got back from casting my ballot, and that was the view from behind the voting machine at King County Elections’ accessible voting center in Tukwila, WA. There were about a dozen people waiting to use the machines at about 11 AM, with another dozen filling out paper ballots. And remember, this is in a county that conducts elections entirely by mail. (Well, obviously, almost entirely.)

Elections workers told me that I came at good time, as things had been much busier earlier in the morning, and they expected crowds to back up again during the lunch hours. Meanwhile, mail-in ballots continue to arrive at a near-record mid-term pace.

Another 170,000 ballots arrived this morning, bringing King County’s running total up to 580,000, or roughly 54% of registered voters, with another large batch of ballots expected to arrive this afternoon. Typically, Tuesday and Wednesday are the days with the largest number of received ballots.

This leaves county elections sticking to their projected 68% turnout rate, or roughly 720,000 returned ballots, up from a 65% turnout rate and 635,753 ballots cast in 2006, the previous midterm election.

Of course, that’s just a projection, but in an year when Republicans are supposed to benefit from a huge enthusiasm gap, it is interesting to note that dark blue King County’s 68% projected turnout is actually a couple of ticks higher than the 66% rate Secretary of State Sam Reed is projecting for Washington state as a whole. Furthermore, King County elections officials tell me that they’re actually projecting 69% turnout for Seattle proper, with the less Democratic rest of the county coming in at 67%.

Huh.

Again, these are just projections. But they sure do seem at odds with the national narrative.

So here’s my schedule for Election Day, 2010.

After I finish writing this post, I plan to head on over to King County Elections’ Tukwila headquarters, check out the mood and the turnout, and then cast my vote in person, just like I always do. (Call me a hopeless romantic.) Then I plan to head home, take my dog on a long, leisurely walk, eat a little lunch, maybe take a nap, have a hot cup of tea and an even hotter shower, then head out to the Montlake Ale House for beer, election returns, and even more beer, depending on how bad (or badder) the results turn out to be. And if I’m not too depressed, I might head over to the Westin for Patty Murray’s victory party.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, I suppose I’ll do a little writing, including some pre-election predictions, return-watching live-blogging, and post election analysis. So stay tuned.

I’m almost feeling nostalgic at the news, what with the John Carlson Show being my first experience in a radio studio, but as of Monday, conservative talk is no more at KVI.

Yeah, I know, good riddance and all that. But it’s hard to think of the continuing loss of live, local programming as a good thing.

Another poll has been released today in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and real estate tycoon-turned-perennial-candidate Dino Rossi (R). The FOX News poll taken on 30 October on 1,000 likely Washington voters (for a 3% MOE) has Patty Murray leading Rossi 49% to 47%.

That’s very interesting, because earlier today, I reported on a Public Policy Polling poll that had Rossi in the lead by +2%. Both were robopolls.

My usual Monte Carlo analysis of this poll has Murray wining 671,871 times, whereas Rossi wins 319,994 times. In other words, this poll alone gives Murray a 67.7% probability of winning to Rossi’s 32.3% chance.

Combining the last seven polls—all taken over the past two weeks—gives a total of 6,371 “votes” to work with. Of these, Murray received 3,073 (48.2%) of “votes” and Rossi received 3,052 (47.9%). The Monte Carlo analysis has Murray winning 568,596 simulated elections to Rossi’s 427,966 wins. That is, the polls support a Murray victory by 57.1% and a Rossi victory by 42.9%.

The result is close! Neither analysis presented here can be considered outside the margin of error. Here is, what I believe is, the final graph for this race: the last couple of months of polling results:

Make of it what you will. The polls say it is a tie or a very small Murray victory. So what do I think will really happen tomorrow? First, let me state that I obviously want Murray to win. Even so, in my professional life, I am a scientist, and evidence is exceedingly important to me, even if it goes against my desires or pet theories. So here goes….

As I outlined at the end of this post there is a discrepancy between live interview polls and robopolls in the Washington Senate race that has also been seen nationally. I offered an explanation (i.e. a theory) as to why the discrepancy exists. It all leads me to believe that robopolls are systematically underestimating Murray’s performance in this race. If the theory is correct, I expect Murray to come away with about a +5% advantage over Rossi after all the votes are counted. But I concede that tomorrow night, reality will confront theory.

Reality always wins.

If only tomorrow’s election goes as well for the team from blue America as the World Series did.

In case you missed it, NPR put out a great report on how the for-profit prison industry assisted in getting Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law on the books. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, as it shows how things that appear to be “grassroots” or being driven by the anger of everyday people are actually far more cynical efforts by special interests to boost their own bottom lines.

One aspect of this story, however, really jumped out at me:

It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC.

It’s a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.

…

“ALEC is the conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group,” said Michael Hough, who was staff director of the meeting.

Hough works for ALEC, but he’s also running for state delegate in Maryland, and if elected says he plans to support a similar bill to Arizona’s law.

That’s right. Not only are there state legislators around the country who enact laws that directly benefit private for-profit companies who build and run prisons (whose profits come directly from taxpayers, of course), but these legislators have the nerve to refer to that as “limited-government.”

There are a lot of misused and misunderstood terms in our political discourse – from socialist to libertarian to fascist – but I’m not sure any of that has been anywhere near as cynical as how the term “limited-government” has been used. It’s now been attached to the belief that we need to round up illegal immigrants en masse and house them in prisons (the 4th Amendment be damned!). And this is not an anomaly. I see this sentiment repeatedly on right-wing Tea Party blogs. There’s a weird kind of cognitive dissonance going on where the presence of large numbers of undocumented migrant workers is indicative of “big government” and the effort to arrest them all and put them in prison is “limited government”. The Tea Party movement, which we’re repeatedly told believes in “limited-government”, only believes in it as a slogan, not as an actual coherent political philosophy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ill0rAGcBa4&sns=em[/youtube]

I was going to push back on the PPP poll that Darryl’s already posted on, citing the DSCC poll that shows Murray up 51-44, are the Washington Poll’s Matt Baretto insisting that PPP doesn’t know Washington state from the other one. But Eli’s already done that on Slog, so you might as well read him.

No, instead I’d just like to use this as an opportunity to emphasize that people who don’t vote really, really suck.

If PPP is right, and there is a huge enthusiasm gap because, what, Obama didn’t enact change fast enough or something, well fuck you. You don’t vote, you don’t have a right to complain about the outcome. Simple as that.

So don’t be an asshole. Vote.

Public Policy Polling has released their final poll of the election season in the Washington Senatorial race. The poll, taken from 29-31 October on as sample of 2,055 likely voters (giving a 2% MOE) has Sen. Patty Murray trailing real estate peddler Dino Rossi 48% to 50%.

While this is only the fourth of twenty polls taken over two months that has Rossi ahead, Rossi has led in two of the past four polls, and Murray has only led in one of them.

A Monte Carlo analysis of the PPP poll shows Murray winning 256,364 simulated elections to Rossi’s 738,506 wins. The poll provides evidence that Murray would win with a 25.8% probability to Rossi’s 74.2% probability. Since Rossi’s winning probability is under 95%, the result is, technically, a statistical tie. But don’t be fooled…Rossi has an advantage by this poll, as is clear in the distribution of simulated election outcomes:

A more complete picture of the election outcome comes by examining all polls taken over the past two weeks. There have been six polls conducted since 17 October until 31 October, and it includes all polls taken since ballots were mailed to most Washington state voters. The metapoll includes 5,371 responses, of which 2,583 are for Murray and 2,582 are for Rossi.

No kidding! They are literally tied as they can be, given the odd number of respondents who chose to “vote.” Can you say “recount!” and “paging Judge Bridges”? I think it is fair to say that this race has seen movement over the past month that has favored Rossi in dissolving Murray’s clear lead.

I’ll end this post with the raw polling picture over the past two months. In a race so close, different people will squint at this graph, view it through different ideological or partisan filters, dump polls they don’t “like”, and come to different conclusions. In fact, this race is, based on any individual poll or based on every poll taken in the past two weeks, utterly indistinguishable from a tie.

Yeah, that’s former Reagan budget director David Stockman despairing over his fellow Republicans’ “anti-tax religion,” and watching last night’s 60 Minutes piece on I-1098 has me despairing too. Of course, the anti-tax mantra is a religion, and a fundamentalist one at that.

And apparently, there’s no reasoning with faith.

If only our government operated as efficiently as the private sector, I guess it wouldn’t know the name of its own legislators either.

The hit piece above, mailed to 41st LD voters (click through to see the whole piece), is not only dishonest in its message (far from criticizing her, the Seattle Times actually endorsed Rep. Marcie Maxwell), but it also stupidly names the wrong state senator. Of course that’s 41st LD state Sen. Randy Gordon’s picture, yet the mailer twice names 48th LD state Sen. Rodney Tom.

Adding to the irony is that the hit piece was paid for by Americans for Prosperity, New York billionaire David Koch’s far-right, ultra-conservative, faux-think-tank front group dedicated to privatizing Social Security… because, you know, the private sector is always more efficient than government. Or something.

Yup. These are the kinda folks I want handling my retirement account.

But then that’s just par for the course in this election isn’t it? An out-of-state billionaire funneling money through a secretive front group into a legislative race for chrisakes, against a local Democrat whose name he can’t even bother to learn. That’s American democracy for ya.

Last week’s contest was won by waguy. It was the law school at Widener University in Wilmington, DE where Christine O’Donnell recently discovered what the First Amendment to the Constitution says.

This is the fifth Sunday of the month, and what I think I’ll do for fifth Sundays is have it be specific to Washington state. Here’s this week’s, good luck.

Chronicles 15:13
All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.

Discuss.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7n3Y7dgxI&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Of all people, Washingtonians should understand the importance of getting out the vote. You may recall a very close state-wide race in 2004 that was won by a 129 vote margin (later judicially adjusted to 133). The loser of that race was Republican Dino Rossi, who is now challenging Sen. Patty Murray for the Senate seat she now holds.

Let’s not have a repeat of that…and you can help.

MoveOn.org is hosting GOTV calling parties to help re-elect Sen. Patty Muray and elect Suzan DelBene. They are looking for volunteers to spend an hour or two doing some good old fashioned voter outreach.

They are particularly interested in volunteers to make calls out of their Bellevue office at three times: Sunday at Noon, Sunday at 4:00 pm, and Monday at 1:00 pm. If you have an hour to spare during these (or even other) times, consider helping out. Start by giving them a call at 425-450-1054.