Washblog

Very interesting. Half of the poll voters in King County oppose eliminating neighborhood poll sites. Here's the link to King Co. exit poll results on transition to vote-by-mail (November 9, 2006). Here's the money quote:

The results indicate that polling place voters are evenly divided on the vote-by-mail issue.  Exactly
one-half of the polling place voters support the move to vote-by-mail, while the other half oppose
the new voting system in King County.

This survey project was conducted by assistant professor Matt Barreto, who is also a member of the non-partisan, academic survey research organization The Washington Poll. (Barreto has done prior research on absentee voting and other election issues.)

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I asked about upcoming CEOC meetings and got a quick response from Michael Alvine. There's a meeting Tuesday Nov 14th from 12:30pm to 2:00pm. The agenda has not been set yet. Though I have the impression that the CEOC members will visit the Temporary Elections Annex to observe the central count.

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It is trivial to determine the votes of anyone who used King County's new Diebold AccuVote TSx touchscreens. I realized this during the Poll Inspector's training. I asked around, apparently our officials have known this, too. There's even an emergency rule to address a similar vulnerability during performance audits.

Below is the explanation...

During the primary Tuesday Sept 19th, paid King County Elections personnel worked to switch voters to absentee ballots. These "Ambassadors" stood outside top poll sites, wearing branded t-shirts, and pressed voters to switch.

King County Elections using ambassadors to encourage use of vote-by-mail

King County Elections Ambassadors Program a Success Many Voters Switching To Vote-by-Mail

The press release claims it's not electioneering. King County Elections has and continues to encourage one form of voting over another. I believe it's illegal.

 

 

[ED: Photo and note added by Noemie Maxwell 9/15/06. This photograph of Jim Hightower was taken at Town Hall Seattle, 9/14/06, by Dina of Citizen Artiste. See more pictures linked to in Dina's comment below the fold. Photo added 9/15/06. Thanks for these great photos, Dina!]

Come hear Jim Hightower tonight at Town Hall for a wonderful discussion on alternative energy, agriculture, and a sustainable future for Washington.

Tickets are still available at the door.

7:00 PM - $10 - doors open at 6:30

Hope to see you there!

 

 

 

On Tuesday Aug 29th, 2006, King County Elections Services began their "logic & accuracy testing" of the new Diebold AccuVote TSx touchscreen voting machines. King County now has 507 (?) of these machines. There will be one at each poll site.

If you want to see what the fuss is about, the L&A testing stretches 10 days long. It begins at 8:30am each day at the Elections Distribution Center 1215 Fir St, Seattle. I encourage people to poke their heads in and see what's what. It's a cool facility and it's good to get a feel for what's going on.

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I headed down to the Annex building for my poll inspector training yesterday. Overall, it was a good experience.

There's roughly 4,800 poll worker positions in King County. According to our trainers, as of 1 or 2 weeks ago, they were 1,000 people short.

Everyone, step up and be a poll worker. Call 206-296-VOTE or email pollworker@metrokc.gov. If you care about democracy, want to learn more about our elections, or enjoy sitting around gabbing with your neighbors, then this is the job for you.

Below, I relate the experience, with extra emphasis on what I learned and observed about the new Diebold AccuVote TSx electronic voting touchscreen machines.

If you care about our democracy, I encourage you and everyone you know to sign up as a poll worker. If you are in King County, call 206-296-VOTE. Do it today.

Two big reasons to sign up.

#1 - King County is rolling out the new Diebold AccuVote TSx touchscreen voting machines this year. This requires an additional poll worker. So we need more people to step up.

#2 - Our elections have become super charged partisan affairs. With more training poll workers on hand, any and all monkey business is harder to pull off.

(Maybe others can provide phone numbers for the other county's elections departments. That'd be great, thanks.)

Unless Washblog is your first source for news, you already know that one person has been killed and five injured in a shooting at the Jewish Federation in downtown Seattle.  The first thing I wish to do here is offer condolences, I think safely offered on behalf of the Washblog community, to the victims of this tragedy as well as the friends and family who will help them bear the trauma of today's events.

I believe we should also offer our thanks to the emergency services and police who responded and seem to have gotten the situation under control very quickly.  Let it not be forgotten that we have some of the best emergency response organizations in the country here.

Little is known at this point.  No motive has been offered, and one person has been taken into custody - the police have just released information that the suspect is a Pakistani man from the Tri-cities, who has a criminal record.  

[Author: Tyler Page]

Give this to young Reagan Dunn: when he sees political opportunity, he leaps at it -- apparently without looking.

This week we were warned in headlines that "personal information was posted on the King County Elections web site." The immediate assumption might have been that some confidential database had been exposed -- as has happened repeatedly under Bush with the Veteran's Administration, the Navy, etc.  Scandal!

But no. Someone showed Dunn that King County makes a lots of its public records available via the Internet, and some of these documents sometimes include personal identifiers, even Social Security numbers.

[This is part one of three.]

The foundation of our democracy is private voting and public counting. Sounds simple, no? Why make it any more complicated?

As I said during my testimony before King County Council June 5th (here, ~1:43), the Washington State Constitution prescribes a secret ballot and public vote count. I called those two traits the cornerstones of our democracy. I also asked what's left if we take those two cornerstones away. Would it be a democracy? I said no, I don't know what it would be called, but it's not a democracy.

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Thus ends an era of 24/7 Republican attacks against Logan's Elections Department, and thus begins a new era of 24/7 Republican attacks against {insert new Director}'s Elections Department.  All hail the mighty Republican fighting machine.  The Seattle Times article can be found here, in which Ron Sims sez:

"I have known for some time that, despite his calm and collected outward demeanor, Dean has been personally hurt by the constant barrage of harsh personal attacks on his character and professionalism leveled by some partisan extremists and elected officials."

One thing Ron doesn't say, but I will, is that some of those partisan extremists ARE elected officials.

This is actually a major loss to the Elections Department, which needs nothing so much as it needs stability, precisely the thing Republicans don't want it to have.  (Congrats, morons, you'll keep our elections in turmoil for another few years!)  Dean Logan is one of the most highly respected elections officials in the nation among his peers, Democratic or Republican, appointed or elected.  Elections supervisors around Washington state leapt to his defense in 2004, regardless of their personal party affiliation.  King County Elections has improved a great deal since he took over.

Title of this piece, I believe, is a quote from Ghandi

Interesting response to Monday's King County Council hearing on the proposal to move the county to 100% Vote-by-mail.  The protesters haven't yet "won", I guess.  But they are at least starting to get people to listen to their viewpoint -- which has validity.

Democrats, Greens, and Republicans all showed up in force to protest the proposal.  Washblog's own Zappini, who's been subjected to insults on Washblog like "The Right's Useful Idiot", "paranoid wierdo", "LaRouchian", "flat-earther", etc. for allying with people across the political spectrum on this issue, posted a announcement of Monday's council meeting in advance.  Thank you, Zappini, for putting up with that nonsense to report here on Washblog.

There was a question posted today on a progressive Democratic listserv about how King County's move to a   Vote-by-Mail system might affect our precinct system. The person posing the question cited the January, 2006 Report by Dean Logan to the King County Executive: King County Elections: Moving to Vote by Mail.  In one of its tables, the report lists 'modifying the size of precincts' as a risk factor in the change.

I wrote a couple of people who are on the board of the 47th District Democrats here in south King County to ask them to weigh in on this.  Tyler Page, a current member and a past District Chair, answered first.  I quoted Tyler in a recent article cross-posted on Daily Kos: Why Darcy's Gunna Win: 25 Democrats who Swung a State.  He was one of those 25 or so Democrats.  Here's what he answered:

King County has now formally adopted a plan to move to all-mail voting by the 2007 primary election. This may portend changes to the precinct system which could greatly affect our local party operations.

(More below the fold)

Update [2006-4-27 18:8:27 by switzerblog]: Goddamn Slog. So they beat me to press by three hours, AND get the news that Toby Nixon is resigning his House seat to run for Finkbeiner's Senate seat. So let me update everything I wrote below to say that now we have a primary between Eric Oemig and Toby Nixon. I'll take some time to gather my thoughts and come back to this issue, but for now, talk amongst yourselves.

I received a copy of a letter today from the State Senate Republican Caucus announcing that former Senate majority/minority leader Bill Finkbeiner is ending his 14-year run in public office to pursue private interests.  Those of you who followed the hubbub around the civil rights bill the last two years will remember that Finkbeiner stepped down as Senate minority leader when he chose to switch his vote on the bill and become the deciding Senator in granting equal protections under the law to GLBT citizens.

What does this mean in the 45th LD?  Well, for the short term, not much.  We're out of session, so he can't push any right-wing legislation as part of his "I'm leaving, screw you" tour (not that Finkbeiner's the type to do that, anyway).  In the upcoming election, though, the whole world just shook.

Eric Oemig has been running a plucky, if somewhat overmatched, campaign to replace Finkbeiner in the Senate.  Eric is a former Microsoftie who founded Moral Politics, and is a good pragmatic progressive.  Until now, Eric's been flying under the radar without much name recognition and facing an uphill battle against a deeply entrenched, difficult to beat incumbent.  Suddenly, he finds himself as the only candidate in the race with six months before election day.  

Now is the time to start treating Eric as though he's in a tight race, because the advantage suddenly just shifted to the Democrats, but that window of opportunity will close quickly.  The Republicans find themselves with no candidate, no one even thinking of running, and have to get a candidate in their quickly to start raising money and competing.  Meanwhile, Eric's been knocking on doors and fundraising and already has his feet under him.  You cannot think that, while the Republicans are shaken up, they won't find a replacement and spill their runneth-ing-over cup of corporate cash on that person.  Eric can't run as though he's ahead - he's got to run as though he's already two points behind whoever they find to replace Finkbeiner.  This means Democrats, progressives, and the 45th need to take this opportunity to add some cashola to Eric's coffers, knock on some doors for him, get some lit printed, and get him in the paper...a LOT.  

And Eric needs to seize this opportunity to thank Finkbeiner for his years of service, then start talking about his great agenda.  What cannot happen is a repeat of Alben in 2004, when Jennifer Dunn dropped out of her race, and Alex Alben's strategy of running against Dunn collapsed, leaving him looking flummoxed on the campaign trail for several weeks while the Republicans reorganized and opening the door for Dave Ross.  Eric has to jump authoritatively to the forefront, and that will require the efforts of Democrats in and near the 45th.

I look forward to Goldy's inevitably better-researched take on all this!