Secretary of State Sam Reed is going to blow $2.5 million of the taxpayer's money on advertisements touting last session's vote-fraud-promoting "election reforms" -- "State to spend $2.5M on voter-confidence campaign"
The state awarded a $2.5 million contract to an advertising and public relations firm to restore confidence in the voting process.Earlier this month I gave a talk at a Skagit County GOP dinner. I got the most applause when I said we need to recruit somebody other than Sam Reed to run for Secretary of State in 2008. This $2.5 million "confidence restoration" advertising nonsense (as well as this) in place of actual confidence-building reforms is exactly why the public has lost so much confidence in elections and in the Secretary of State.Daniels-Brown Communications was awarded the two-year contract to create and produce a voter education campaign for the Secretary of State's Office, according to an announcement.
The campaign is expected to include advertising on television, radio and in newspapers and magazines during the next two election cycles, officials said.
The message will focus on reforms passed this year by the Legislature following major problems in the gubernatorial election last fall.
Am I confident that the State and counties have initiated all necessary processes to eliminate the dead, the felon, the non-citizen, the non (legally) residents from the registered voter rolls? No - haven't seen any news reports claiming this has been done. The KC report doesn't address any of this.
Am I confident that all mail balloting will not have the same problems that happened last time? No - there were a lot of reasons stated for "reporting definciencies" of mail ballots - one being that the volume was so great. How will increasing the volume make it even better? None of the KC report show any demand for better controls in the audit trail.
Am I confident that one recount - manual at that - will solve the issues that the last election raised? No - I'd prefer to see ballot "enhancement" with FULL audit trail and machine count only. Some of the reports from the manual recount that said that some people didn't check the ballots in pre-separated stacks to make sure they were in the right stack is one reason to reduce the human involvement.
Am I confident that only legal votes from legal will be counted? Not yet.
Show me these reforms (and others) in actual practice and working and then I'll tell you if my confidence is increasing.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on July 29, 2005 11:26 AMWhy no mention of Reed's WAC revisions that have upset at least a few lefties?
http://www1.leg.wa.gov/documents/wsr/2005/14/05-14-172.htm
In it, he seems to make an effort to go beyond the Legislature and enact some reforms that just might help.
Posted by: Mark on July 29, 2005 11:39 AMIn order to bring out genuine reform, we are going to have to vote these inept bums out of office. Unfortunately, the means to electing better people is broken and corrupt.
Posted by: Gary on July 29, 2005 12:42 PMWhat Reed SHOULD do is become a passionate advocate for REAL election reform, instead of the nonsensical pity-pat crap he's BEEN shilling.
And now, he's going to waste $2.5 million trying to get us to swallow this garbage?
Posted by: Who... Me? on July 29, 2005 01:06 PMIt's not perception... it is reality. Until they address the root causes, they're just dressing up a pig.
Posted by: Trunk Monkey on July 29, 2005 01:42 PM(360) 902-4151
sreed@secstate.wa.gov
Posted by: AP on July 29, 2005 02:12 PM- It's federal $ from the Help America Vote Act
- It is for voter education & can only be used for voter education
- supposedly the Sec. of State has the authority & has ruled that photo ID must be used at polls (is this true?)
Posted by: AP on July 29, 2005 02:25 PMI don't think Reed is for the democrats or worked against Dino.
Sam Reed calls himself a moderate republican, which as far as I can tell is basically a republican who likes government.
During the trial, Thomas Ahern (Reed's lawyer) stated over and over that the SOS sided with both the democrats and the republicans on numerous occasions. Ahern's closing argument talked about issues that where not even brought to the trial but could hurt Reed politically (i.e. military ballots). His whole argument defended Reed politically, not legally.
If you look at when the SOS ruled with Dino, it was when the argument fell on the side of defending the system, defending government, defending the status quo (Larry Phillip's ballot comes to mind).
When he sided with the democrats it was the same old "nothing to see here", give the system the benefit of the doubt, government is inherently good non-sense.
Sam Reed is a career bureaucrat. He thinks government is the answer to all of our prayers and his life dream is to be a "Statesmen" of the highest order. Don't kid yourself, Sam Reed will feed your children to lions if it makes him look good politically. He is from the Kennedy/Clinton school of "the ends justify the means, what is good for my career must be good for the people".
I know it is stil 3 years and change away, but if the U.S. Senate thing does not work for her, I hope Diane Tebelius takes a long hard look at taking Reed out in a primary. She has both the political and legal background for SOS. I don't know if she can beat McGavick or Cantwell, but I bet she could thump Sam.
As for the possibility of showing ID at the polls, this will lead to a bigger rush to sign up for absentee ballots. Duh. If Iraq can register a whole country in a matter of weeks, we should also be able reregister all voters here before the November election. However, the liberal whiners won't go for that because they would lose too much of their voter base.
Posted by: Burdabee on July 29, 2005 05:25 PMSam Reed had an opportunity to lobby the legislature for real election reform, instead he chose to use his influence and time to lobby Judge Bridges into deciding against free and fair elections in Washington State.
Now that same Sam Reed is going to use Federal HAV funds to cover up the mess? Is there any other state in the nation, where government officials can still get away with BS on this scale?
Posted by: dl on July 29, 2005 06:59 PMThis is the letter I send to ole Sammy
Dear Secretary Reed:
While reading the Puget Sound Business Journal today, I found that you and your office are hiring a PR firm (advertiser) to sell the alleged "elections reforms" enacted in the previous legislation.
This sir, is a waste of tax payer dollars. Not unlike the dog and pony show carried out in the statewide tour embarked upon by yourself earlier this year.
The people you will be selling this to already believe we had a fair election and recount.
The felons don't care, the double voters don't care, the dementia patients don't care and Lord knows the dead don't care. You would be better advise to send a new voter registration in a self addressed stamped envelope to the registered voters of Washington State, with the instructions to photo copy ID and proof of signature to purge the rolls of the afore mentioned.
Please take this under advisement, it will get a lot more people to believe you care about reform than with a communications firm.
Sincerely
Dean Logan is running for SOS!
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on July 30, 2005 01:22 AMAnd, as it turns out, the same judge says that the parties can't control who runs as a candidate. You can file and run as whatever you want! This is rich!
Hey, YOU have a great day now, y'hear?
Posted by: Potshot on August 1, 2005 05:42 AMMismanagement, potential fraud, illegal votes and a host of other ulcerations in our WA elections---we do not need to be 'educated' about voting and problems. We need to clean the system and purge the incompetent boobs running the election system. By the way--how many are fired or in jail yet...I'm waiting...
$2.5mm for gold spray paint on a turd.
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on August 1, 2005 02:06 PM