This morning the P-I declared vote-by-mail in King County a sure thing. The reporter does make a nod to the needed formality of a full council vote next Tuesday, but based on the 5-3 "yes" vote in the Committee-of-the-Whole yesterday, believes vote-by-mail in King County is a done deal.
I watched most of the meeting yesterday, and what seemed most evident was the lack of good information. For the first part of the meeting, councilmembers were asking questions about the effect of vote-by-mail, and no one from the Elections office was on hand to answer even basic questions. After a while Sean Bouffiou from the elections office showed up, and helped advise the councilmembers. The amusing part is that Bouffiou is the Human Resources and Finance manager for REALS. Yet apparently his expertise and knowledge was enough to help the council decide to make this monumental change in the structure of county elections...
The King County Journal also ran a piece on the proposal this morning.
Posted by Jonathan Bechtle at May 23, 2006 09:28 AM | Email ThisThey admit that you need extra staff instead of volunteers. Do they realize that staff cost money, volunteers don't? Where are the savings?
Typical!
Posted by: Fred on May 23, 2006 09:16 AMThose of you who swallowed whole Shark's masterful critique last week that the Wal-Mart Crime study was not reliable because it was... (shudder)... Union-sponsored... here's a story in The Columbian you should check out: http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/05222006news30233.cfm
It sez: "Beating out the entire county for police calls to any 'retail, commercial or residential development' is the Wal-Mart retail complex... at the intersection of Mill Plain Boulevard and Interstate 205." And this is according to the Clark County Sheriff's Office, not some icky Union.
This comment is not intended as a "told-you-so." It is actually just an experiment for my Internet Sociology class to see how quickly someone will post Wal-Mart's defensive talking points, as delivered from Mount Bentonville.
The clock starts... now.
Posted by: 40-year-old Union Hack on May 23, 2006 09:22 AMBad statistics. I would expect a shopping area of 400,000 sq ft to have more calls than one of 100 sq ft. No comparison for that was issued. Also...
"And beating out the entire county for police calls to any "retail, commercial or residential development" is the Wal-Mart retail complex the anchor store and its satellite storefronts and fast-food restaurants at the intersection of Mill Plain Boulevard and Interstate 205"
How many were Wal-Mart and how many were the other stores, for which there is no count?
But it does make good press for Wal-Mart haters.
Posted by: Fred on May 23, 2006 09:41 AMOT: As we expected, vote by mail is a fait accompli. Alas, more fraud and deceit in the land (Seattle) of imported criminals (liberals). Apparently, they are doing this everywhere (California) with studiously tailored reports of its success (not) concluded solely by its
popularity in certain areas with elections officials (clerks) (easier task, more overtime, less fuss). We can fairly conclude that if it utterly and observably fails in California, Washington State will follow the lines of deception used there to keep it in place.
Don’t worry, our elections have been corrupt in the past, but now they will be more seamlessly corrupt, that’ll solve it. During the revolution, as the first rounds are fired, I wonder if it will dawn on liberals . . . why.
Posted by: Amused by liberals on May 23, 2006 10:02 AMThe good news is that this will come back to bite them. As usual, in their zeal, they fail to clearly think out the future consequences. The same voters they hope to attract in all mail voting are the apathetic automatons that are more likely to treat mail ballots as junk mail or forget the day of the election because they are only motivated by what others tell them and not what they think for themselves. Absent the deadline of an election day, the participation will decline. This is a good thing for a representative republic. Better to leave election decisions in the hands of voters that actually care.
We'll just have to do everything we can to make sure that Logan doen't throw piles of unathenticatd absentee ballots into the tabulation as he did in 2004.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 23, 2006 10:07 AMStatistics aside, Katomar nailed it -- Union WalMarts wouldn't alter circumstantial crimes.
Next you'll hear that Wal Mart causes global warming and terrorism.
They'll have fun explaining how Wal Mart and Bush can both be so powerful.
Don't worry, nothing is beneath morons like this union twerp.
One point I posted numerous times about the fallacy of the Wal-Mart crime studies....
All the studies found that Wal-Marts ATTRACTED crime. None of them implied nor found that Wal-Marts CREATED crime.
So, in essence, the 40-year-old Union Hack is arguing that it's BAD for Wal-Mart to attract criminals AWAY from your homes and businesses. Because where would those criminals be, if they didn't have a 400,000 square foot business with many entrances and exits manned by minimum-wage employees to target?
The interesting conclusion that all these crime statistics seem to come to is that it is union members committing the crime. This comes from two points:
1 - Wal-Mart crime rate is so bad compared to union shops that the union pays for a study to quantify how bad it is.
2 - As they say it is bad, crime rates must have gone up because of the existance of Wal-Mart, as opposed to concentrating the existing crime in a single place.
So who else would do it but people that hate Wal-Mart and try and smear it at any opportunity?
Posted by: Fred on May 23, 2006 03:37 PM
Does anybody else notice that we never get to VOTE on subjects that directly affect us, silly little things like VOTING? (and tax increases, etc)
I predict that if this passes there will be a very low voter turnout this year.
Most of the people I know in this state will refuse to vote by mail when they have a polling place nearby.
I officially resign from any ORGANIZED party since none of them (including the repubs) seem to care about the voters.
The dems will win this again (maybe forever) since the HONEST voters have had their votes taken from them once again.
This state (and the politicians, judges, and law-enforcement divisions) sucks.
Posted by: elmo on May 23, 2006 04:28 PMYou are obviously forgetting the many liberal studies that prove that crime is associated with low prices.
The unions insist that high wages and higher prices drives away crime.
They may be right but I'm not smart enough to figure out how, so I guess I'll just have to keep believing that crime is caused by criminals.
Silly me.
Posted by: Amused by liberals on May 23, 2006 05:34 PMVote-by-mail is an insurance policy to preserve the status quo. If it wasn't so obvious, it would be devious.
Posted by: Organization Man on May 23, 2006 07:08 PMNote this quote from the King County Journal article:
Julia Patterson, a SeaTac Democrat, co-sponsored the all-mail-voting ordinance with fellow Democrat Bob Ferguson of Shoreline, who represents part of northeast King County
``This is a government efficiency proposal,'' Patterson said, one that will ease the potential for human error. Now, there are about 500 polling places, staffed by an often-changing cadre of about 4,000 volunteers, she said.
The human errors (and corruption as well) are occurring mostly with the handling of the mail-in ballots, not the ballots filled in at the polling places. And now we are looking at flooding DeanRon and company with even more mail-in ballots.
What a mess, what a complete screwed-up mess - brought to us by the Dems of corrupt King County.
Posted by: Gary on May 24, 2006 01:01 PM