It's in the P-I

Jason Osgood has a great post below about the P-I's weekend editorial in favor of forcing everybody to vote by mail. Be sure to read Jason's post. A few more comments about the P-I's editorial --

First, a note of gratitude to the P-I. I finally learned something new from one of its editorials: The word "squaloid"

Squa´loid (skwā´loid)
a. 1. (Zool.) Like or pertaining to a shark or sharks.

Vocabulary enrichment notwithstanding, the editorial is as predictably partisan and fact-averse a plea for mail-voting as one would expect from a partisan and fact-averse newspaper whose own marquee columnist orchestrated a conspiracy to commit mail-ballot fraud.

The editorial praises mail-only voting as "well-researched". It is -- by those of us who care enough to look into the horrendous problems, certainly not by the P-I. The only item in the editorial which resembles a fact is this --

if it helps, the council might note that more than 70 percent of its constituents already have made up their minds; they already vote by mail.

That figure has been mendaciously repeated ad nauseum by the mail-ballot advocates. But 70% is merely the percentage of the ballots cast in the November 2005 election that were absentee ballots. . If the P-I had done any actual research, it would have realized that this number was cherry-picked to exaggerate the support for mail voting. Other numbers show greater support for polling places. As of the November 2005 election, only 51% of the county's registered voters were registered permanent absentee. 334,000 voted at the polls in November 2004, which is more than the 300,569 total votes cast in the September 2005 primary. Indeed, turn out for the primary was astonishing low -- 75% of registered voters didn't bother to vote at all. By the same argument used to justify mail-only voting, the P-I editors would also recommend that the Council abolish primary elections. But there's nothing magical about 70% or 75%, the P-I has been advocating mail-only voting since shortly after the very high-turnout November 2004 election, in which only 63% voted by mail. The P-I has essentially argued that if a product has only 37% market share at any given point in time it should be pulled from the shelves. It's worth noting that in the Seattle daily newspaper market, the P-I has only a 37% share. I'll look forward to the P-I's editorial calling for its own demise. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 12, 2006 07:48 PM | Email This