Today's Seattle Times editorial argues against I-25. The core argument is, I paraphrase, "Voters want to elect their elections director, and what do they know? So the county council shouldn't let them the vote on this question!". The editorial makes a claim which I believe has no basis in reality:
Much fuss has been made about how the elections director is not accountable to the public and how if the elections director had been directly accountable to the public in the 2004 governor's race, election mistakes would not have been made.Perhaps I'm wrong, but I find no discussion in Judge Bridge's ruling whether King County's elections director should be elected or appointed. I've asked Times editorial editor James Vesely to explain the basis for that claim. I'll post his response, if any. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 26, 2007 05:30 PM | Email ThisThis is by now trumped up hooey, and a judge in a Republican county said as much after a lengthy trial on behalf of Republican Dino Rossi.
I wouldn't line the hamster cage with that paper. The poor thing deserves a clean cage, not on that is line with the crap that paper spews.
Vessey is an old time, full swallow kool-aid drinker. He is a dies in the wool, lie at all costs for your cause liberal that would have made Goebbels proud.
Posted by: pbj on August 26, 2007 06:55 PMHowever, from time to time, corruption, indifference, incompetence, or just a realization of how important a government job is has caused the people to decide that they no longer have the confidence in some representatives to allow a job to be appointed any longer.
Such is the case with the position of auditor for King County.
Erroneously mailing out thousands of duplicate ballots, missing counting of hundreds of ballots, finding ballots multiple times over the course of multiple recounts, having poor procedures that encouraged some to illegally put provisional ballots through Accuvote machines, and having an error laden registration system all coming together in time for the election of the Governor to be decided by slightly more than a hundred votes forced skepticism and distrust on the appointed elections director.
On top of this, confidence in the system was severely depressed and the KC Executive that was in charge of appointing the elections head did virtually nothing to effectively address any of the issues surrounding the debacle.
I-25 is a result of The People finally deciding that elections are important. Too important to be entrusted to "representatives" that care more for their position and power than for the right of the people for free, clean, legal, and accurate elections.
The People have declared that elections are so important to our form of government that they should directly decide who will represent them in overseeing the elections department.
The new auditor will not be able to hide behind the executive or the council. The new auditor will have to defend themself and their department directly to The People.
If you want free, clean and legal elections, then why wouldn't you want to have direct input into who is the director of the department charged with keeping the elctions free? If this function of government is as important as we now say it is, then I-25 is the right way to go.
Sure, we could elect a party hack. We do it all the time, but nobody has said that those jobs are too important to be entrusted to The People's vote.
Elections are important. Important enough for The People to take a more direct say in how they are managed and run.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on August 26, 2007 08:58 PM