I came to know Sam Reed while I was working for the state GOP. He constantly whined when the GOP refused to pay off his $10,000 or so campaign debt from the 2000 election, because, apparently, even as a newly elected statewide official he lacked the ability to raise that paltry amount himself.

That's when I also came to know, in the most up close and personal way, that political parties were only a label, and in many instances such as Reed's were used only in the guise of opportunism, since "personal responsibility" and other GOP concepts such as vote security and felon responsibility seemed to be concepts beyond Reed's grasp.

In a dull-normal tenure where Reed SHOULD have been acting on behalf of the voters of this state, we were, instead, cursed with a man who's primary concern was based on reducing his work load.

Reed has neither advocated nor implemented any programs designed to ferret out the illegal alien vote; in fact, as a strong advocate of motor voter, where this state, for unfathomable reasons, remains only one of two in the entire country to provide illegal aliens with driver's licenses, making Washington State the shame of the entire country, no thanks to Reed.

When one applied for the license they're looking for, of course not requiring proof of citizenship to drive, one also doesn't provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, either, diluting perhaps our most precious right by allowing any one of these people committing multiple crimes (Being here illegally and falsely swearing to be a citizen) to vote. Not requiring this common-sense qualification reduces the work load of the Secretary of State's office, because there is, then, no requirement to attack this kind of fraud.

Reed appeared to be helpless to deal with the felon voting issue, but appearances are deceiving. Publicly, his staff even lied about the timing of Reed's efforts to get out from under the felon voting issue, as that post explains. Except for sending convicted felons illegal voter registration forms, Reed has never done anything to enforce the restrictions against felons voting without first completing their sentences... "completing their sentences" including the vital aspect of paying their court-ordered restitution, an act that few felons bother with.

Now, voter registration forms are part of felon out-processing, and voting has been completely taken off the table as an additional lever to get these criminals to pay the victim(s) for their criminal acts.

And who benefited from that? Democrats, who've been after the felon vote for years, and Sam Reed, who subsequently had his own work load reduced, because he could stop making excuses for failing to do his job and work to write software that would screen out felons.

He did nothing about the felon vote because he never WANTED to do anything about it.

And finally, his moronic desire to jump off the cliff with Oregon and require all votes to be in by COB election day, instead of the much fairer system that has been in use in this state for decades... the system that allows votes POSTMARKED by COB election day to be counted... as they should be.

Democrats want that because typically, late-breaking votes usually trend right... as illustrated by Tom Mielke's come-from-behind victory over Pam Brokaw in the Clark County Commissioner race in 2008, where 4000 late-breaking votes came in for Tom.

Under Reed's "work avoidance" plan, Mielke would have lost, because many of those votes would not have been counted. And naturally, the rag would have supported that.

Soon, Reed will be gone. And it won't be soon enough for me.

Hinton