Month: October 2006 (Page 4 of 4)

But, as a reason to vote against, not for the initiative. Goldy points to the obvious two-faced nature of Dan Wood, who would promote I-933 as a way to get the government off the backs of good folks like us, then testify that a fish processing plant was ruining the value of his rental properties down on the harbor.

That Wood would testify before the Hoquiam City council points to something: the way to argue against 933 is to say it will destroy your property values. Not because of government action, but because of your neighbors screwing with you.

or: f*#k Mark Shattuck.

Four years ago Sheldon gave the GOP about $10,000. Now, after his victory over Democrat Kyle Taylor Lucas, they’re begining to return the favor.

Citizens Alliance for a Legislative Majority, a new PAC in Washington funded mostly by seed money from the Republican State Leadership Commitee, gave $500 to Sen. Sheldon earlier this month.

Not that he needs it.

(The Republicans really considered him one of their own anyway)

If Republicans are giving money to Sheldon, who is donating to his Republican opponent, Mark Shattuck?

That’s right, two people for a total of $400 have donated to Republican Shattuck’s campaign, $100 less than what the State Republicans gave to his opponent Democrat Tim Sheldon.

Former California Congressman and current Gig Harbor resident (boy I like him already) Burt Talcott (say that with your teeth clenched) has a very energetic defense of of current primary system in the TNT recently. Actually he seems to be defending primaries in general, and attacking the idea of an IRV system, which would do away with primaries.

Both major political parties, although often adversarial on most issues, strongly oppose IRV.

Now, why would both the Democrats and the Republicans oppose IRV when they disagree with each other on so much? Probably because they’re the two major parties and fear losing their positions to lesser parties. Defending a duopoly.

That isn’t to say that some Democratic county organizations don’t like IRV. Whatcom county put it in their platform this year, and Thurston did two years ago.

Party workers conduct workshops for voters, informational public forums, candidate debates and “get-out-the-vote” campaigns. They monitor elections and hold election officials accountable. They sponsor conventions and neighborhood meetings to develop and explain public policy positions.

These essential functions inform the electorate in ways that the government, individuals and narrow interests do not and cannot possibly accomplish; their value far exceeds the costs of conducting primary elections.

Voting a different way won’t stop parties from doing these things. Not that parties do this sort of stuff anyway. A lot of local parties don’t do a lot of voter education forumy type of stuff. It would be great if they did, but a lot more effort is put into raising money for candidates, not good-for-the public education events.

Primaries enable candidates to demonstrate their political skills and permit thousands of citizens to participate in the nomination process – rather than relegate nominations to a few closeted elite.

This is the most base argument for public primaries, that if we had nominating process within the parties it would be back to the bad old days of Boss Tweed and smoke filled rooms.

It would only be that way if the parties let it be that way. The fact is it has been almost 100 years since the first primaries came along and nearly 40 since they became common. Since then communication technology has, to put it bluntly, has changed a bit. It is possible today to run a nominating convention online (as they’ve done in Arizona).

Defending the current voting system should not be done by saying “We’re trying to save the parties.” I’m all for the parties, and one in particular, but the parties’ fate will be on how well they address the issues of the day and how well they encourage participation, not on how we vote.

Ward is running against paleo-conservative Sen. Pam Roach up in King County. She has a new ad, an imitiation of a great Rainier Beer ad that I think we all remember. It turns out to be a deeper statement on growth and where we’ve come from as a region.

Her ad:

The original Rainier ad:

When you look at it side by side to the original Rainier Beer ad, you can see that the same bend in the road is no longer fields, but rather suburban homes.

I had a meeting with Sen. Karen Fraser today to go over he role as a moderator for this event.

I have to say, I probably have one of the nicest elected officials in my district, she spent a lot of time with me, and I’m happy I voted for her.

Anyway, since talking about a public forum doesn’t take very long, our conversation wandered into the topic of blogging (a topic I like talking about), and it sounded like she might get into it herself. I mentioned Rep. Dave Upthegrove’s Uptheblog, which I hope gives her a good impression of an elected official blog.

A few weeks ago the Washington blogoshere on both sides of the aisle were all a twitter with the Sheldon v. Lucas race for the 35th LD Senate seat. Mostly that statewide Dems were trying to get rid of the Dem in Name Only Tim Sheldon.

There was a bit of sniping on the conservative side of things that the Democratic Party was out for ideological purity, not popular candidates. Which may be true. But, at least we try to get candidates we don’t like out during a public election.

The Republican Party tries to fight them off even before they get on the ballot. Seattle Times in 2005:

But state Republicans also adopted rules for a Montana primary — rules state GOP Chairman Chris Vance says are now in effect — that assert the party’s “right to grant permission to use the Republican name … only to candidates who demonstrate significant support within the Republican Party.”

In most cases, the rules require a candidate to have received 25 percent of the vote at the county convention. Candidates also could have qualified by submitting to the party by last Friday a large number of voter signatures, but Vance said he knew of no candidates taking that route.

Democrats have adopted no similar rules.

In the second election with the pick-a-party system, voter turnout went up four points from the last non-presidential year primary election. Since 2004, turnout was down seven points.

There are probably many other factors impacting turnout than the primary system, but it seems that the only thing the system changed was how people talk about the primary, not whether they vote or not.

I’d be interested to see how many people turned in non-partisan ballots compared to partisan ballots the last two times around, and see how that compares to party ID in the state.