Olympia Time

History, politics, people of Oly WA

Category: democracy (Page 3 of 3)

So, who’s to say that the parties can’t live with Top Two?

January 5, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Depending on how the Supreme Court rules in the next few months, we might have a Top Two primary back in Washington. This could take the power away from local parties as to who actually carries their label, who gets considered a Democrat or Republican on the ballot.

Right now, that label is determined by a primary election choosing the parties’ nominees. But, in a system where two Dems could advance to the general, we could see parties using lawsuits and party conventions to enforce their label.

Side note: even if the Supreme Court upholds the lower court decision throwing out the Top Two, the Grange has said they’d consider a statewide non-partisan election initiative.

Anyway, the recent decisions by the Pierce County Democratic and Republican parties relating to how candidates will appear on the IRV ballot next year could give an indication how the parties could live in a Top Two or non-partisan world. Both parties are allowing more than one candidate to appear on the IRV ballot, the Democrats allowing three, Republicans two.

Letter to the TNT (hat tip to Ranked Choice Voting Washington):

Republicans decided to allow anyone who garners 40 percent-plus of delegate votes at the party’s county convention to run with their brand name. In theory, the party will have a maximum of two candidates for any of the countywide seats. In practice, it will propose one GOP candidate for each race.

The Democratic Party, in contrast, decided to allow an inclusive measure that would allow up to three party candidates per race. In practice, this means that voters will have a chance to decide, based on the merits of each candidate, to actually rank candidates based on their own values and agendas.

IRV is essentially a non-partisan system, as it relates to local parties. Each of them will allow more than one candidate to leave an internal party event (caucuses or a convention) with a nod and a label.

So, who’s to say that the two parties can’t live with Top Two?

Why don’t we vote to fill vacancies on local boards?

January 3, 2008 / / 0 Comments

One of the things that made vote-by-mail an easy thing to do politically, was that the proponents said that it would make elections cheaper. No need for real world voting locations, everyone would just mail it in (on their own dime, btw).

So, why don’t we hold special elections to fill vacancies in local boards. Right now we’re going through the process of appointing a new city council member in Olympia. I’ve been blogging about it a lot because compared to the regular system of reviewing candidates (at least five months and two elections) the appointment process is short and undemocratic.

Which makes me wonder why we just can’t have another election. Here are more thoughts:

  • Local school boards hold elections at irregular times for citizens to consider bond measures and levies.
  • Again, if vote by mail elections are so cheap, why not hold elections to fill vacancies?
  • More democracy is a good thing.

Now, if someone quit five months before an election to fill their seat, I could see the wisdom of not holding an election. But, in Olympia we have a seat with 23 months left to go on it, so if we were to draw a line, somewhere between 23 months and nine months would be a good place to start. I’d go with nine months or a year.

Just creating an option for local governments to hold an elections somewhere in RCW 42.12 would be a good place to start.

Thurston County can afford to pay for our ballots to be mailed

October 24, 2007 / / 0 Comments

A follow up to earlier today, I was poking around trying to find out what the savings were when Thurston County went to vote by mail back in 2005. This is as close to a definitive answer that I could find:

There are obvious advantages to make the switch.

– Cost savings. Wyman estimates the county could save $400,000 in poll-site costs by going to an all-mail election.

So, if 100,000 people voted in Thurston County during each election, it would only cost $41,000 to pay for postage. This is of course assuming the county couldn’t get some kind of bulk mail rate, which is sort of obvious that they would.

Why are we even talking about this, why don’t they just do it?

Why do we need to pay for stamps to vote anyway?

October 24, 2007 / / 0 Comments

When Keri and I voted on Sunday night, she wondered why we have to pay for stamps to vote. I repeated my fantasy “If I was running”: I’d mail stamps to likely voters before their ballots arrived.

What if we all just dropped our ballots in the mail without stamps. If we all lived in Thurston County (like I do), seems like they’d get delivered anyway and the county would eventually pay for our postage.

While I’m not totally sure that paying for postage is a “poll tax” (actually going somewhere to vote probably costs something too), the political wisdom of asking people to put a stamp on a ballot is distasteful at least. So says Rep. Williams:

Democratic state Rep. Brendan Williams of Olympia agrees with DeMucha, saying the postage requirement is a poll tax. Williams, who has suggested using state money for postage, also said he thinks county auditors might cover postage using the savings from going to vote-by-mail in 36 of the state’s 39 counties.

A story in the Puyallup Herald from back in May points to the cost, especially since we’re not talking about just once a year in November:

The auditor’s office and school districts are looking at ways to make it a non-issue for voters.

“We’d like to pay return postage,” Cook said, explaining the postage would be part of the election costs.

However the expense may be too great to make it a reality, said Pat McCarthy, Pierce County auditor.

The Puyallup and Sumner School Districts paid $156,000 combined for election costs for the February bond measures.

District officials think the cost of providing postage would be out-weighed by the voter response.

People don’t want to go to the grocery store to buy a book of stamps or go to the post office for a single stamp just to send in a ballot, Cook said.

So what would the postage cost? Assuming we’re talking about full postage, if the 2006 election were held in Thurston County this year, we’re talking about around 85,000 voters. Let’s just say 100,000 for the sake of arguing that free postage would boost turn out. That’s $41,000, which doesn’t sound like very much.

Statewide, the cost would have been just about $864,000 (not assuming a boost in turnout).

Not a lot of Open Space for Democracy in Olympia last night

October 3, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Open Space for Democracy is one of my favorite books of all time, which made me sad that I wasn’t able to go last night when Terry Tempest Williams was speaking downtown on climate change. Though, it seems I wouldn’t have been too happy if I had gone. I’m not too happy right now.

This is a forum?

After a series of written audience questions directed at the speakers and moderated by KPLU Radio reporter Liam Moriarity, attendees were asked to fill out commitment forms in their programs, pledging to help. The solutions included installing fluorescent light bulbs, buying recycled items and reducing car trips. The forms were collected in the lobby.

Second hand I heard that both Williams and the other speaker talked for a half hour and then combined they took three questions. Not too open forumy to me. Not much like a democracy either, it sounded more like a lecture.

I know the point of the “forum” was to spark action, but 1,000 people out of a city of 40,000 plus (and I’m assuming that some of the folks came from out of town), doesn’t sound very cost effective to me.

Bringing big time speakers in seems like more of the role of something like the

If, on the other hand, we’re talking about a local government trying to formulate policy, I think we need a different approach. The $25,000 we spent could have gone a lot further to bringing people together.

  • The city tried to put together an ad hoc committee of citizens to help guide the budget, but that fell apart. Maybe if we paid people for their participation in a group like that, much like we do with a criminal jury, we would have gotten a better response. The jury idea has already been talked about outside of the court arena.
  • If we spent $25,000 on building a city club (like in Portland, Tacoma or Eugene) that would go a lot further in building democracy here than bringing in high priced talent for a “forum.” Or maybe a something a little more active, like an English Civil Society group.
  • King County just approved a plan to bring together small discussion groups that will report back to the county auditor and then the county council. This system will cost about $130,000

a year for a county of over 1.5 million people. I wonder what we could get for $25,000 is a city of just over $40,000. There is even a bill that has been introduced for this on the state level.

Re; Paying for College with the Constitution

September 28, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Mr. England says:

Education is pointless without liberty. And liberty relies on the rule of law.

While he’s talking about college education, I easily saw the implication towards libraries. Since you can get a book at a book store, why have libraries or have schools?

So say the trustees of the Boston Public Library in 1852:

It will however be readily conceded that this falls far short of the aid and encouragement which would be afforded to the reading community, (in which we include all persons desirous of obtaining knowledge or an agreeable employment of their time from the perusal of books), by a well supplied public library. If we had no free schools, we should not be a community without education. Large numbers of children would be educated at private schools at the expense of parents able to afford it, and considerable numbers in narrow circumstances would, by the aid of the affluent and liberal, obtain the same advantages. We all feel however that such a state of things would be a poor substitute for our system of public schools, of which it is the best feature that it is a public provision for all; affording equal advantages to poor and rich; furnishing at the public expense an education so good, as to make it an object with all classes to send their children to the public schools.

Newer posts »

© 2025 Olympia Time

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑