AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Fuck you, Conlin.

And for those unaware, the next drop isn't until 4:30 tomorrow. No 8:30pm ones anymore.

Wow!

Can't say I am personally happy with the result but hard work and elections do matter. And we all have to congratulate those attributes.

If she does win, all I hope is that she grows into the position rather than saying absurd things (collectivize Amazon per Goldy) and can move the liberal (which is what she is) agenda forward.

@2: Good personal exercise, but the various places that post results also post it quicky, i.e. http://mynorthwest.com/?nid=327&id=151&l… was updated 10 minutes ago.

@3

Awww! Fuck you! I want mah ballots now!

Wowee zowie. Pass the popcorn.

@ 4 BS She not a liberal McGinn and O'Brien are liberals, she is is out there look at the issues page on their websites.

Time to find a good Democrat to take her out in 2015, and with Madison Park and more moderate areas that are part of the 3rd its possible.

Well, that's unsurprising when you pull stunts like this:

"According to Locker, the Sawant campaign’s door-to-door effort to rustle up unverified votes yielded about 100 signature affidavits on Saturday.

"At a Sunday volunteer training session, Locker told supporters to only collect affidavits from Sawant supporters. 'Conlin is not going around collecting Sawant ballots, I promise you,' he said. If voters indicated that they were Conlin supporters, he told the door knockers to say that they were collecting information for future Sawant campaigns."

http://crosscut.com/2013/11/11/politics-…

Yay, new boss.

No worry, if it ends up with less than 0.5% and 2000 votes or less separating the two there will be an automatic recount. Then, we'll find boxes of ballots that seem to favor the incumbent.

Well there's one idealogical automatic "no" vote on all city council issues going forward.

Also, today's drop was only 8395 ballots. That's the lowest afternoon ballot drop so far. They might be running out.

Well this just got very interesting.

@9

However you like to characterize Sawant is up to you.

But so far -- as Goldy wrote months ago -- she is basically a liberal. Kinda on the leftward side but so far hasn't said anything which is not well-within mainstream liberalism.

That's part of her political skill: she makes some folks think she is a "Socialist" but in fact she will act on the Council (if she gets there) as a liberal.

Nice that the vote difference is 41. Since Seattle has a little over 410,000 voters it works out to a difference of .0001 percent. If only Richard could have convinced .0001 percent more of Seattle's voters during his 16 years in office. The pet goat lobby really let him down.

Things that happen next.

Ongoing denunciation from Fox et al. The Seattle Socialist Sawant does have an illeteritive ring go it.

Lawyers. I am guessing there is money in town to fund a Conlin verification.

@10:

If there's nothing illegal about the practice then you really can't fault her - rather, if Conlin hadn't been so arrogant as to believe he was a fifth-time shoo-in, maybe he would have had the presence of mind to muster some of his own volunteers to do a similar door-to-door outreach.

Instead, he'll probably find a way to spin the "victim card" on this as well...

I for one welcome our new socialist overlords.

Maybe she is gonna be stinking up city hall after all.

This otta be good.

She is a socialist, it's just that our constitution, economic structure, city charter, voters in 2015, etc, prevent her from acting.

From the fringe she will temper what passes for liberal in this town with the only tool at her disposal, actual liberalism.

Does Jamie Pedersen live in the 3rd City Legislative District, juuuuuuuuust askin'

@17: It sounds like he did. The Seattle Times reported that both campaigns were doing that over the weekend.

Conlin gained 0.65% in today's count compared to Friday evening's drop. But the big change is "Write In" who increased their take by 1,467% since Friday evening with a whopping 37 ballots today.

@23

Sawant leads decisively for The People.

I am proud of my city today.

Social liberalism has been played out in Seattle, very few litmus papers to test. So, onto economic equity in an overwhelmingly corporatist town.

The waterfront park vote sure is going to be interesting, with the $250,000,000 tax bill the rest of the city will vote on. Charlie Royer and the rest of those folks are in for a shock.

Looks like Ol' Droopy Drawers may be looking for work in the private sector.

@17: There's something sketch about getting lists of voters whose votes were invalidated, going up to their doors, and purposefully not telling them that their vote was discarded (nor that they can fix it) if they don't support your candidate. For a supposed new politics, it's the same old shit.

In fact, it's quite blatantly voter suppression. Underlined, italicized, and bolded.

I would not draw any conclusions about SeaTac Prop 1. The numbers being counted right now are too small to ascribe any sort of trend to. They have been since election night.

When you are counting thousands of ballots, and they are consistently trending in a single direction, as the Sawant race has, then you have both significant numbers and a consistent pattern. You can make reasonably accurate assumptions based on that. I would agree that Sawant will likely win at this point.

But when you are only counting a few hundred ballots, and there is no consistent pattern, as we have seen with the SeaTac Prop 1, then you really can't make any sort of prediction. Any one ballot drop could easily be an outlier. The data points are meaningless. You just have to say it is too close to call, and wait for the final tally.

@10 That's how Democrats do it. Dems invented ballot chasing in 2004, and it won Chris Gregoire the governorship. Let Conlin turn out his own voters. Why should SA fight with one hand tied behind their back?

I am very happy for her, and for we who are hooked on Slog. Interesting times on the way for local blogdom!

@11 She'll win by more than 0.5 percent, well outside recount range. You can bank on it.

@13 Running out of ballots would be fine, now that she's ahead. But by my calculation there are still another 19,000 or so left to count in this race.

Hrm... so recount triggered if the race is within 2000 votes and 0.5%. If I were to presume the exact same percentages as today, Sawant could avoid the 0.5% trigger with another ~5,100 ballots counted.

Of course, Conlin could also pay for a recount.

I'm confident she'll win, but I'm just curious -- if the current totals were the totals at the end, could she win with less than 50%? I mean, can anyone win with less than 50%? Anyone know?

There will not be an automatic recount.

@10 how is that a "stunt"? Everyone unverified will get a notice about the unverified status of their ballot. Why shouldn't Sawant supporters ensure that people who legitimately voted for her have her vote counted? And why would it be their responsibility to do the same for Conlin supporters?

@34 Bill Clinton won with less than 50%, why can't Sawant?

@34,

Sure, if Write-In (Greg Nickels, for example), gets 10% then either of the other real candidates getting over 45% would win.

fuuuck YESSSSSSS

@10: "That's how Democrats do it."

Well, that makes it okay then. And that happened in 2004 before King County went to all-mail ballots?

We're talking about people who know that a legitimately cast ballot is uncounted, them going up to that voter's door, and withholding that information from them if they don't support that candidate. They've already made the effort to go to the voter's door. In fact, they lie about the purpose of their visit. It's legal, sure, but it's also sleazy, unethical, and rather opposed to modern conceptions of democracy (as much of a sham that is).

But hey, you and they have a lot invested in this election, so however you win is okay, right?

@40 did you read @36? These people are going to be notified anyway. I fail to see the problem.

Well the naysayers have nothing to say now, even if Conlin should eek out a victory.....
Well not exactly. They can say "my bad."
Election Night Party:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TguWL3N2K…

Ciao

Hmm, "fuck you Conlin"...etc. have any of these people actually met Richard Conlin or really studied his record on the council? Do you really believe he is an evil tool of The Man? Richard is a thoroughly decent, hard working, intellegent guy who takes a lot of care about decision making. Maybe you don't agree with every vote he has taken, well grow the fuck up, polticians in a representative democracy are not supposed to be robots. Is Conlin a socialist? No but he is pretty liberal. Sawant says she is a socialist, but her campaign was bankrolled by Microsoft employees, (one of the most ruthlessly cutthroat capitalist corporations in the history of the most ruthlessly cutthroat capitalist country in history, so lets withhold judgement until she actually has a record. Her burn-the-house-down style seems ill fitting for a deliberative body, but if she wins the recount we can see whether she is a squeaky wheel or an effective council member. Even if you disagree with every vote Conlin has ever taken and you have actually meet with and talked to him, you cannot accuse him of being an asshole, he is a decent guy, you just look like a prick for making comments like that.

@28, ballots with write-ins are in a set-aside pile. Someone deals with them... slowly, then more people can help. That's your jump.

@44 yes.

Slightly related, currently 522 is losing by just about 58,000 votes. It has no chance of passing, but the gap is a lot closer than on election night. (51.75% vs 48.25% as of today.)

I'm not gloating. It's nice that a socialist won an election, or at least it's nice to think that she'll be a strong progressive. But I'm not that unhappy with Conlin. He didn't do such a bad job. He thoroughly ticked me off ramming down the tunnel, and maybe he didn't work well enough with McGinn. But he was good on density, which is a pet issue of mine. If an establishment council member was going to get challenge, I wish it would have been someone else.

But on the other hand, I miss Judy Nicastro, Heidi Wills, and (yes) Peter Steinbrueck. (He was pretty awesome as a councilmember.) If Sawant can bring a little of that back - hell, if she can do something about affordable housing - then I'll be cool with this.

Plus, it feels awesome to be the city with the elected Socialist.

@47 Which goes to show you that, in a different year, that initiative can win. Why not?

@15 Sorry to burst your bubble David, but you and The Stranger are wrong and naive that she is a 'liberal''. She's a Trotskyist, like me.

http://www.socialistalternative.org/abou…

Ground breaking and damn good!!! Huzzah!!!

The chart is sketchy as all hell, it doesn't control for the number of votes on each drop. Great to see some alternative voices coming into power, but stop fucking around with bad statistics. It makes it look like you're trying to fool people.

@16: Your math is off:

"Nice that the vote difference is 41. Since Seattle has a little over 410,000 voters it works out to a difference of .0001 percent. "

41 is .01% of 410,000, not .0001%.

(10% = 41,000; 1% = 4,100; 0.1% = 410; 0.01% = 41.)

Hi Goldy. This article is being used as the primary source for the claim that Kshama Sawant supports collectivizing Amazon. (A Forbes article, an Economic Policy Journal post, and her wikipedia page all cite this article; more will follow if she wins.)

"Collectivizing" (aka nationalizing) Amazon means to take it away from Jeff Bezos and give it to the government to run. This is a pretty serious policy objective, and stands aberrantly out in a game of 'one of these things is not like the other' when grouped with her other policy objectives ($15 minimum wage, rent control, wealth tax).

It's possible to be a socialist without wanting to nationalize major corporations. So while I know the Stranger is in part responsible for Kshama Sawant's lead, I think this particular claim might be doing some damage to her. The text of the article says "she'll make a cogent economic argument for, say, collectivizing Amazon...." This is pretty ambiguous reporting. Can we get either a retraction or a more explicit statement of the facts? On what day and in what context did she make this argument? The interjection "say" implies it's just an example of the kind of argument she may make: is it an example, or did she a actually make this argument? It's possible to make a cogent hypothetical argument for something (she's an econ professor) without it being a policy objective--which was Kshama doing? Can Goldy link to some of Kshama's writings that support his reporting that she favors collectivizing Amazon?

I'm asking because I'm a Kshama supporter (less because I agree with her policies and more because I like her and I like political dissent), and it looks like she might win. If so, she may be the new face of electable socialism in America. This article seems to have been written as a feel-good profile at a time when it seemed less likely that Kshama would win, but now it's important to precisely and accurately report her policy positions. Socialism doesn't need to be extreme.

@56: "This article is being used as the primary source for the claim that Kshama Sawant supports collectivizing Amazon."

What do you suggest regarding persons making up an argument from whole cloth for partisan hackery?