September 16 is a primary election for the Seattle City Council, Metropolitan King County Council, Seattle Public Schools, Seattle Popular Monorail Authority, and Port of Seattle. There are also two initiatives on the ballot that will be decided on September 16--one of particular concern to potheads, the other to caffeine addicts. The top two vote getters in all the nonpartisan races--city council, monorail board, school board, and port commissioner--go through to the general election. The county races are party primaries, and the winners for each party square off against each other in the general election this November.

Reading that paragraph made your head hurt, didn't it? It's way too much for you to keep track of, we realize, which is why we've made it our job to keep track of elections, candidates, and issues on your behalf. It's mind-numbing, soul-crushing, dead-boring work--compared to what we had to go through, your job is easy. All you have to do is VOTE, dammit!

To make our job just a bit more fun, we asked the candidates to meet us at the Garage's bowling alley on Broadway to answer our questions--and then we invited the candidates to bowl. We tallied up the answers and bowling scores and picked the best candidates in each race.

The Stranger Election Bowling League does not make endorsements in uncontested races--but go ahead and cast your vote for excellent King County Council Dem Dow Constantine anyway. And whatever else you do--even if you're going to skip our endorsements and just clip out the cheat sheet on page 19 (which you can take into the voting booth)--don't vote for that dumb-ass Kollin Min. If you want to find out why you shouldn't vote for that dumbass, well, you'll have to keep reading.

The Stranger Election Bowling League: Erica C. Barnett, Josh Feit, Amy Jenniges, Sandeep Kaushik, Tim Keck, and Dan Savage.