"Also: considering the narrow margin, the 163 people who wrote in someone other than Braddock or Herbold remain infuriating."

Why the irrational hatred for write-ins? If someone is so obnoxious as to write in a no-shot/protest/fantasy candidate, why the fuck would anyone who does care about the outcome want those idiot voters' votes to affect the outcome? I gotta think that democracy is usually better off if idiots can just be filler instead of participants.

@1, you seem to disagree with yourself. Voters who cast a write-in vote are casting a valid vote of their own conscience.

That said: Go Herbold!

@2, What? No. I'm not infuriated by people that write-in votes. Groover has complained repeatedly about write-in votes. She seems to suggest that voters ought only to choose among the names printed.

I'm saying if someone can't get that they are throwing their vote away to their own conscience, I'm happy they aren't having an effect on the outcome of the election. They might as well not have voted. That's fine with me. I'm all for allowing and encouraging everyone to vote and to vote for whoever they want. If they still choose not to participate or to throw it away, fine! The rest of us that value our vote AND the outcome can determine the winner.

The fucktard known as #Where'sBruce Harrell couldn't be bothered to show up at his job yesterday when the Seattle City Council finalized the 2916 budget. Thanks Tammy for doing your very best. You ran an excellent campaign and deserved to win.

Harrell didn't show up yesterday so he wouldn't have to participate in actual discussion about various points of the budget. He will show up next Monday to vote it in.

Writing in a non-viable candidate is no different, and has the same net effect, as not voting for anybody in that race. Otherwise known as voter fall-off. I'm confident voter fall-off in Dist. 1 is a much larger than the number of write-in votes.

having worked for king county elections in a variety of positions, including working with live (ie voted) ballots, i encourage anyone i know to NOT write in names for non-viable people - you have NO IDEA how much extra work goes in to write in ballots, as EVERY write-in has to be handled by at least two (often more) workers on the county's dime - back in the '06 general (federal) election i had to handle a ballot where the douchetard had only voted on the federal positions (my guess was he only knew the names enough to pay attention to those races) and then wrote "MY DICK" in to EVERY OTHER GODDAMNED RACE. i had to sit there with another worker (live ballots are NEVER left alone with a single person, and armed county sherriffs have to be present, quite often with D & R representatives to watch over everything) and record every single fucking "vote" - a big damn waste of taxpayers' $/county workers' time.