Comments

1
Yay :)
2
I'm a little frustrated by the transit slush fund passing last night. The mayor who was a state senator when they passed the Boeing tax cuts, the largest corporate tax cut in the nation, just asked the people of Seattle to cover Boeing's share out of their pocket with the largest levy in Seattle's history...and won.

How are we supposed to push for progressive tax reform if we can't even say no to a levy that has no set in stone projects? We keep putting regressive band-aid after band-aid on our tax structure (remember last year's transit package passed on the backs of a massively regressive car tab? Or was that too long ago?). We're tell them to stop, but then they do it again, and we say "just this one more time" but it never is a last time.

Prop 1 was yet another bad deal for progressive taxation, something that many people in this city desperately wants but don't have the guts to demand.
3
These past several years, I've been confused by immediate post election projection. From last night Stranger's coverage, the last I read was 80% of the ballots have yet be counted. Does election board count through the night? Has that percentage changed this AM? Or is it the other way around, 80% of the ballots have been counted already which is why the media is calling it so early? With mail in ballot, I thought it takes a while to count. Who releases these projections? Does anybody know?
4
Nice election reporting throughout, Heidi. Glad you're writing for The Stranger.
5
I live in the 4th district and let me say from the very beginning of this election cycle we had mediocrity to chose from. And I barely seen any of the candidates (pre and post primary) actually do much campaigning. I literally flipped a coin between Rob and Michael.

BTW: why won't anyone define what they mean by "making Seattle affordable"? You'd think that would be something which can be defined with a quantitative dollar value and instead it was just thrown around as a platitude to be forgotten about come January 2016.
6
These results mean that Seattle will become even more unaffordable, waste more money, and repair no infrastructure. It's all rhetoric.

Rents will go up with the property taxes, transportation monies will subsidies pet projects and the county interests while Seattle infrastructure continues to deteriorate. Oh, the developers will continue to reap profits.

I would love the day I actually see workers making significant progress on repairing our infrastructure. But it won't happen, the city has proven itself incapable of using funds wisely for decades.

In the meantime, most of us will feel the pinch and the pain of irrational rhetorical and expensive programs. Most will retire an leave, or have children and leave. That leaves Seattle to be an unaffordable city of constant churn with no soul, no heart, and no identity.

7
Bye Jane! Go have a cocktail.
8
Sawant was lucky that Seattle went to districts.
Her citywide numbers were not great, and her base of support in the 3rd was not as strong as her supporters will shout at you to believe.
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/…
9
Election math update:

*****

District 1 has 60,991 registered voters.

As of last night, King County had 17,441 returned ballots for us.

Last night's declared results:

Shannon Braddock
52.92% - 6,023 votes

Lisa Herbold
46.48% - 5,290 votes

Shannon and Lisa difference: 733 votes, 6.44%.

Last night declared total ballots on hand/back to County Elections: 11,381 ballots, for an 18.6% return rate.

King County general election voter turnout for general elections since 2000: 61.85%.

King County general election voter turnout for general elections since 2000 if you only count off and odd-years like this: 48.66%.

I've seen good sources who I trust estimate this year ending up around 36%, so we'll likely see another 10,500 to 17,800 votes added to last night's totals.

Last night's results are literally only 50% of the outcome!

*****

This is NOT over. No one should be declaring victory or conceding defeat, even in there minds and hearts, candidate or supporter. Every day still matters. Commence stress drinking of coffee, beer, wine, bourbon, all of us... we'll be getting new ballot updates daily.

This could go a lot of ways yet.

Don't forget... crazy stuff can happen in politics, or not. Just like sports. The NBA's Dream Team lost in the Olympics. The Boston Red Sox came from 0-3 down to beat the Yankees 4-3 and go on to win the World Series. Dewey and Truman.

"Oops! One week after 16-year Seattle City Council incumbent Richard Conlin claimed an election night victory with a seemingly invincible 7.5 percent margin, his socialist challenger, Kshama Sawant, stunningly grabbed the lead. When The Stranger went to press Tuesday night, Sawant was narrowly leading Conlin by 41 votes, 49.91 percent to 49.88 percent."

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/ksham…

"It has been four days since the last ballot drop on Friday evening, in which Sawant gained 1,458 votes on incumbent Richard Conlin, winning 58.5% of the new votes tallied. Sawant has gained steadily on Conlin from the original 6,136 vote margin Election Night, and now trails by 1,237 votes. Should last week’s trends hold, Sawant will pass Conlin in either the 4:30 or 8:30 ballot tally releases tonight."

http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2013/1…
10
The rightward shift of the State legislature likely means we are unlikely to get progressive taxation any time soon. I'm guessing that some of the people who voted for I-1366 are fed up with being asked to carry the load for those who can afford to pay more.
11
@10, very optimistic. Hopefully you will be vindicated by a similar flip-flop this time around. But being a pessimist, I think the die has been cast. It would be great to be wrong though!
12
@9 (Joe) I meant.....
13
Not a knock on Heidi in particular, but local (alt) media's obsession with breaking down the entire election on an "insider/outsider" binary is really tiresome and speaks to just how little substantive difference there is between these candidates. In the Herbold/Braddock and Maddux/Johnson races, in particular, you really have to parse words to find a substantive policy difference between the candidates. They literally agree on everything, and voters are just left with having to guess at how their personalities would fit on the council, or simply read their resumes and go with whatever one sounds more accomplished. Even in the Grant/Burgess race, presumably the most high-profile race in the city, the two candidates spent most of their time in their KUOW debates agreeing with each other.

I don't blame the media so much - it's their job to draw distinctions between candidates that are nearly homogeneous - I just hope there's a better narrative framework for it during the next race, because it feels like putting square pegs in round holes right now.
14
I still remember the first election campaign I worked on. A friend was running for the legislature in 1970, and by 8:45 on election night we knew the final outcome. Those good old voting machines gave results that we, the people, could add up when the polls closed.

And kudos to Hutch @13. You echo my thoughts very closely.
15
@13: Well put. The Stranger's desire to construct a team good guy vs team bad guy narrative (which didn't even guide their endorsements, as even with their evident desire to cheerlead for team outsider they couldn't stomach endorsing the odious Bradbund) obscures more than it reveals about the candidates.

And while I'm glad Johnson and Braddock (probably) won their respective races, I can acknowledge with honesty that the difference between them and their opponents isn't that great.
16
@14 you sound like the news story we get every year around this time - "why don't we require all ballots be received at elections HQ by Nov 3rd"
17
@9 Nice work there. And I agree @4, Heidi's been doing some great work.
18
*POUNDS HEAD AGAINST A WALL*

If people don't think candidates campaigned this cycle, I don't know what rock you were purposely hiding under... because there were more (local!) debates/forums, more news coverage, and more ratings and endorsements from community organizations than I have ever seen before.

And if you can't see the rather strong philosophical divides between a slate of lefty progressives and more moderate liberals, then I don't know what's the point of even having elections around here...
20
Left out is the news that while the Council is more incumbent-based and centrist, the Seattle School Board has leaned to the progressive side. The one incumbent running, Marty McLaren, is losing badly. In the other three races, the candidates who promised more on transparency, accountability and better communications are winning handily. It is highly unlikely any new voting would change this.

This is great news for Seattle. We need a Board to hold staff, especially senior staff, accountable. It's astonishing that the current Board would tell parents that they will lose staff over the loss of a few kids at their school and yet find it in their hearts to give the Superintendent - who gets paid more than the Governor - a raise. (They are considering giving him a 5% raise and a one-year extension on his contract. This for a guy who is Opie-nice but basically, a seat-warmer (albeit, a very expensive one.)
21
@13, Maddox and Johnson are opposites when it comes to the arena.
http://www.sonicsrising.com/2015/10/27/9…
22
Everyone's bitching about developers and outside money. I just voted against rent control. It's not progressive, it's just stupid. If the 'leftists' candidates weren't pushing rent control, I might have been interested in voting for them. Also, declaring every ugly building a landmark because you don't want new neighbors is also stupid. /sorry for the name calling.
23
@9: The dream team never lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Unite…
In addition, Dream Teams 2&3 never lost, also going 8-0 at the Olympics.
That said... I remember the 4 days in October well.

24
@6
This is a "feels only" site. Don't start dropping facts here. It confuses people.
25
You REALLY want some more change? Then create a ballot measure mandating all qualified residents to vote: that will force the Ignorant Majority to bone up on political philosophy AND political science.
26
Are the districts in compliance with the Bill of Rights and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? ( what about adding more districts to further represent the true degree of demographic diversity of the city? --- http://www.census.gov & http://www.winwinnetwork.org & http://www.constitution.org ).
27
The results "mean" higher taxes, more bums, winos, deadbeats, and misc homeless people in Seattle. "Build it and they will come." That's OK. Homeless people never vote Republican, right?

Please wait...

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