What the fuck is a pangolin?
Of all the questions the Stranger Election Control Board has had to ask itself over these many years—questions like “Is 1:30 p.m. too early to have a drink if you’re already stoned?” and “Why does The Stranger conference room have carpet on the walls?” and the perennial “What went so wrong with these people’s lives that they want to run for school board?”—we’d never yet had to ask ourselves about pangolins. Until this year.
Because this year, it’s apparently not enough that we’re voting on every seat on the Seattle City Council; some important local measures addressing transportation, campaign finance reform, and police accountability; the latest Tim Eyman bullshit; the race for King County ASSe$$or; and several races for the motherfucking school board. This year, thanks to Paul Allen’s vast wealth, we’re also voting on whether we like pangolins enough—and we’ll admit, they are cute little termite-eating mammals—to create a new statewide law so that Paul Allen can stop freaking out about threatened species that are not even native to Washington State and maybe start focusing on our state’s threatened workers, renters, and school kids.
It’s enough to make us want to curl up into small, impenetrable balls and point our scales outward—like a pangolin—and ignore the politicians who come into our office seeking the SECB’s prized and priceless endorsement. But since we can’t do that, it remains our job (and yours!) to make some decisions. It’s election time, people. We’re all going to have to put down our bongs, pull up our pants, and push away from the Tumblr porn long enough to vote. Stop daydreaming about whether that water they found on Mars is drinkable and how you can get there. It’s not, and you can’t. Go find your ballot. (Hint: It’s in your actual, physical mailbox.) And then join us in casting a couple dozen votes. Seriously, it’s only a couple dozen votes, and this shit is important. We have pangolins—not to mention a city, a county, a state, and a planet—to save…
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