Random Nuclear Strikes

Before I get into my voting kerfuffle, Stefan Sharkansky of Sound Politics has a tale to tell that I fear is all too typical of voting in King County.

He was working as a Provisional Ballot Judge at his local polling station yesterday. A man comes into the polling place attempting to vote and during the search for his name in the books the man reveals to Stefan that he has only be residing in Washington State for around 20 days or so. It says right on the provisional ballot that you need to be a resident of the state for a minimum of 30 days to be eligible for a ballot because that is the law, and Stefan informs him of his ineligibility. As the guy begins to leave the polling station the lead Poll Judge comes over and freaks out because she is ignorant of the law.

Read about the rest of it here.
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Well, the results are forging their way in from yesterday’s election here in Washington.

Let’s run it down again. If you missed yesterday’s post explaining the issues and people, they’re right here.
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Today’s election day in the Republic of Kalifornia, too. Polls all seem to show Schwarzenegger’s measures all going down to defeat, but based on some local on-the-ground info from yesterday and today, I’m not so sure.
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Yes, you read that post title correctly.

Please remember that I am a non-bleeding heart liberal living in King County, Washington, so no matter what I choose on my ballot today, I stand a good chance that my vote will be evened out by a fictional homeless person registered at the county courthouse or someone who has moved out of the county and was dumb enough to mail the absentee ballot that the KC Elections Office sent to them (because the office is such a clusterfuck) back to the Elections Office in an attempt to be honest, only to have some miscellaneous KC employee use it to re-elect the person signing their paychecks and issuing pay raises.

And that is just what can happen if my vote even makes it from my polling place to the counting place. But what the hell, I still give it my all on voting day. When else am I going to have the opportunity to get assaulted again at one of the local Seattle schools?

While this is an off-year election, it is still an exciting one, what with the nationwide 50/50 split being encapsulated here in Washington.

I figure that I have at least the same chance of folks from across the US who visit RNS caring about who and what I’m voting for as the King County Elections Board.

So let’s run it down, shall we?
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For those not in the know, Washington State’s I-912 is a Citizen’s Initiative brought into being when the citizens rejected the state’s attempt to seize more money via special legislation that inflicted the people of Washington with a series of gas tax increases spread out over four years totaling 9.5 cents per gallon of fuel. 912 would repeal those taxes and the state government, the county government and a number of other special interest groups (who are all just interested in getting their hands on this tax money) oppose it.

I have spoken about I-912 here before.

Washington is currently the on the tail end of the Top 5 highest gas taxed states list, but we are below the halfway mark in terms of states that actually see a return of our money in improvements. This fact puts us consistently in the Top 5 worst cities for traffic and the only things the state and county can come up with are expensive fantasy schemes of mass transit to waste our tax money on.

We have been held in limbo by wannabe social engineers who want the Seattle Metro area to be more like any Euro city with assloads of trains you care to name while traffic just gets worse and worse.

45% of our transportation money goes to fund mass transit, even though less that 8% of the citizens utilize it. This election cycle has even seen Democrat County Executive Candidates brag that they refuse to build more lane capacity and feel no fault in flat out telling voters that they would rather waste the transportation money on faulty bus routes and inflexible train schedules than make the commute easier.

That is how screwed up this place is.

If you haven’t read my previous post on Initiative 912, I suggest you do so now because what will follow are updates to that. While the updates are entertaining, you might need some background to get the full giggle/smash something effect.
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