Washington, mail in those ballots! (and a few races of note)

One thing we've learned in training for running phone banks is that a full 18% of Washington's mail-in ballots are postmarked after election day and are therefore invalid.

Please don't be one of them. Get that ballot in early and then help us out with GOTV.

Some things to avoid with your mail-in ballot are listed below, as well as some races to pay attention to in the state, starting with Darcy Burner and the Governor's race.

Things to avoid with your mail-in ballot:
Setting it aside once you've filled it out; this often leads people to think that it's been mailed, and discover it too late.
Setting it aside before you've filled it out in a place where you won't see it every day. Same result as above.
Waiting until the evening of election day to turn it in. The deadline is 8pm. At exactly 8:00:01pm, it is too late to vote.
Not finding out where to turn in your ballot. It's as simple as calling your county auditor. I've listed the phone numbers for the elections divisions of all the county auditors in the state below. Also, anybody who calls you for GOTV (and they will) will know where you can turn it in.
Mailing it on election day. This is the most important one to avoid of all. You'd think that if you got it to your local post office by 5pm on election day, that it would be postmarked that day. However, in many counties (including Kitsap, where I live), the postmarking has been consolidated to a larger city facility. In the case of South Kitsap, that is Tacoma. If you mail your ballot at any time on election day in South Kitsap, your ballot will be postmarked the next day and therefore be too late. Your vote will not count. This is happening all over the state.

So get that ballot in before election day to make sure it counts!

Some of the current races in the state:

Everybody here is following the Darcy Burner (WA-08) race and I don't think it's necessary to duplicate the information from the many diaries here. Please contribute to Darcy's race, and if you're able to see a WA-08 Neighbor to Neighbor calling or canvassing campaign, please give them some of your volunteer time. If you're not in Washington or don't get this link on your Neighbor to Neighbor front page, here's where to go. You'll be calling for Obama, our great governor Chris Gregoire, and Darcy.

The Governor's Race: Oh, boy, where to start. Dino Rossi is a snake-oil salesman who is much, much more far right-wing than he is letting on in his campaign. Among other extreme positions, he opposes access to birth control, even for married couples. He opposes a woman's right to choose.

Like John McCain, he would reduce regulations on health insurance and do his level best to remove mandates like coverage of birth control if Viagra is covered and coverage of mammograms. His budget, which was left with Chris Gregoire in 2004, left 40,000 children out of state health care; one of Gregoire's first acts was to restore it. In her first term, she wanted to ensure that all Washington kids were covered. One of Gregoire's plans for her next term is to expand health care coverage in Washington so that it covers all Washingtonians, kids and adults alike. (No printed source on this, but I heard it from her when she gave a speech to about 60 volunteers in the Silverdale office on October 11.) Oh, and Dino's opposed to stem cell research, too.

Two former Supreme Court justices brought a lawsuit against Rossi and the BIAW, alleging improper campaign coordination between the two. The BIAW has given huge sums to the Rossi campaign; I believe they are by far his biggest contributor. It is the BIAW that funded and placed the billboards you see everywhere east of the Cascades that say "Don't let Seattle steal this election". By the way, the Attorney General's letter to the parties involved in the suit is mentioned towards the end of the article. The current Attorney General is a Republican and a real partisan. Vote for John Ladenburg instead.

Rossi's transportation plan has been labeled "complete silliness" by Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington state Transportation Center at the University of Washington. And when it comes to repairing fish culverts, he's using cost estimates from 1999.

Despite the fact that both of his parents were educators, a biographical note he uses repeatedly on the stump, his education record is absymal.

Dino's a climate change denier as well. (The above link is hard to read, and I tried to go to the original sources on it, but they've been removed.)

You won't see that on his TV ads. What you'll see is a smooth-talking used-car-salesman type who says he's the change candidate. He's one kind of change candidate, all right, but I don't think the kind of change he'll bring to Washington is the kind any of us want to live with here.

So now that you have a bunch of reasons not to support Dino Rossi, why should you go out of your way to support Chris Gregoire? Simply put, she's a far better governor than she is a campaigner. This year, the Pew Center on the States rated Washington one of the three best-managed states in the country. (The other two are Utah and Virginia. Congratulations to both.) And Forbes Magazine says "In Forbes.com's second annual Top States for Business, Virginia may be the top-ranked state for the second straight year, but Washington is the big story. The biggest mover (tied with Tennessee), rising from 12th to fifth place, Washington is also the only state to finish in the top five in three main categories (labor, regulatory environment and growth). And Washington's numbers are up across the board when you look both backward and at projections into the future." You don't get these kinds of ratings without a capable manager as Governor, which Gregoire is.

She's a capable fiscal manager as well, and works closely with our legislature to make sure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and that spending cuts are made when necessary. Knowing that revenue will be decreased for next year, she's already identified over a billion dollars in cuts. Moreover, despite what Dino says about our state having a huge deficit, we actually have a surplus, and a rainy day fund with money in it. It's true that the decrease in revenues in 2009 over 2008 may cause the state to hit the rainy day fund, but I expect the taxpayers will insist that that be the last resort.

She's also accessible, which is something you never see addressed in ads, on her website, by newspapers, or anywhere else. She makes a point of going around the state, and not just when she's campaigning. She talks with individuals, small groups, and large groups. She listens to what people have to say. If you have a reason to meet with her, her office will try its best to arrange something. I have met her quite a few times in the past four years, and she's even bought us pizza. One of my favorite memories of her is her first appearance as Governor at the Washington State Democrats' annual crab feed in Olympia in 2005; one of the stories she told about getting settled as governor and in the governor's mansion was their first night there, when they were all hungry and tried to send out for pizza, but couldn't get the pizza parlor to believe that it was really the Governor calling from the governor's mansion.

Enough with the governor's race. Let's move on to some others that are getting less statewide and national attention.

State Commissioner of Public Lands: The Democratic candidate in this race is a life-long rancher from Okanogan named Peter Goldmark. The Commissioner of Public Lands oversees the Department of Natural Resources. Goldmark wants to ensure that Washington's public environmental treasures are cared for by someone who represents environmental soundness, not timber interests. He cares a great deal about climate change and wants to practice sustainable forestry, where the incumbent, Doug Sutherland, is mostly interested in cutting down trees. One of the other big issues that the Department of Natural Resources deals with is wildfires; with all the grassland on the east of the Cascades and all the trees covering the mountains and on the west of the Cascades, wildfires are a concern to the entire state. Goldmark has three decades as a volunteer rural firefighter and is well versed in these issues from the ground up.

Attorney General: Most of the county prosecutors in the state have endorsed former Pierce County executive John Ladenburg for Attorney General. Ladenburg has spoken before groups I've been in several times, and he emphasizes that we need an Attorney General with actual prosecutorial trial experience. His big punchline is that we need an Attorney General who represents the people, not big corporations (as Rob McKenna often does). He points out that we are second worst in the nation for consumer fraud, and ninth worst in the nation for identity theft, and McKenna is doing little to nothing to change that. Ladenburg is a good, solid pick.

Secretary of State: Believe it or not, progressive groups all over the state are recommending this guy: Republican incumbent Sam Reed. Reed earned the praise of Democratic and fair elections groups all over the state when he went against the urgings of his own party and proceeded with the manual recount that proved that Chris Gregoire had won the gubernatorial election in 2004 by 133 votes, the closest governor's race in U.S. history. Even the liberal-leaning Seattle Post-Intelligencer endorsed Reed. (The Stranger had initially endorsed Reed, but when he said he was "delighted" that Dino Rossi was allowed to list his affiliation as "prefers GOP party", they took it back and endorsed Democrat (and Washblog blogger) Jason Osgood instead.

Something I really want to see pass is I-1000, the Death With Dignity initiative that is modeled after the one Oregon has had for the past ten years. It's been a real success in Oregon; even the Portland Oregonian, which had been against the initiative there from the beginning, published an editorial early this year which said that, contrary to what they had warned in the beginning, no abuses of the law appear to have occurred in the past ten years. Even the Seattle Times, no left-leaning paper, endorsed I-1000, as did many other papers, groups, and doctors in the state. I have personal reasons for wanting this one to pass; death from kidney failure can be over in a matter of days, or it can take months, and feeling your body fill up with fluid and toxins while you get all the other effects of kidney failure (I won't go into them here) is not going to be easy to bear. There may well come a time when I am out of transplant options and out of accesses, and have to say farewell. If McCain wins and gets his health care plan through, of course, that day may come much sooner, and I'll never be able to afford a transplant with a minimum of a $50,000 co-insurance via Medicare. When the time comes, however long it takes and however old I am, I want the choice of dying with dignity.

A couple of local races:
Kim Abel: Kim Abel is running for retired State Legislator Pat Lantz's seat against Republican county commissioner from our district Jan Angel. Jan Angel has been sticking in the craw of South Kitsap Democrats, park lovers, and people who like their zoning the way it is for the past eight years. One of the things Jan is responsible for is a development going in about two miles from me; on a 12-acre lot that was previously zoned rural 1 per 5 (one house per five acres), like everything else around it, a grand total of 78 houses will soon make their appearance on 40x100 foot lots. The parcel was originally planned for recreational lots back in the early 1900s, back when people wanted to own a little piece of land where they could get away and pitch a tent. The original planners never had houses in mind when they platted that out. Nonetheless, a developer bought it and houses are going in, making this an urban density development in the midst of a peaceful semi-rural area. The sewage system for the development is actually located on a two-acre parcel nearby. This development will add over 700 car trips a day to the access road, a two-lane road with sloping gravel shoulders. (This is the road I have to walk up to get to the bus stop a mile and a half away.) Jan Angel is the one responsible for letting this go through. In order to clear the land for development, an eagle nest tree that was used every year was cut down, and all the neighbors in the area are concerned about what this will do to Beaver Creek, which runs right through it. Jan wanted to bring this sort of development to the entirety of Manchester, a peaceful small town by the waterside. Instead, she's going to try to take these values to Olympia, where she can do even more damage encourage even more development. Kim Abel is the former mayor of Port Orchard, the town nearest me. She's a committed Democrat, a lawyer, and was formerly the Air Quality Chair for the Sierra Club in Los Angeles. She wants to continue and enable the expansion of higher education to the Kitsap Peninsula, which finally got a baccalaureate program at Olympic College, making this the only four-year program west of Seattle and Tacoma. She had a good track record of helping small business while she was mayor, and will continue to assist and enable small business as a state legislator. Moreover, Kim was picked and brought to the 26th LD Democrats by Pat Lantz. Pat was a great friend to the LGBT community and Kim will continue her work. Kim's got a real battle to win this election; Jan is a formidable campaigner, and has been running ads on local cable saying "Let Jan Angel continue working for you", making many voters think that she is the incumbent.

And then there's our other legislative seat, which is held by Larry Seaquist. Larry's been in office for two years and has accomplished a great deal in that time. He says he's probably the most fiscally conservative guy in Olympia, and that may be true; he is also a dedicated social progressive. One of the things he's working on now, at the behest of Speaker Frank Chopp, is figuring out how to get healthcare to all Washingtonians. He's been having community meetings to brainstorm ideas. Larry is approachable and will listen to constituents' concerns. I have been asking him about making Washington the nation's first opt-out state for organ transplants; instead of opting in on your driver's license, you'd opt out if you want to, with no questions asked. When I told him that it wouldn't cost the state any additional money because it uses the mechanism that's already there, he got very interested indeed.

For some reason, the Republicans can't seem to find anybody good to run against Larry. Two years ago, when the seat was an open seat, the Republicans picked Ron Boehme. Ron, who put huge signs all over Port Orchard, called himself a "Prophet of the Lord"; his sermons were out on the Net, and were suppressed by his campaign. Some local Democrats made sure to mirror them before they were taken down, so they remained visible. Larry Seaquist is a former Navy captain and battleship commander. He writes for publications like the Christian Science Monitor, and one of his endorsements in his first campaign was from a former Secretary of the Navy. He won by a good margin. This year, the Republicans are running Marlyn Jensen, who calls herself "Mrs. Republican". The Kitsap Sun sent out a questionnaire to both candidates; Marlyn Jensen sent back five separate replies with different answers to many of the questions each time; she has claimed that some of them were "a prank", but they are consistent with her speech and writing patterns, and the fifth one (the most lucid) appears to have been written by a professional. She thinks, and has said in the paper and in debates, that global warming is a good idea because it could stand to be a little warmer around here. That's one of the answers that she said was a prank, but she's made this pronouncement herself. Larry ought to win again handily.

I hope Kim wins as well, which would keep our very swing district blue again for the next two years. We are probably the most swing district in the entire state, just about 50/50 Democrat/Republican. The only way we win is by outworking our Republican counterparts and running better candidates.

Wherever you live in Washington, please get your ballot in early if there's any way possible. If you're a poll voter (and only two counties still have many polls), remember that the polls close at 8pm. If you vote by mail, don't wait until election day to mail your ballot, because it just might get postmarked the next day instead.

If you don't live in Washington, please vote early if you can. And wherever you live, if you can spare a bit to help out some of our great candidates, I know they really need it.

Here are some places to contribute:
Darcy Burner, WA-08
Chris Gregoire for Governor
Peter Goldmark for Commissioner of Public Lands
John Ladenburg for Attorney General
I am not listing a contribute link for Sam Reed because he's a Republican. I am not going to urge any Kossack to give their hard-earned money to a Republican, no matter how honest. What can I say? I'm a partisan.
Yes on I-1000, the Death With Dignity initiative
Kim Abel for State Representative, LD-26
Larry Seaquist for State Representative, LD-26

County Auditors (Elections Divisions):
County: Adams
Phone: [phone]

County: Asotin
Phone: [phone]

County: Benton
Phone: [phone] and 509-786-5618

County: Chelan
Phone: [phone]

County: Clallam
Phone: [phone]

County: Clark
Phone: [phone]

County: Columbia
Phone: [phone]

County: Cowlitz
Phone: [phone]

County: Douglas
Phone: [phone] ext 207

County: Ferry
Phone: [phone]

County: Franklin
Phone: [phone]

County: Garfield
Phone: [phone]

County: Grant
Phone: [phone] ext. 343

County: Grays Harbor
Phone: [phone]

County: Island
ip: 98239-5000
Phone: [phone]

County: Jefferson
Phone: [phone]

County: King
Zip: 98057
Phone: [phone]

County: Kitsap
Phone: [phone]

County: Kittitas
Phone: [phone]

County: Klickitat
Phone: [phone]

County: Lewis
Phone: [phone]

County: Lincoln
Phone: [phone]

County: Mason
Phone: [phone] ext.469

County: Okanogan
Phone: [phone]

County: Pacific
Phone: [phone]

County: Pend Oreille
Phone: [phone] and 509-447-6472

County: Pierce
Phone: [phone]

County: San Juan
Phone: [phone]

County: Skagit
Phone: [phone]

County: Skamania
Phone: [phone]

County: Snohomish
Phone: [phone]

County: Spokane
Phone: [phone]

County: Stevens
Phone: [phone] and 1-866-307-9060

County: Thurston
Phone: [phone]

County: Wahkiakum
Phone: [phone]

County: Walla Walla
Phone: [phone]

County: Whatcom
Phone: [phone]

County: Whitman
Phone: [phone]

County: Yakima
Phone: [phone]

And by the way, if you want to help phone bank and you live anywhere around Port Orchard, contact me and I'll sign you up. I'm the volunteer coordinator.