So, there's a lot going on this election season, and only some of it is happening on the ballot itself.
Washington State has exclusive mail-in ballots, and I've noted elsewhere that this has been a very good system in that it makes it pretty easy to vote, and the state gets to oversee the voting rolls. The Federal Government, primarily the current Executive branch, hates that, and wants to control who gets to vote. And yes, there is voter fraud out there, but more often than not its from the people counting the votes as opposed to the voters themselves. In any event, the GOPS in charge want to crash/control mail-in voting so they can decide who gets to vote (spoilers: Not you).
And in the primary we saw this in a gutting of the Post Office's responsibilities in this, such that they will not guarantee the postmarking your vote in a timely fashion so that it is postmarked before election day. So you can still mail in the ballot, but unless the Post Office gets around to it, it won't count.
To no one's surprise, in the primary, there was an increase statewide in rejected ballots that arrived too late. But to everyone's surprise, this increase was strongest in Republican rural areas, while in King County, where most of the people live and most of the people vote Democrat, there was a DECREASE in rejected ballots. There could be a couple reasons for this - King County and its adjacent counties have more drop-off boxes, and people used them. Or that it takes longer for the Post Office to turn around ballots in rural areas. Or it could be that King County voters are ornery enough and peeved at Federal intrusion that they got off their duffs and made sure that their votes counted.
So, good job to the folk in King County, regardless of who you voted for. And a hat-tip to the Republicans who shot themselves in the foot pushing this, as Republicans are wont to do.
But the Federal Government was not done, though, in that they went to the Supreme Court and demanded that they could crash the entire mail-in-ballot system. At the time of this writing, the court has voted 7-2 that he should go stick his head in a pig and stop this foolishness. This does not mean that the Executive Branch will not continue to try to control your votes, because, you know, they only have to win ONCE.
Oh, and the head of the Executive branch has declared that this election is all about HIM. He's not on the ballot, but this is an endorsement of him personally and the GOP's policies and candidates only secondly. Which since midterm elections usually tend to trend AGAINST the party in power, seems like he's lining up his other foot for a bullet, but whatever.
So where does that leave us? Well, first off, I'm going to recommend you vote early. We're on a short timeline here (3 November is Election day) I'm going to recommend you find a drop-off box nearby to turn your ballot in, because the Post Office may be too busy sending out those fliers from Safeway to get around to postmarking your stuff. And I am also going to indulge in spoilers this particular go around. Yep, I'm going to tell you want I'm recommending, and THEN drag you through the thought process (such as it is). OK? OK.
And of course I'll be pointing out others - the Seattle Times has been moving through the ballot over the past month, but you can find their summary here. The Stranger is being kind of touchy right now because they got some pushback about not recommending the most progressive candidates in the primary. That's OK by me, but as a result, they've gone into detail about how they don't like most of the candidates they did recommend here. A comparison of the Times and the Stranger's endorsements can be found here. Plus, there is a "Lefty" aggregation of endorsements and support can be found here, the Urbanist is doing a deep dive here, and the Progressive Voters Guide here (and you can tune it to your particular county).
So here we go. Some of this is going to be very familiar to those few who paid attention to the Summer Primary, but there are some new things. As usual, I'm not going to call out races where there is a single candidate, which includes a lot of the lower-level judgeships. Here's what I'm voting for, and I'll catch up with the details later.
The Heywood Initiatives (IP26-645, IP26-001, and IP 26-638): I wish there was an "oh, hell, no" option here, but I will settle for a simple NO.
US Representative District 9: Adam Smith
State Representative, District 11: Ashley Fedan
King County Assessor: Robert Foxcurran
Washington State Supreme Court:
Position 1: Colleen Melody
Position 3: Jaime Hawk
Position 4: Ian Birk
Position 5: Theo Angelis
Position 7: Debra Stephens
Southeast Electoral District Position No.5: Heather M. Barker
Kent School District No. 415 Proposition No. 1 Replacement of Expiring Educational Programs and Operations Levy: Yes
OK? So let's turn over the test papers and begin. More later,
