Stories for Nov. 7, 2007

The last election day

By Daniel Jack Chasan

When I walked out of my old polling place Tuesday morning, Nov. 6, I felt depressed. Not just because there were so many complex ballot issues (all those constitutional amendments with virtually no public discussion) or because, for the first time that I could remember, I didn't see Bonnie Shride, a longtime poll worker who died earlier this year. No, as I walked out I realized that I had just participated in my last real election day. I started going to the polls with my mother when I was a little kid. I've always valued the ritual. I know people say we don't have time for these little rituals any more. Give me a break. This is a society that has elevated Super Bowl Sunday to a national event, a society in which adolescents rent limos for high school dances. We have plenty of rituals. Voting just happens to be one on which we no longer want to waste our time.

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The people didn't really speak, given the low turnout

By David Brewster

Here's a bracing corrective from reader Patrick Higgins, arguing that "the people" didn't really speak, as we pundits like to say, since the large majority of voters stayed silent. Mr. Higgins, you have the microphone: Before we all get too far along with our pronouncements about what "the voters" of Washington have just said, let's be honest about the numbers when we're assessing election results and trying to determine what "the people" want.

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Post Prop 1: Let the small ideas bloom

By David Brewster

One immediate reaction to the defeat of Proposition 1, the roads and transit package the voters thumped yesterday, is to fall back to The Portland Way. Build lots of small fixes, as opportunities arise, rather than scaring the voters with a mega-package. It may be a little Rube Goldberg-like, but it gradually gets the job done. Like what? Well, here are a set of ideas sent along by a reader, Greg Coe. See what you think, and send along your own pet (small) projects.

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The price of votes in Oregon

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

Oregon voters, except those in Multnomah County where Portland sits, can be bought. Not something to be proud of, but at least it took $12 million to do it. No cheap you-know-whats here. As reported in The Oregonian, the tobacco industry spent that and more. The industry's strategy was to convince voters that using a constitutional amendment to add an 85-cent tax to a pack of smokes was like putting a butt out on a Founding Father's forehead. Shocking, mean-spirited, just plain wrong.

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Please note that I was drinking

By Pete Jackson

Cocker Fennessy, a Seattle public-relations firm, hosted the premier "pre-poll" party, an Oscar-night analogue for the Northwest's political class. It was a blast. (Disclosure: Cocker Fennessy wined me, fed me, and wined me again.) The election-night fete featured an impressive mix of politicos – a majority of the Seattle City Council as well as King County Council members Dow Constantine, Pete von Reichbauer, Julia Patterson, and Larry Phillips. These weary, cornered souls mingled with quasi-government honchos (Joni Earl, who runs Sound Transit, and David Dicks, the new director of the Puget Sound Partnership) as well as snack-grazing gadabouts (e.g., O. Casey Corr of Crosscut and me).

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