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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Politics / Election / Olympia Don't Expect Ballot Guides for the Primary

Posted by Riya Bhattacharjee on Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 12:42 PM

tHERESA tHOMPSON/FLICKR
No ballot guides for August 17

The primaries are nearly here, but our broke-ass state can’t foot the bill for printing the voters guide. (It costs $1.3 million to print those things.) But an e-mail from Secretary of State Sam Reed says all of the candidate statements are online.

“There is plenty of good, solid, unfiltered information,” out there, he says. So if you want to research before you vote—or find Dino Rossi’s phone number—you can go to My Vote, the TVW’s Video Voter’s Guide, and your county's election website. Or you can just ask the Stranger Election Control Board, which announced its endorsements yesterday.

A few counties are producing a primary voters guide on their own. The state government usually doesn't publish voters guides during the primaries, but they made an exception in 2008, the first primary which used the new voter-approved top-two system. "In case there was any confusion with the new system," says Amanda Meyer at the Secretary of State's office. But this time, the legislature just doesn't have the money.

Meyer says that although she didn't have a sense of how many people have access to the Internet in the state. "We would be happy to print a pamphlet if the legislature gives us the money, but it's out of our hand," she says. "When times are hard, something has to be cut."

If you ask me, the Internet is great and all, but there's quite a number of people out there—including senior citizens—who rely on printed ballot guides as their primary source of information. Lawmakers have not given up on paper election guides completely—the general election voter’s pamphlet is expected to be mailed out in October.

UPDATE: King County is producing its own voters guide, says Meyer at the Secretary of State's office. But other counties, you're SOL.

Comments (10) RSS

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there were voter's guides in the mail that just came in here...(south lake union, seattle)

Posted by ssmary on July 29, 2010 at 12:45 PM

the secretary of state is so broke, s/he only has one hand?

Posted by misterlevitan

on July 29, 2010 at 12:51 PM

$1.3 million?? We've got that money earmarked for Gates on the Viaduct!!

Y'all dumbass voters just gonna have to ejimucate yeselves....

Posted by merry on July 29, 2010 at 12:57 PM

@ 1, hi, as the post says, a few counties are producing a primary voters guide on their own. King could be one of them, waiting to hear back from the SOA's office. thx!

Posted by Riya Bhattacharjee on July 29, 2010 at 1:00 PM

It's time to cancel the Billionaires Tunnel if we can't afford voter guides for the Primary.

Nine Gates for the Billionaire Kings, Driving To Their Jets.
Seven EIS drafts released that risks don't vet.
Five votes to kill the tunnel, Five votes to bind it.
Three quakes to kill them all and drown them in the muck.
One Tunnel to Bankrupt the State, One Tunnel for Seattle to Wake.

In the massive debt load of the Tunnel Kings, Primaries and Voters are not thought-of things ...

Posted by Will in Seattle

on July 29, 2010 at 1:02 PM

Perhaps they can print a voters guide in the phone book.

Posted by Danger on July 29, 2010 at 1:11 PM

A third of the state doesn't have internet access! What the hell are these people thinking!

@3, that's the first thing that popped into my mind. We won't do the stuff we are mandated to do by law, like organize proper voting, but we can magically afford remote-control gates we don't need and which nobody asked for.

Posted by Fnarf