Results tagged “voting”

As the week comes to a close, it's time to relax. But before you gear up for a dreary Friday evening followed by a potentially bright weekend, take a moment to check the status of your voter registration. If you're not registered to vote -- or if your registration address needs updating, it's time to act! Monday October 5 is the last day to register online or by mail if you want to vote in the November 3rd election. Monday is also the last day to update your address if you're already registered.

The internet is indeed alluring and the source of many pleasures, and locals just can't keep their hands off her. This morning, we learn that Washington state legislators are ga-ga for Facebook (late pass! but welcome) and that Mars Hill Church has given worshippers the go-ahead to tweet during services (...ugh). Careful, guys: the world wide web is a cruel mistress. Forgive the Napoleon Dynamite reference, it was unavoidable.

We had no idea Seattle Metropolitan even had blogs, but they do, and the fashion one (the first one we clicked on) by Laura Cassidy is fun. Cassidy was not enamored with Michelle Obama's white ball gown but really dug her lemongrass suit. Seattle Weekly's new music editor, Jonathan Cunningham, introduced himself over at Reverb ("I'm not a hipster. I pull no punches"). Over at Sound Politics, Stefan Sharkansky is freaking out about mail-in ballot signature verification. And the great debate about school closures continues, respectfully, at Crosscut: they've published the School Board's rebuttal of Dick Lilly's argument that the SPS shouldn't close any schools at all.

Little Miss Seattlest mostly watches Yo Gabba Gabba! and Pixar movies (on weekends), so she was thrilled to stay up late and watch the election with her parents. Obama's already delivering big happiness to her life. He also, apparently, has a fun name to say.

We all know the results of last night's election, however it is what all the blogs were talking about yesterday... So, we hope you enjoy your very last (for this cycle) election-heavy neighborhood news.
• West Seattle Blog hunkered down at The Skylark Cafe and made it Election HQ to watch the results roll in last night.
• The support for Obama moved over from Basset Hounds to dogs in general, according to the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog.
• The Central District News faced long lines when voting yesterday at TT Minor. Our busy busy friends, the Geeky Swedes of My Ballard, PhinneyWood, and The Magnolia Voice also reported long lines and lots of voters in their respective neighborhoods.

While the country was busy blindly voting for whoever they fancied, Seattle Weekly writer Don Ward was hard at work being a true patriot and writing an important blog post for the Weekly. We only wish he'd opened our eyes sooner before we so ignorantly cast our ballot.

• Yet another reason we love Seattle: a vendor was selling pasties at a Catholic School fundraiser/bazaar. We are pleased to report that Magnolia Voice has some photographic proof this actually happened and that the vendor received no ruler raps on the knuckles.
• Pedestrian safety is near and dear to our heart and to our rebuilt knee after experiencing life on the bumper end of our own car v. pedestrian equation. So we will certainly be applying to the Mayor's Pedestrian Advisory Board, and we think you should too.
• After all that anticipation for Zaw, Capitol Hill Seattle already has "5 Ways To Fix Zaw's Broken Pizza." Not exactly the glowing review a new business hopes to receive from the local neighborhood blog.

Seattlest has a brilliant idea for your re-election bid in four years. Can you do us a favor and create a check box on your website, next to where we might provide our email address when we donate or sign up for an event? We would like that check box to read "I am an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama who is also a dedicated voter. You have my vote. Definitely. Please spend your money on mail-bombing undecideds, rather than me." This would, of course, be accompanied by a check box reading, "I'm thinking about voting for Barack Obama, but I'm not sold. Please email me every ten minutes." We're just saying we'd like to have a choice there. Speaking of choices...have you guys voted yet, or what? What are you waiting for?

Quick reminder to all the registered absentee voters among us: your mail-in ballots for this summer's primary need to be postmarked by tomorrow, August 19th, in order to be counted in the vote! More information about the Top Two Primary system can be found at the Secretary of State's website, including the link to an online Voter's Guide. And to those of you who aren't yet registered voters, now would be a great time to transform into a beautiful voting butterfly by filling out the registration form.

So, who got the 2008 Voters' Pamphlet in the mail this week? There are some weirdos in there this summer, or maybe only in our appropriately zoned edition. This weekend (yes, on a Friday night....what are you trying to say?), we plunked down on the couch to read the more noteworthy parts of the Pamphlet to our housemate. Here are our favorite tidbits, with page references for those of you who live by Seattlest HQ and are registered to vote:

Like our esteemed editor, we also acted as a delegate at our precinct caucus yesterday, the 36th District Caucus at Ballard High School.

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they will discuss the Democratic race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Archie McPhee's latest bumper stickers, posted in Seattlest's Flickr Pool

Over the weekend we got an email from our friend in Wisconsin asking, "Why does Washington have a caucus and a primary? I don't get it. How does this work?"

We respectfully disagree with our colleagues. Having gone into our second caucus as undecideds, we emerged firmly decided: the caucus stinks. And we weren't even invested in any candidate this time around. The Slog's Erica Barnett makes a good case against it. We'll concede that it was nice to see some neighbors; however, we don't really care to meet our neighbors in this particular context. Block parties, barbeques, chats across the fence, and pleasantries exchanged while taking walks are far better community builders. Politics doesn't build community; it builds cliques. At best, caucuses are just echo chambers for them, like mega-churches in which people get caught up in the moment. At worst, they intimidate.

We here at Seattlest really wanted to go out and caucus on Saturday, however, HBO is showing Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. So we made some calls, and the DNC gave us permission to hold a special caucus today. They even threw in a couple delegates that Utah wasn’t going to use:

Current Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan is in the middle of a another controversy.

Are you guys watching this race? Incredible! Super Tuesday has officially come and gone, delegates divided, $250 million in campaign money spent, and still no Democratic frontrunner in sight. We at Seattlest are beside ourselves and while we may never understand the logic behind superdelegates we do know this: Washington is going to have a big say in how this race is decided. This Saturday, Washingtonians will caucus with 80 Democratic delegates up for grabs in the biggest race in the country this weekend. The Seattle Times actually referred to us this morning as "The Next Big Prize." So you want to make your vote actually count? Well, friends, then you must caucus! And your friendly Seattlesters are here to make the process as painless as possible.

Kim: I tried for about five minutes after Iowa to convince myself I could and would get behind an Obama candidacy. I will vote for whomever earns the Democratic nomination, but I just honestly don’t get what the big deal is about Obama. I’ve been a Hillary gal from the beginning, and that hasn’t changed. The best thing I can say about Obama is that he makes inspiring speeches, that make me feel good about myself in a “I can do it!” sort of way. Like a pep talk before a ballet performance (sorry, yall, never played sports). But, I don’t think that’s enough. I think it’s important to be lifted up, but if you’re then left hanging, you just fall back down. His proposals and plans are either bad, or are copies of Hillary and John Edwards’. I really, really hope he doesn’t get the nomination, because I’m so happy to be excited about an election cycle and to feel optimistic about it; and I think I would hate to lose that feeling of excitement about real long-lasting transformation. I’m sure his supporters will jump on me for that since he’s supposed to be the change candidate, but I’m not buying it. Hillary has great plans, she has alliances and friends on both sides of the aisle (important for getting things through congress) and I don’t doubt for a second that she gets the weight and breadth of everything that comes across a president’s desk. John Edwards looks great on paper, but I just don’t like him.

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they review Tuesday's doings in New Hampshire.

Originally ran on January 3, 2007, and updated for January 2008.

Turns out Amazon.com's customer service department isn't staffed by computers -- just sarcasm-savvy people who use computers. Consumerist broke the story: Amazon Sends "Best Customer Service E-mail I've Ever Received". We'll summarize: One of Amazon.com's Black Friday deals was the chance to win a $1000 laptop for $299. Many people entered; most of them were unsuccessful. Some theorized that Amazon employees had snatched up all the good deals, since no one they knew had won...

While trolling through today's Floor Proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives for our other job (it's an exciting one), we noticed something that will probably get no coverage anywhere else. However, we think it is important to note when Congress singles out one faith as important. We think it's doubly important to note when the vote is taken while Congress fights with the Bush Administration over funding the government for the next year, haggles...

It's cool that Drew Carey has been the face of the new Seattle MLS team, appearing at the G&D and showing up in the booth for Monday Night Football to talk about the team's plans in Seattle, but he's kind of a Cleveland guy. Couldn't we get a Seattle name that's about on par with Carey? Like....oh god there is no Seattle name on par with Drew Carey. Long live Seattle guy Drew Carey!

When we sat down to do our endorsements we reached a disturbing conclusion. We cannot, in good conscience, vote for anyone.

Prop. 1, the roads and transit measure. Supporters say it will help solve our gridlock problem. Anti-tax opponents say"no it won't" and environazi opponents say "roads are killing the planet, it's transit-only or nothing." Tomorrow's election day. Here's how Seattlesters are voting.

It's still raining, but that's not stopping us this weekend. As we get ready to head out the door, the Seattlest staff is once again sharing our weekend plans in the hopes that we'll see you along the way.

City Council candidate Venus Velázquez was arrested for a DUI last night which can't be good for her campaign for Peter Steinbrueck's seat. Apparently, she had "two drinks with her meal" and then hung around for a while to ensure she wasn't impaired. If that's what really happened, bummer. It sounds like she made a better effort than the guys we see "sobering up" at the end of the night by switching to light beer for last call. "No more shots for me...I'm driving. Two Pabsts, please." Needless to say, you don't see those guys appearing in your voter's guide too often. Even if it was two drinks and a cooling off period - a cop saw fit to pull her over, administer the field tests and take her in.

It’s been hard for us to admit this, greenie that we are, but a vote for Prop. 1 is in order, at least from this Seattlest's perspective.

Along with the million other words being written on this topic, we at Seattlest thought it was a good time to share some of our thinking on the Roads and Transit bill we're going to have the chance to vote on this November.