Thursday Thinking... From Whatcom County

Voter Turnout
It's good to see my impression about voter turnout being confirmed. Looks like Auditor Shirley Forslof's earlier estimate of 55% is going to be close to the correct number. Today's update on the County Auditors webpage shows the turnout at 53.6%, so far.

I had the feeling that a majority of those who were going to vote were waiting (at least figuratively) until the last minute to caste their ballots.

I don't have a provable explanation for why folks waited to vote. It was just "in the air". I picked up the feeling people were holding off on putting their ballot in the mail.

I do have a theory; all of the rumors and dirty politicking made people wait to see if there would be any last minute revelations that would make them want to change their mind about who to vote for. The Bellingham mayors race got most of the press coverage but it wasn't the only race where rumormongering ran wild. Ferndale city council races had their share of whisper campaigns and the County government races had plenty of manure being flung by the building industry and local Republicans.

More Citizen Involvement and Higher Voter Turnout
A comment was left recently asking what I thought would increase voter turnout. I don't have 'The Magic Answer' however I do know of a way to encourage more people to run for office and get more people involved in the process.

That way is Publicly Funded Campaign's. I know some people preemptively reject the idea because it involves tax money. What those people are shutting their ears to is the diversity of candidates that could run without being considered "fringe candidates" and how much 'tax money' could be saved by electing candidates who owed their undivided allegiance to voter instead of contributors.

Here in Washington State we have Everyone should look over the washclean.org website and think about it. With Publicly Funded Campaigns, anyone who was willing to put in the effort could run for office, no special interests or insider connections needed. Plus, any candidate would have a credible chance of winning, as long as their ideas appealed to a majority of voters.

With more diverse candidates, I think more citizens would feel it was worth being involved. More citizens would work on campaigns because they felt invested in a candidate. Voter turnout would increase, especially in primaries, because citizens could feel their votes would be meaningful.

In September, we covered a presentation sponsored by the local League of Women Voters on Clean Campaigns.


Authoritarian Followers - aka conservatives
What I've distilled from reading the 'Conservatives' comments on the B'ham Heralds website and a couple of local rightwing blogs:
1.) Knowing the answer to all questions before the question is asked makes rightwingers very smug.
2.) For rightwingers, no matter what the question is, the answer is always the same; "Clinton did it."... or some variant on that theme.
3.) Neither scientific evidence nor unimpeachable eyewitnesses can prevent rightwingers from blaming "Clinton".
4.) When rightwing ideas fail, they always blame it on "media bias".

And speaking of Authoritarianism
KGMI program director and rightwing radio host Debbie Chavez has used the bad behavior of some commenter's as a excuse to control all comments on the KGMI.com blog. Those wishing to comment must now email their submission to Debbie for consideration. She sez she's taking the "highroad" but she's actually set up a way to filter out all the non-conservative comments.

Here's a thought; have people register before they can post comments, then they can say whatever they want but they've got to own it. It would take less time to verify each registration than it would to review every comment.