Go to Democracy Fest at UW now!!!!!!!!!!
One in five Clark County voters has already voted with an absentee ballot, The Columbian reports.
Deborah Senn profile from Susan Kelleher in The Times.
"In the final weeks leading up to the election, Deborah Senn's bid to become Washington's attorney general has morphed into something of an anti-campaign.
Instead of offering the usual litany of groups who support her, the Democratic nominee for the state's second most powerful office is mostly talking about who doesn't want her there.
There's the United States Chamber of Commerce, which spent $1.5 million on an ad campaign to try to knock her out of the Democratic primary last month. The Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) was by far the biggest contributor to a campaign that began airing attack ads against her last week. And a political-action committee that exists to elect Republicans to state and local office is spending $1.3 million to defeat her.
To Senn and her supporters, every dollar big business spends against her is another reason to vote to make the consumer advocate and former insurance commissioner the state's top lawyer. As attorney general, Senn would be charged with enforcing state laws and regulations, and she'd have the power to investigate and prosecute businesses."
Craig Welch, also in The Seattle Times, profiles the race for Public Lands Commissioner.
"Sutherland, who is finishing his first four-year term as commissioner of public lands, has moved to have state forests certified as environmentally sustainable by using an independent auditing process created by the timber industry. He recently completed a long-term plan to increase logging on state trust lands in Western Washington by at least 30 percent to help supply money for public-school construction. And his campaign is supported overwhelmingly by more than a dozen sawmills and timber companies.
Cooper, a firefighter and state legislator who chairs the House Fisheries, Ecology and Parks Committee, wants to certify Washington forests as "green" according to criteria preferred by environmentalists, and wants a permanent ban on logging old-growth trees. He is the beneficiary of a massive campaign contribution by the state's wealthiest environmental donor, and has a member of the Washington Environmental Council working on his campaign."
A profile of the 18th LD Senate race, the most expensive legislative race in the state, from the Longview Daily News. $440,000 spent between the two of them.
Oregon
Watchers watch the poll watchers watching the other poll watchers in a postmodern electoral exercise, The Oregonian reports.
"As a voluntary observer at Washington County's Elections Division office, Cornish is allowed to watch, but not object, touch or, for the most part, speak. She and a group of fellow Republicans, mostly retirees, organized through a series of shifts, have taken the tradition of poll watching to another level.
Instead of showing up at the election office on Election Day, as usual, poll watchers such as Cornish have been streaming in and out of the office since Oct. 18, the first business day after ballots for the Nov. 2 general election were mailed.
A few days later, volunteers from a nonpartisan group, Count Every Vote, showed up. And then a few Democrats started to appear.
The office responded by hiring its former elections manager, Ginny Kingsley, to observe the observers, some of whom are observing other observers."
This is happening all over the country, and could definitely determine the outcome.
Alaska
An interesting initiative on the ballot would end the governor's right to appoint someone to fill a vacant Senate seat. This puts Lisa Murkowski in a very awkward position. The incumbent Republican was appointed by her father, who won the governor's mansion; he left his Senate seat to do so. Whether for or against the initiative, it reminds voters of this nepotism incident. Murkowski has come out against. Her opponent Tony Knowles holds a slim, within-the-margin-of-error lead. Control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance.
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