A reader was wondering about lower turnout areas in the city of Spokane, specifically questioning whether the lack of certain candidates on the ballot was responsible for the lower turnout in the city’s Northeast Council District, West Central and East Central.

Probably not.

This is a map of last year’s general election turnout in the city of Spokane, which set a record in terms of total votes and percentages.

Compare it to this year’s city turnout, and it seems pretty clear that in relative terms, turnout was RELATIVELY low in most of the same areas, and RELATIVELY high in most of the same areas. Remember that turnout is a comparison of the number of ballots divided by the number of registered voters in each individual precinct, and then the percentages — not the total number of votes — are compared among the precincts.

The total number of votes varies greatly from election to election, but the relative turnout for different areas of the city remains fairly constant.

Saturday Night Live has proved it can take shots at the Obama Administration just as it did at the Bush Admin.

For those of you who went to bed at a reasonable hour, and either forgot to set your recorder or pushed the wrong buttons, here’s the Cold Open that makes fun of Vice President Biden.

A swath of central Spokane – roughly from the river to Wellesley Avenue – may have more women representing it in elective office than any place else in the country.

Eastern Washington in general is unique in the country for having women in top offices. No other voters outside the 5th Congressional District have both U.S. senators, a U.S. House member and a governor who are all women. And while the district’s voters didn’t necessarily give Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell or Gov. Chris Gregoire the majority of their votes in the last elections, all three hold office and no other state’s residents have a woman in those three statewide posts.

But the overlapping of several districts within Spokane County creates an area that has – by design or chance – an even larger array of executive and legislative power exercised by women.

Continue reading Women rock Spokane vote »

Spin Control regularly reports the voter turnout in elections as a gauge of the relative strength of different areas or neighborhoods.

But turnout is a percentage of the people who vote divided by the total people registered. Some areas that have high turnout don’t have as many voters, and some with a relatively high number of voters fail to generate much interest in the candidates or issues on the ballot.

Turnout in the city of Spokane for the Nov. 3 election averages just under 50 percent with just a few ballots yet to count.

But it varied significantly around the city, as is typical for most elections. This map divides the city’s precincts into four equal segments based on turnout and shows heavier turnout in the south and northwest, and light voting in the north central and northeast.

The latest numbers for Proposition 4 continue to show it getting hammered all over the city. It lost all city precincts, so the only real question was, where did it lose worse?

Rocky Treppiedi kept his District 81 School Board seat on the strength of his vote margins in the south and northwest parts of the district, which extends outside the city limits. Laura Carder did well in northeast Spokane, where she’s run previously as a legislative candidate, but those precincts traditionally have fewer voters and smaller turnout than the ones Treppiedi won.

Late vote counts didn’t really change the landscape for the City of Spokane’s Fire Bond proposal. It did well in some of the vote rich regions of south and northwest Spokane, but did poorly on the north side and East Central. There aren’t enough votes left to tip it over the top next week.

Everyone join in, please:

Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear

Washington Staaaate.

Happy Birthday to you.

Washington as a state turns 120 today. Don’t feel bad if you forgot to send a card. Once you get passed 100, birthdays aren’t that big a deal until you hit the really big milestones. So mark your calendar for Nov. 11, 2014, because that’ll be 125, and you’ll probably need to send a gift, too.

Want to see an image of the telegram announcing statehood? It’s on the Secretary of State’s Web site, just click here.

Former GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected to be autographing copies of her new book next month at the Coeur d’Alene Fred Meyer store.

Palin, who already has a best-seller before her book is even released next week, is tentatively scheduled for a Coeur d’Alene stop on Dec. 10. But don’t call the store to ask for a time. They don’t have one yet, company spokeswoman Melinda Merrill said Tuesday.

“Everything is really tentative right now,” Merrill said.

But a CdA stop will be in keeping with her tour schedule, which is only announced through Dec. 8. She’s bypassing some big blue metro areas like Seattle and L.A. and doing a red heartlands swing that includes Sioux City and Sioux Falls, Fort Wayne and Birmingham.

If she books Spokane, too, we’ll let you know as soon as we do.

The only race that seems to be hanging fire still is the City of Spokane Fire Bond.

As of Friday, it had inched up to a 59.43 percent approval rating, or

29,611 for

20.215 against

It needs to get to 60 percent.

The county elections office estimates it has about 8,000 votes left to count. If half of them are from the city (which is about what we can expect in most elections), the bond issue is going to need about 67 percent approval rating in those ballots to close the gap.

Ted Sturdevant was named this morning the new director of the state Department of Ecology.

Gov. Chris Gregoire announced the appointment to replace Jay Manning, who moved from head of DoE to be her chief of staff.

Sturdevant has been with DoE for 7 years as director of external affairs, and before that worked for Gov. Gary Locke.

He starts today, at an annual salary of $141,549.

By late last week one question surrounding Referendum 71 was settled: The measure passed and the “everything but marriage” statutes go into effect for the whole state, after it was approved handily in most Puget Sound counties and hammered pretty badly elsewhere.

That’s really just the quick question the ballot measure generated. The longer one, which would have survived regardless of the vote count, has political operatives watching closely, legal scholars salivating – and may give legislators something to do in coming years besides sweating  the state’s declining finances.

The question: Are the signatures on R-71 petitions  – or any other statewide ballot measure – public?

Continue reading One Ref 71 impact lives on »

Incumbent Rocky Treppeidi inched a bit farther ahead of challenger Laura Carder in Thursday’s vote count. But there’s still a dramatic north-south split in the votes as shown in the map here.

Andy Billig, the president of the Spokane Indians baseball, wants to play in a different league. He’s running for the state Legislature in central Spokane’s 3rd District.

As ballots were being cast and counted this week for the 2009 election, Billig filed papers with the state Public Disclosure Commission to run for the state House of Representatives seat currently held by seven-term incumbent Alex Wood. Both are Democrats.

To read more, go inside the blog

Continue reading Billig to run for 3rd Dist. House seat »

Spokane School Board incumbent Jeff Bierman is in a tight race with challenger Heidi Olson. As in the Treppiedi-Carder race, there’s a distinct north-south split, as the map illustrates. Here’s the latest tally, as of Wednesday evening:

Bierman 17,344 (51,35%)
Olson     16,431 (48.65%)

The Spokane School Board races are too tight to call with any certainty. But a look at the vote patterns shows a definite north-south split in both races.

It’s probably most pronounced in the Position 4 race, where incumbent Rocky Treppiedi has a narrow lead over challenger Laura Carder. Current tally is:

Treppiedi 17,893 (51.64%)
Carder     16,758 (48.36%)

Spokane City Proposition 1, aka the Fire Bond Issue, inched a bit toward the supermajority it needs for passage in Wednesday evening’s count. As the map shows, its support varied around the city. The ballot measure currently has a 58.85 percent approval; it needs 60 percent.

Jon Snyder continues to lead Mike Allen in the South Spokane Council District race. Latest tally:

Snyder 7,091

Allen    6,412.

We’re about two hours from another drop of election numbers in Spokane County. Elections Manager Mike McLaughlin said he expects 8,000 to 10,000 votes to be included in the count. That will leave roughly 30,000 votes left for the rest of the week.

The county received 22,567 ballots in the mail on Wednesday, pushing turnout to 52 percent. McLaughlin said another 500 to 1,000 more could be expected the rest of the week.

Continue reading New numbers expected soon; turnout rises above 50 percent »

There are few, if any, bright spots supporters of Envision Spokane’s Community Bill of Rights will find in last night’s count.

As a whole, Proposition 4 only garnered 25 percent support. It failed in all of the city’s nearly 125 precincts.

The measure won 40 percent support only in four precincts: downtown Spokane, one that covers most of Browne’s Addition and the western portion of Peaceful Valley, one precinct in East Central and one in the Bemiss Neighborhood, which is just south of Hillyard.

The worst showing was in a precinct bordering Latah Creek in the far south of the city where only 7.7 percent of voters supported the proposition.

Click here to download a high-resolution JPG of the above map.

Spokane’s Fire Bond Issue didn’t have the 60 percent super majority in ballots counted Tuesday night.

Click here to view a high-resolution JPG of this map.

Initiative 1033 got hammered in the city of Spokane, but did well outside it.

Click here to download a high-resolution JPG of this map.

As of Tuesday night, here’s how the vote totals look in Spokane County for Referendum 71.

The showing of Spokane City Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin — the City Council’s most conservative member — in a district that voted for President Obama has prompted speculation that she may run as a Republican for state Rep. Alex Wood’s seat next year in Spokane’s 3rd Legislative District. That’s eastern Washington’s most solidly Democratic district.

McLaughlin won all 43 precincts in her council district race in the August primary, a feat she repeated in Tuesday’s general election.

Speaking from her campaign party Tuesday night, McLaughlin said she will not rule out a run for the Legislature, but added: “At this point, I have no intention of running next year.”

She added that her husband isn’t sold on the idea of her running for an office that would require a campaign every two years.

Spokane voters seemed to spend a bit more time weighing their options this year. The two biggest days for ballots showing up at the elections office were yesterday and today.

The current ballot count stands at 98,968, which is 38.5 percent of all registered voters in the county. More than 39,000 of those ballots showed up in the last two days — and that doesn’t count the final pickups from drop boxes all over the county.

Could it be that some voters regretted voting too early in previous years, and held on to their ballots until closer to the deadline, to see how the campaigns played out? Hard to say, but it does seem to undercut the argument of some campaign operatives that so many resources should be targeted at the week the ballots get mailed out.

If tradition holds, biggest day for turnout will be tomorrow, when most ballots mailed yesterday and today get delivered.

For more on how the ballot turn-in count stands, go inside the blog.

Continue reading Spokane County turnout: 38.5% so far »

Here’s one of the more talked about election mailers distributed locally this campaign season.

It’s from Envision Spokane, the campaign in support of Proposition 4. It hit mailboxes last week.

What do you think? Is it effective?

(Note: This story appeared in Sunday’s paper, and through an oversight on my part didn’t get posted simultaneously to the blog. So it appears here with links to the spread sheets that show the campaign spending, for those political junkies out there that eat this stuff up. Jim Camden.)

Among the talking points hotly debated by both sides in the campaign over the city of Spokane’s Proposition 4 is whether the proposed changes are good or bad for local business.

The talking point on the “Yes” side says a requirement for local banks to reinvest local money in local business will pump more money into the Spokane economy and help mom-and-pop businesses struggling against the national chains and big-box stores. The talking point on the “No” side says that provision isn’t what local businesses need, and requirements for prevailing wages and apprenticeship programs will put locals at a disadvantage against competitors just across the city line.

Talk, as the saying goes, is cheap – although during a campaign, speech covers everything from folks bloviating at forums to literature in the mailbox, TV ads and radio spots. Campaign speech often comes with a payment-due notice from sign makers, print shops, commercial schedulers and consultants.

So the question is, when the campaigns pay for such speech, and anything else they need to convince you of the rightness or wrongness of Prop 4, who spends their money locally, and who spends it elsewhere?

Continue reading Following the money: Prop 4 spending »

In a new video from BarelyPolitical.com, Obama Girl, aka Amber Ettinger, makes a pitch for someone to be appointed to the Social Security Board.

The plea is set to “Man of Constant Sorrow,” and proves that blue-grass legend Ralph Stanley can still pick and sing, Obama Girl can dance even though she can’t lip-synch too well, and the guy they’re hyping, Eric C. Conn, should never ever quit his day job to become a dancer. But it’s a fun watch.

Spokane County commissioners fired the company they hired less than a year ago to operate the county’s Raceway Park, their controversial purchase near Airway Heights that drew good crowds this summer but racked up some $1.2 million in unpaid construction debt.

The county’s insurance may be needed to pay contractors that performed the work ordered by Austin Motor Sports Management but never approved by the county, they said.

Commissioners voted unanimously during a special afternoon meeting Thursday to terminate the contract with the company and its owner Bucky Austin, a racing enthusiast who owns a chain of auto repair shops in the Puget Sound region. Despite promises in August and September that he would make good on all outstanding debts for improvements in the park, Austin still owes several local contractors, who have filed liens worth about $1.2 million against him and the county.

They’re looking for a new operator to run the track in 2010, although next time, they expect to keep “a closer, watchful eye” on Austin’s replacement, County Board Chairman Todd Mielke said.

The county became aware of financial problems at the track last summer, when contractors began serving notice that they would file liens for unpaid bills. Austin called the liens standard procedure, said he had to review billing to make sure the work was actually done and promised to pay everybody by November.

But commissioners discovered Austin had ordered more construction than they expected, essentially compressing renovations the county thought would take two years into the first year the track operated. He did it without securing performance bonds, as required by state law, or putting the projects out to competitive bids, commissioners said.

Because of those problems, commissioners said Austin’s contract was in default and terminated on Thursday afternoon.

Austin was put on notice in September that he’d lose the contract in 60 days if he didn’t “cure” those problems. He said he would find financing or partners to make payments. But this week, his attorney confirmed that “Austin Motor Sports Management is unable to find additional financing to continue to operate the raceway,” Jim Emacio, the county’s chief civil deputy, told commissioners.

The notice of default had a 60-day time limit, which would have been up on Sunday. When asked why they were terminating it just three days early, they said the weather was turning cold and they wanted to have county staff “winterize” the facility as soon as possible.

Asked if the decision was at all prompted by fears Austin’s management company, a limited liability corporation apart from his repair shops, could declare bankruptcy, Mielke would only say: “Rumors abound.”

The county will draft a new request for proposal and allow potential operators to submit bids.

“We hope to find an operator that can continue to operate the track… and maintain it’s credibility with the community,” Mielke said. “We’re going to do our due diligence with any construction projects that take place.”

They want to  county will also review all the outstanding claims to make sure the work was done, is up to standards and has been double-billed, Commissioner Mark Richard said. Legitimate claims will be submitted to the county’s insurance carrier for payment.

That process could take up to 60 days. John Black, an attorney who represents seven of the contractors holding some $1.19 million in unpaid bills, said his clients could eventually file suit against the county if they aren’t paid. But it might take about two months to prepare a lawsuit, so the contractors might hold off.

“If in fact there is a commitment to pay, it would make sense to wait,” said Black, who added he heard about the commissioners’ decision from the reporter calling to ask for comment.

Story also filed on the Local News section, and generating comments. Join the discussion here.