Public Periscope
From PUBLIC PERISCOPE, November 27, 2000, page A8: We goofed last week in attributing a proposal for “Radio Free Idaho” made earlier this month at an Environmental Protection Agency hearing in Spokane. It was environmental activist Bart Haggin, not County Commissioner John Roskelley, who made the comment during testimony to EPA Ombudsman Robert Martin regarding the cleanup of mining waste in the Coeur d’Alene Basin.
What are they trying to tell us?
One of the most interesting things in the latest batch of election results from Spokane County’s ongoing absentee count is not whom the voters punched ballots for or against, but whom they bypassed altogether … It’s not surprising that the presidential race, which is historically the big draw to the voting booth, had the fewest ballots that had no punches for any candidate. Countywide, only 1,287 of the 168,564 ballots run through the computer were “blank” for prez, while 1,352 were marked for more than one White House wannabe. (Take that, Palm Beach County.) … Uncontested races for statewide offices had as many 63,000 voters who decided it wasn’t worth their time to punch the ballot, and nearly 40,000 bypassed the contested Supreme Court races. For the high-profile races, the fall-off was much less - but it wasn’t always logically distributed.
Take the U.S. House race between George Nethercutt and Tom Keefe. The stakes were high, and the two candidates put at least as much effort into winning votes as Senate candidates Slade Gorton and Maria Cantwell, or gubernatorial candidates Gary Locke and John Carlson. Yet 5,600 voters opted out of the House race - about double the number who skipped the Senate race immediately ahead of it or the governor’s race immediately after it on the ballot … The 6th District state House race between John Ahern and Jack Geraghty was bypassed by 6,662 voters.
Elections officials usually refer to this as ballot fatigue, which suggests voters just get tired as they go down a long list of races. But considering the tenor of these two races, one could also argue some of these unpunched cards represent ballot disgust, with a significant number of voters saying they don’t think any of the candidates are worthy of the job based on what they or their allies did over the past few months … That’s sad if it’s true, because it means the ranks of negative campaign tacticians will continue to grow.
Who gets to be the DJ?
There’s a Berlin Wall of difference between Idaho and Washington, according to John Roskelley, Democratic county commissioner, mountain climber and environmentalist. Politicians in mining-dominated Idaho can’t be trusted to clean up a century of pollution that’s washed downstream from Idaho’s Silver Valley, he said last week at a hearing called by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Ombudsman Robert Martin … Roskelley told Martin that Idaho is so backward he’s been thinking of launching a “Radio Free Idaho” to “broadcast subversive thoughts over the border.” The quip got a laugh from the Spokane crowd, which was largely supportive of a strong role for the EPA in the mining cleanup … We suspect it would get a different reaction on the other side of the border.
Top of the heap
Spokane voters rejected state Sen. Jim West’s bid to be their next mayor, but his Republican colleagues in the Senate still value his leadership. They elected West minority leader - the official title is Republican leader, to de-emphasize the fact that they’re two votes down in the Senate - during a caucus meeting Friday … The GOP is definitely looking east for leadership. Along with West, it chose Pat Hale of Kennewick as caucus chairman, Larry Sheahan of Spokane as floor leader, Alex Deccio of Yakima as whip and Mike Hewitt of Walla Walla as assistant whip.