Sign flaps routine, but not this one

At this point in the campaign, every candidate has lost campaign signs, and 99 percent of them are blaming their opponents for a concerted effort to desecrate, decimate and otherwise disgrace their multicolored placards.

They call, they complain, we listen, but frankly, we don’t do anything because signage loss is something built into the campaign budget and most of it is a result of random acts of unkindness by nonpartisan vandals.

But George Nethercutt’s Senate campaign made such an outrageous claim about lost signage last week that it gave us pause.

In a letter to Patty Murray’s campaign manager, Carol Albert, Nethercutt counterpart Tom Mason claimed that not only had her supporters stolen a bunch of his signs, but the senator had stood idly by, and watched them.

This all happened, the Nethercutt campaign claimed when pressed, last Sunday at a certain intersection in Seattle. Two campaign workers said they saw Murray and her husband watch the sign pilferage then calmly get into a Chevy Yukon.

Ridiculous, said the Murray campaign. She wasn’t even in Seattle on Sunday; she was on Whidbey Island with her family. She doesn’t condone dirty campaign tricks like that.

And they don’t have a Yukon.

“I wonder if whomever supposedly saw Senator Murray was the same person who thinks she cut Coast Guard funding,” said Murray spokeswoman Alex Glass, referring to an ad by the Nethercutt campaign that brought several Coast Guard officers to her defense. “It’s a fantasy.”

Alex Conant, Nethercutt’s spokesman, said his campaign workers remain positive about what they saw – although they did not actually talk to the person they claim was Murray. “All I know is what our staff guys told us.”

Conant added that they hadn’t been trying to make a big deal out of the incident. “We just sent the letter,” he said.

And e-mailed copies of it to the news media, of course.

A welcome respite

But there is something nice to say about the Senate campaigns.

Both of them pulled their commercials yesterday and refrained from campaigning, in commemoration of the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Some other candidates also observed the day with similar restraint.

If there’s one thing from this year’s campaigns that catches on, let’s hope it will be this.

Giving everyone a day’s rest from the campaign cacophony is the least we can do.

The write stuff

Upset with the new primary system, some voters might be thinking of going at least partway back to the old “blanket” primary by writing in the name of a candidate from a different party in Tuesday’s election, County Auditor Vicky Dalton said.

That might make you feel better, but it’s almost surely a wasted vote in that race. Chances are, no one will ever know but you, Dalton said.

That’s because elections officials don’t record each name scrawled on the blanks provided on the ballot.

The computer does register the number of write-ins in a given race. If there are enough write-ins to affect the outcome of a particular election – say if one candidate got 30 votes, another got 25, and the write-ins totaled 31 – elections staff would go through the write-ins and see whose name was there.

But an occasional write-in of a Republican name in the Democratic gubernatorial primary or a Democratic name in the Republican congressional primary? It ain’t gonna matter, so no one’s going back to check what name is on that line.

In case you’re wondering

And for those who are still worried that someone will figure out which party’s ballot they chose, write it down or tell someone else, there’s this note from the secretary of state’s office.

State law says it’s a gross misdemeanor to reveal what ballot a voter chooses in the primary. That would be punishable by a fine of as much as $5,000, or up to a year in jail.

We’re guessing it’s not worth that to anyone who is working the polls.