Spin control : Outside spending deserves scrutiny

The Washington Public Disclosure Commission wants the Legislature to crack down on independent expenditures by putting limits on how much money independent groups can receive and spend in coming elections.

The PDC said last week it is motivated by a record amount of money – $5.5 million total – being dumped into the 2006 campaigns by groups trying to influence everything from the state Supreme Court races to a county commissioner seat.

Independent expenditure committees have been a problem since voters put campaign contribution limits on state races back in 1992.

A group of business types or unions or other like-minded folks with more money than sense, or at least more money than they can give directly to a candidate, get together. They dream up a euphonious name – Citizens For Super Swell Government, People Against Really Terrible Stuff, Committee to Do Only Nice Things – and park their money there.

A couple of lobbyists in Olympia have perfected the art of forming independent committees, and a couple of campaign ninjas specialize in attack ads.

The independents often wait until late in the campaign, then blanket a district with ads that portray their candidate as a cross between Gandhi and George Washington, or they say their candidate’s opponent shouldn’t be allowed within 100 yards of children, dogs or churches, let alone be sent to City Hall, the Legislature or Congress.

The nastier the ad, the more likely it is to come so late in the campaign that the targeted candidate can’t respond, and whatever news coverage it gets has to repeat the claims in an effort to debunk them. And the voters are left wondering “Just who are Citizens for Super Swell Government?”

“The dramatic and overwhelming increase of money spent on independent advertisements interferes with the fundamental democratic process,” Commissioner Mike Connelly said Thursday in a PDC release.

The increase in spending is pretty easy to prove. But how much it interferes with the democratic process might be more difficult.

For example, the biggest spender this year was a group calling itself “It’s Time For A Change” which at last count had shelled out $1.25 million on campaigns. It’s Time got all of its money from ChangePAC, another independent group, which in turn got more than half its money from the Building Industry Association of Washington.

The groups did a better job of moving their money around than picking candidates. It’s Time spent much of its money backing the losing side in a pair of state Supreme Court races. Meanwhile, another independent group, Citizens to Uphold the Constitution, sprang up to weigh in on the other side. That group was the No. 2 spender, at about $647,000.

Independent groups may be the political equivalent to Newton’s Third Law of Physics. For every group with too much idle cash that tries to push one side of an issue, an equal and opposite group will form to push the other side.

Why the ballot count dragged on

About one voter in eight in Spokane County turned in a ballot for the November election that couldn’t be immediately fed into the computer and tabulated.

Most of those – about 15,500 – had problems like using a pencil or the wrong color of ink to fill in the oval, using something other than a filled circle next to the name to pick the candidates or leaving random marks on the ballot.

Another 3,500 had signatures that didn’t match the registration form in the computer or had no signature at all.

Ballots that fell into the first group were “remade” by elections workers who carefully marked blank ballots for the candidates and positions of choice, under the watchful eyes of other elections workers and party observers. For those wondering why the ballot counts dragged on, that’s a big reason.

Voters who turned in ballots in the second group had a chance to “cure” their signatures. The county sent each of them an affidavit to fill out and sign, and either mail in or bring to the office. Those who didn’t respond got a call from elections officials, and in some cases the Republican and Democratic party officials who were given the names to do a little extra “encouraging.”

Figures released last week showed the best rate of curing signatures was in the 6th Legislative District, where two out of three signatures were fixed well enough to feed the ballots into the machine. In the adjoining 4th District, about 55 percent of the voters sent in affidavits on their own or were tracked down.

No surprise, considering the 6th had a legislative race so close it needed a recount, and the 4th featured blowouts.