Washblog

In Good Faith?

Maleng say's he won't prosecute according to this mornings PI:
he won't prosecute Sotelo for perjury. "She acted in good faith, withdrawing 178 challenges filed in error." He also said that "That law [the state law on address challenges -- and cited by Logan at Monday's Canvassing Board meeting -- that requires the challenger to supply the voter's actual home address, something Sotelo did not do] shouldn't govern the type of challenge Sotelo filed, which targeted the voter's initial qualifications. According to the PI he will seek a legal opinion from his, cronies er, the Attorney General Rob McKenna and Secretary of State Sam Reed, both Republicans.

This all ties in well with the formation of a PAC for the Judiciary. If the republicans [and by republicans I do mean the BIAW and such] can’t win with an even playing field they are going to tip the field in there favor regardless of the intent of the law. Sign Switzersblog’s petition. We must use this as a rallying cry - No Voter Disenfranchisement!

Sims to Maleng: Prosecute Lori Sotelo

Ron Sims today called on Norm Maleng to initiate an investigation of perjury by Lori Sotelo in the case of the nearly 2,000 voter registration challenges she filed with no personal knowledge of the voters' actual eligibility. 

"The Canvassing Board made the right decision," Sims said. "The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, and what Ms. Sotelo did was an abuse of the challenge process. By signing an oath ‘under penalty of perjury' in which she swore she had ‘personal knowledge' that hundreds of King County voters were incorrectly registered – at least 178 of which were subsequently withdrawn after evidence came to light that the voters in question were correctly registered – she willfully and needlessly abused the voter challenge process. This was a deliberate attempt to intimidate voters and dissuade them from voting, and ought to be investigated and then prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

"The sad fact is that the vast majority of the voters – more than 1,000 – challenged by Ms. Sotelo ended up not voting in this election. In that sense, Ms. Sotelo and other party officials involved in her effort can say, ‘Mission Accomplished.' Unfortunately, our nation has a long and well documented history of systematic efforts by some groups and parties to disenfranchise large numbers of people, or alternately to intimidate them into not exercising their right to vote, and this effort appears to fall squarely in that tradition.

As I said last night, damn straight!  Get this petition to your friends and get them to sign it.  We need to stand with Ron Sims and Larry Phillips in demanding that Norm Maleng do his job!  Time is short, so let's get this ball really rolling today!

Damn straight!

Winter Storm '05 is bearing down on us, with its life-altering one to three inches of snow (unless it doesn't), and I'm enjoying, tremendously, the GOP's attempt to spin Lori Sotelo's utter failure to do her job into a win for them.

I'm going to say it again.  Lori Sotelo, liar, cheat and bully, failed at her task.  Unless her task was to be exposed as a careless person who is willing to perjure herself and sacrifice the rights of others for base partisan gain.  (okay, she was so sloppy she even failed at the base partisan gain.  Poor Lori.)

Tomorrow, Norm Maleng is holding a press conference to outline the procedure for deciding what action is required for the last unresolved challenged registrations.  One hopes he would mention the 1944 cases of perjury Lori Sotelo should be charged with, but I'm not holding my breath.  As we've known, it'll be up to us to pressure him to do his job and uphold the laws - click here and sign the petition if you haven't already.  Send it to your friends if you have.

Before we go to the jump, let me just say that Anonym deserves major, major kudos for his great coverage over the past couple weeks.  He's done yeoman's work, sitting through those boring meetings (I sat through part of one - yeesh!), and giving us solid coverage in a 'just the facts' style.  So, kudos, Anonym!

More after the jump - Dean Logan's statement, and more!

70% of Republican Voter Registration Challenges REJECTED!

I knew that today's Canvass Board meeting was a big deal when I showed up today - there were at least two tv cameras, and 5-6 microphones recording the action at the Canvass Board table.  The true sign that this was a really big story was the fact that Goldy from Horsesass and Stefan Sharkansky from Soundpolitics were both seated a couple aisles in front of me.  Of course, because I like pain so much, I stayed through the entire meeting - Goldy on the other hand (showing why he is the local liberal blogking) scampered early and scooped me.  Oh well!

The big story of the meeting was that 70% of the challenges issued by Ms. Sotelo were rejected!  (133 of the challenges were rejected, 57 accepted - these were only the challenged voters who actually voted in the 11/8 election - the rest of the 1,944 challenged voter registrations will be heard at another time).

Christmas Gift; Documentary The Power of Nightmares

Recommended BCC documentary; The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear

We give this a Highly Recommended rating, please take the time to view, it is full of detail and if you don't watch all of it, guaranteed you will learn something new even from watching bits of it!

Hi Friends,

We watched all three; and the history relevant to US getting into Iraq is profound. So much so that we believe it a valued gift at Christmas this year...it contributes immensely to the dialogue with language not yet used. A BBC documentary that US media will not air in this country....it's apparant why not once you see the videos. Highly recommended, and sharing among my 'bring them home now' friends. Lietta (and Arthur; he found them and shared with me)

The Power of Nightmares -
THIS IS A MUST WATCH DOCUMENTARY
Each program is 58 minutes long - - Real Video -11-26

Part 1 http://tinyurl.com/7qhmt
Part 2 http://tinyurl.com/af2aw
Part 3 http://tinyurl.com/8j27y

Douglas County at it again

Douglas County and East Wenatchee went to a whole bunch of trouble to get feed back from citizens through out the county by doing a survey at the East Wenatchee mall for several days over 70% (several thousand people of all walks of life) that took the survey stated they wanted less growth or slow growth and lots of parks, orchards, trails, spaces, etc. responsible development and to maintain the small town rural atmosphere that is or I should say was so appealing about this area.

The survey was done for input on visioning as required by law for the update of the County Comp Plan. In the end developers and the commissioners didn't like the statement so they thumbed their nose at it. It seems that this 'to hell with the majority' attitude would be fraudulent but our elected officials don’t seem too worried. It needs to be studied to see if the comp plan (to be adopted) violates the original vision statement and if it does the Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board would probably remand the plan back to the county to make the county comply. But the commissioners are so imbedded with the developers that they don't give a damn about the majority of the citizens.

Of course when your county commissioners have family and close friends that are realtors, developers, construction workers, own asphalt plants & sand and gravel pits, you have a pretty good idea of where their loyalty lies.

It depends what the meaning of "is" is

“We made some mistakes. We’re sorry about that.” --  with those words, State Republican Chair Chris Vance expects that his party's legal and PR problems will just disappear into the mist.

Continuing the extension of their newly discovered moral equivalency, Vance and the GOP's attorneys are pulling out all the stops to avoid any repercussions for their irresponsible, thuggish, lying, cheating actions when they tryied to deny the right to vote to nearly 2000 people.  (click here for complete coverage)  In this article from the Federal Way Mirror, Vance claims (incorrectly) that the GOP doesn't need to provide the voters' actual address as required by law.  Parsing the law far beyond its actual meaning, he's decided "the actual residence must be verified only if the challenge is over the person's residential address.  Voters who registered a post office or personal mail box as their residential address have 'given us no address at all,' Vance said."

The best quote:

He further defended Sotelo and the county Republicans’ challenge. “Making some errors is not the same thing as perjury,” he said.

Bullshit.  That's a pretty damn interesting perspective coming from a party that tried to impeach a Democratic President for perjury.  The bottom line, despite what Chris Vance's fat, lying ass says, is that Lori Sotelo signed 1,944 documents "under penalty of perjury" that she had personal knowledge that voters were illegally registered.  She had no such knowledge.  That is perjury, no matter how many Republican attorneys try to twist the meaning.

Sign the petition - We'll bring it to Norm Maleng, and keep the pressure on him to do his job and prosecute Lori Sotelo for perjury as required by law.  If you've signed it, forward it to others.  We must not let up on this!

And if you want the public to remember how the GOP views their right to vote, write a letter to your local paper.  Then support Senators Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Karen Keiser's legislation to prevent this type of bullying, lying and cheating.

Strategery

2006 is definitely going to be a huge year in Washington. We have both chambers of the state legislature and a great leader in Governor Gregoire to work on legislation during the winter and early spring, then the elections in the fall.

Priorities for a Healthy Washington has an outline of their 2006 legislative agenda, and the Institute for Washington's Future is working toward an ambitious goal of their own.

Blogs will play an integral role in lobbying democrats and republicans on legislation, and groups like the IWF and Healthy WA will need all the help they can get.

Along with environmental legislation, taxes is another issue that needs to be addressed. True 'political capital' was earned by the democrats in the state legislature, and by Governor Gregoire with I-912's defeat. To reform the B&O tax, property tax, and the sales tax into a more progressive income tax, they are going to need every ounce of that 'capital'. But Gregoire can get it done like she did with the transportation package.

My take is these two issues - environment and taxes - have the opportunity to do what we need in order to win elections. By educating and bringing into the fold more of the rural voters that were previously lost to property rights reactionaries, and the poor who are apathetic on all candidates, the democrats will have a nice base to work with come November. The key is constant voter contact, education, and new voter registration. As activists, this legislation would give us great talking points to sell to other constituents whenever contact happens.

What other legislative priorities would you like to see come from Olympia?

Dicks gets it, Dick doesn't...

It's good to hear when a Democrat realizes that their support of the Iraq War was a mistake and they admit.

"Three years ago, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., loudly and proudly backed President Bush's plan to deploy troops to Iraq...

...Now he's joined the growing ranks of politicians who believe the war was a mistake _ his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war...

...Dicks now said he believes the intelligence was "doctored" and that the White House did not prepare for or deploy enough troops for the insurgency that's unfolded. He said he would "absolutely not" have voted for the war had he known there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction." from: State congressman reverses opinion on Iraq - Once in favor of Iraq war, now Dicks calls it a mistake.

It makes me proud that this guy comes from my state of Washington, although I wish he had been a bit less trusting when the administration was selling the war in the first place.

Dick Cheney of course is tight with the administration in putting their own pride and desire to never admit error as a goal much more important to them then competence or what will help America.

Big Time Patriot

Home builders & Co. ready to pour $ into WA judicial races

Senator Johnson represents me in the 47th Legislative District and, evidently, is preparing to leave the State Senate to run for a judicial position.  This PAC appears ready to influence judicial races across the state.

Dear Senator Johnson:

I see from an article in today's PI that you are likely to be receiving contributions from a new PAC that is preparing to further politicize Washington by pouring money into the campaigns of right-wing individuals such as yourself who are planning to run for judicial office.

This PAC, with the deceptively reassuring name of The Constitutional Law PAC, appears to have a clear goal of leveraging large amounts of money from big corporate interests to create an activist, conservative court that will be likely to make decisions that financially benefit its supporters. These supporters include the home builder's lobby.

The article states that you are interested in receiving this PAC's support.

It was my impression that, in theory at least, conservative people were against the politicization of our judicial system.  It was my understanding that conservatives view the term, "activist judge" as a kind of insult that they can use to denigrate liberals like me.  However, it appears that, in this case, as in so many others lately, it is the conservatives who are enthusiastically promoting judicial activism.  This apparent hypocricy in the interest of private financial gain is deeply disappointing to me.  I like to feel I can respect the elected officials who represent me, regardless of their political philosophy. It saddens me to see behavior that appears, at least from my perspective, to be neither honest or honorable.

I would appreciate hearing from you as to whether you support this intrusion of ideologically-motivated money into our judicial system.  If so, how do you square this activist approach with the conservative world view -- or, for that matter, with ethical representation of the people of Washington state that considers the common good as its primary goal?

Many thanks for your attention to this extremely important matter.