Well, November 8th has come and gone, and the people that were interested in voting have already done so, or failed to do so. It’s all over for this year.
Or is it? Next year is a Presidential Election Year. I’m sure some, if not all, have noticed that it’s already moving along. Obama hasn’t really done anything but campaign for half a year now. Then there’s the GOP debates, where one guy looks great in the polls for a week or two only to get knocked down a dozen points and have someone else rise to take their place. The exception seems to be Mitt Romney, who has maintained a position in the top 2 – 3 on every poll I’ve seen. This scares me, because he’s almost as conservative as Obama. Which is to say, not conservative.
But enough of the national stuff today. I want to go over the election results, briefly, in case there are any you missed. We’ll start with the state-wide issues, then look at a few of the bigger ones specific to King County
First, the Initiatives.
I-1125 – this is the initiative concerning tolling, which would set a requirement that the tolling be done by the legislature, not an independent group of appointed folks. It also would not allow for variable rate tolls. It also would have restricted the use of the money collected from those tolls to be used ONLY for transportation projects. I voted yes, but could have gone either way. It failed, by quite a large margin.
I-1163 – This is the initiative that supposedly sets educational and background check requirements for elderly and disabled care workers. They spent a little money on commercials talking about preventing old people from being abused by their care workers. A great and noble idea, except that it’s complete BS. This initiative changes nothing except where the required education comes from. Specifically, this takes the education out of the hands of the state and gives it over to a SEIU, the Service Employees International Union. I’m all for privatizing as much as possible, but to take something that the state pays for away from the state, and give it to a union who now will charge the state to provide services, and at a higher rate….. well, that’s just stupid. Remind me to thank the voters in this state for not paying attention, because this one passed with flying colors.
i-1183 – Likely the most talked about initiative you’ve ever seen. It’s basically a rework of I-1100 from last year, and the end result is that the state would have to shut down their liquor stores, sell off the property (more likely let the lease go) and get out of the liquor business. The state role will be enforcement, and only enforcement, and we’d get the privilege of purchasing our booze from businesses that are actually competing for our business. Crazy, this whole free market system. Contrary to the schmuck advertisements you see with the 14 year olds buying a fifth of Jack at the local 7-11, which isn’t even allowed to sell liquor under this bill, there really are no down sides to this. Unless you happen to be the state and really like having ultimate power and monopoly over something that’s not your business in the first place. As such, the voters saw through the BS this year and passed the initiative. This was the most expensive item on a ballot in Washington State, ever, outpacing even the Gubernatorial election from a few years back when we ended up with 2 or 3 recounts. You know, the one where the Dems “found” several thousand votes and we got stuck with evil and ugly for our Governor?
Here’s the actual counts of each initiative from King County voters.
The number from King County usually tend to be skewed from that of the rest of the state, given that King County is extremely liberal, and most of the rest of the state is much less so, faring into very conservative in some places. This year, the King County numbers look very similar to those of the rest of the state on the initiatives, as well as the Amendments to the State Constitution. I was surprised, too.
The ballot measures to amend the Constitution both passed overwhelmingly. 8205 actually had over 80% in King County. 8206 had nearly 70%. Seeing as 8205 actually did nothing except to change our constitution to match the laws we’re already following, I’m a little surprised that 20% of the people voted against it, but whatever works for them I suppose. 8206 established spending limits for years when revenues are flowing in, although it’s based in percentages where I would have really preferred an actual hard dollar cap. It also requires the establishment of a rainy day fund that is specifically paid into in the years when we have good revenue, to be used in the years when we have a shortfall to avoid situations like we’re in now. You know the one, where the folks in Olympia decided that they didn’t' need to cut spending, and now we have a $2 BILLION budget gap? Obviously, there’s a chunk of folks in Olympia who would fail a Junior High level economics class, but I digress. Here’s the actual vote counts for King County on these issues.
These are the only ballot issues this year that were state wide. Everything else was school district, hospital district, water district, local, county, etc. The big one around here was our County Council seats that were open. Positions 2, 4, 6, and 8 were up for election this year. Coming from someone who isn’t a fan of our County Council to begin with, I am pretty happy with the way it went. I would prefer we had some folks that err on the side of individual freedom occasionally, but I’ll take middle of the road conservatives over the libtards we usually see any day of the year. Here’s the results.
If you should happen to live in King County and want to check specific results, go to http://www.kingcounty.gov/elections/results.aspx. You can find results for every election from the last decade there. If you’re outside King County, I suggest you find the site for your local county department of elections. Most should have results available for you to review, at least from the most recent elections.
On a side note to all the “No On 1183” folks. Suck it. We won, despite your advertisements having zero truth, and being so far beyond “misleading'” that they were simple, flat out lies. Federal Law prohibits businesses from having monopolies on anything, even when there are valid reasons why they do, and will specifically require private businesses to take action to break up or avoid monopoly situations that are negative to the health of the business. The justification is that it’s bad for consumers to only have one choice, and a monopoly makes it inevitable that a business will seek to take advantage of consumers. But it’s ok for the consumers to only have one choice and be taken advantage of if it’s run by the state?
I’ll say it again. Suck it, morons. Freedom won.
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