Your last chance to vote is today and tomorrow so get your ballots in the mail and make your voice heard. Even if you’ve been burnt by national elections in the past, voting on the state and county levels is crucial to making a real impact.
For those of you following The Melon, we’ve done a lot of work in Pierce County writing and interviewing for the election. You can find all of our great interviews with candidates and advocates as well as links to articles in our:
As a former University of Puget Sound student who worked on the “Yes on Three” campaign to bring ranked choice voting (or, as we called it during the campaign, instant runoff voting) to Pierce County in 2006, I was disappointed to hear the news that the Pierce County Council voted put a repeal measure on the ballot this fall. Its action flies in the face of how well ranked choice voting (RCV) is working in other states and the rising support for the system, which now includes President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain.
Talking to friends back in Pierce County, the perception is that not enough voters understand the system. This comes as a big surprise to me. Of the countless number of voters that I talked to in 2006, only a single person objected to the system because they thought it was confusing. In the nine other municipalities that have run ranked choice elections this decade, voters have handled it quite well – in fact the number of invalid ballots was very low in Pierce’s RCV races as well. I have faith that people in my former county can handle ranking candidates just as well as they can in any of the other places using RCV.
The nominations are in and now it’s your turn to vote for the winners! The deadline for votes is December 28th, 2008 at 10am. Winners will be announced on January 3rd, 2008. (Note: Nominations in a given category were limited to one per person.) Please, one vote per person.
Voting for partisan candidates can be fairly easy, given the often clear lines of distinction drawn by the candidates. But what about those cumbersome “nonpartisan” races?
When Pierce County absentee ballots were mailed out last week for the August 19 Primary, I was one of the few political junkies who wasted no time filling mine out. Today I was contacted by a friend who basically asked how she should approach the “nonpartisan” portion of her ballot. Since it’s not everyday that someone is wise enough to tap the knowledge encapsulated in my head, I was happy to oblige…
Your last chance to vote is today and tomorrow so get your ballots in the mail and make your voice heard. Even if you’ve been burnt by national elections in the past, voting on the state and county levels is crucial to making a real impact.
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