Greg Nickels concedes (Seattle mayor primary)

Ongoing (Live Broadcast) | KING5

[djf]

After two terms as mayor of Seattle, Greg Nickels is now conceding.

[Lexinom]

Oh, that’s right, now I remember.

Still, good news about Nickels. His departure is via the preferred mechanism.

[4woodenboats]

Nickels is now free to join Sims under Obama's "Trade in your clunker civil servant" program.

Maybe they can work together on the "Turn This Country Into One Bigass Tent City" project.

[WeatherGuy]

[stormer]

All voting is by mail, so they have to make sure they have them all.

[normanpubbie]

I understand. But my point was that they seemed to be taking a long time to count the ballots on hand (two-and-a-half days). For that matter, how many days does it take for ballots to arrive in the mail from the most far-flung precincts within the city limits?

Here in Oklahoma, mail-in ballots have to be in the county election board office on election day. This minimizes the possibility of fraud in the voting process.

And fraud is a real possibility in Washington state. Remember Gregoire's election?

[stormer]

This is the first time that all balloting has been by mail, so there may be a learning curve. Also keep in mind that while the county that Seattle is in is the most metropolitan in the state, there are areas that are extremely remote, and since the county runs elections, they may want to have all their ducks in a row before they provide final countywide figures.

I also never really bought into the allegations of election fraud - no question it was close - but it doesn't explain how well Gregoire did running for her second term against the same opponent. The biggest problem for Republicans is Washington is that they can't seem to find qualified candidates. In the last few elections we've had a really loony religious fanatic who practically thought God spoke through her husband, a talk show host who was kicked off TV for giving the finger to his co-host on air, and a guy who couldn't shake the slum-lord tag and left a lot of folks wanting to wash their hands after hearing him speak.

[MediaMole]

It’s a non-partisan primary, meaning that two lefties will face off in the general election. The top two vote getters go on to the general election. It isn’t like a partisan primary.

[normanpubbie]

I was referring to the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election. There were massive irregularities in the election, including "newly found ballots" (which is always suspicious), ineligible voters who were found to have cast votes, a large difference between the initial count and the machine recount, and other elements which strongly suggest that fraud occurred in that election.

As of 8 p.m. Saturday, the King County website indicates that 145035 ballots have been received in from Seattle city, with 341,567 received county-wide. It will be interesting to see if these numbers increase this week.

From your post, in the past the Republicans have put up bozos for mayor. Why don't the Republican leaders in Seattle and statewide work harder to find good candidates?

[stormer]

Those were gubernatorial candidates BTW. The GOP in Washington lacks vision and the tactics that work in other regions won't work here. The folks here by in large don't go to church, are surprisingly libertarian, and “greener” than in other places. Combine that with the fact that Washington has a greater percentage of the population working in science, engineering, and technology than any other state, a large number of critical military installations, and a high percentage of retired military folks. People here aren't interested in rain-makers, they want competent critical thinkers regardless of party - think Dan Evans or Scoop Jackson.

[normanpubbie]

King County Election Board received 156 ballots today, 101 of them from Seattle. Dang that Pony Express is slow.

There is so much disenchantment with Obama and the Democrats this year that, if the 'Phants put forth some extra effort across the country (including WA and OR), we could make larger gains in 2010 than in the usual off-year elections.