Monday, November 7, 2016

STATE ELECTIONS

► From PubliCola — Vote for a Regional Upgrade. Vote for ST3. — Given the region’s explosive growth—86,000 people moved to the region in the last year alone, the biggest increase in 20 years—providing people with an alternative to driving cars is imperative for the economy and the environment. The region is expected to add 800,000 new people by 2040, reaching about five million people, an approximate 30 percent increase from 2014.

ALSO at The Stand — Sound Transit Prop. 1: Good jobs now and in the future

► In today’s Seattle Times — Lost your ballot? Looking for a dropbox? We’ve got you covered — Tuesday, Election Day, is the last day to vote in Washington state. Completed ballots must be in an elections-office dropbox by 8 p.m. Tuesday or, if mailed, postmarked no later than Tuesday. If you’re putting your ballot in a mailbox Tuesday, check the pickup times; if you’re unsure, use an election dropbox or go to the Post Office.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Click here for a list of ballot drop box locations and voting service centers in Washington state. Lost your ballot? You can still vote. You can print out a PDF replacement/provisional ballot online. Click here to find your county auditor and find out how to make your voice heard.

► From the Yakima H-R — State election officials think we might set a turnout record

► In the Seattle Times — Control of state House in play in spendy down-ballot races — Democrats are eager to rebuild a majority that has shrunk in recent years — and are spreading money across the state to try to pick off GOP-held seats. Republicans, meanwhile, would love to take the gavel from House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-Seattle). They’re trying to protect their seats and pick up the two needed to gain control.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Check out the complete list of election endorsements by the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

► From The Stranger — Here’s why you should care about tech, financial billionaires trying to influence state judicial races — Exerting influence over the ballot initiative process wasn’t enough to get the tech and finance billionaires the charter schools they wanted, so now it looks like they’re hoping that picking off individual state Supreme Court justices will do the trick.

ALSO at The Stand — Support three incumbent state Supreme Court justices

► From KUOW — Obama administration touts Washington’s higher minimum wage measure

► In today’s Seattle Times — After family feuds over Trump, Clinton and Sanders, can state Dems and GOP mend their party fences? — After family feuds over Trump, Clinton and Sanders, can state Dems and GOP mend their party fences? — “You have some people who consider themselves Republican elites who think they’re somehow above Mr. Trump, and then you have the 90 percent of Republicans in Washington state who are on board,” said state Sen. Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale), deputy state director for the Trump campaign. “We’re going to have the big tent, and they’re going to be stuck in a yurt.”

NATIONAL ELECTIONS

► From Think Progress — Mass poll closures in battleground states create potential for Election Day chaos — Since the Supreme Court struck down a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, more than a dozen Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed a wave of laws that restrict when, where, and how people can cast a ballot. They have also, a new report reveals, shut down hundreds of polling places. A study of nearly 400 counties in Alabama, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi found that those counties collectively reduced the number of polling locations available to voters by at least 16 percent — eliminating more than 860 places. This sharp reduction — which would have difficult to implement if the Voting Rights Act were still in full force—means that voters in dozens of counties may have to travel a greater distance and wait in a longer line.

► In today’s Washington Post — After roiling campaign, Comey tells Congress new emails are irrelevant — FBI Director James Comey said investigators determined that the newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails were either duplicates or personal emails that were not related to government business from her time as secretary of state.

► ICYMI, last week’s MUST-READ from Vox — The real Clinton email scandal is that a bullshit story has dominated the campaign (by Matthew Yglesias) — In total, network newscasts have, remarkably, dedicated more airtime to coverage of Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined. This is unfortunate because emailgate, like so many Clinton pseudo-scandals before it, is bullshit. The real scandal here is the way a story that was at best of modest significance came to dominate the U.S. presidential election — overwhelming stories of much more importance, giving the American people a completely skewed impression of one of the two nominees, and creating space for the FBI to intervene in the election in favor of its apparently preferred candidate in a dangerous way.

► From Huffington Post — Hillary Clinton wraps up campaign with a moving video about how it all began — It’s been more than 18 long months since Hillary Clinton confirmed that she would run for president. And with just hours left until election day, the Democratic nominee’s team decided to take an emotional look back at how her campaign to become the first female POTUS all started.

► From The Onion — Trump makes last-minute appeal to whites — “Mr. Trump will visit white churches and businesses in several states, conveying a hopeful message to the nation’s Caucasians that tomorrow will be brighter,” said Trump’s communications director, Hope Hicks. “We want white people, and in particular, white men, to recognize that they have a voice in this campaign, and we want to assure them that Donald Trump understands the white community’s concerns and will never stop fighting for them as president.”

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

► In today’s NY Times — A coup against the Supreme Court (editorial) — Republicans first justified their refusal to hold hearings or a vote on Mr. Obama’s nominee before the presidential election because “the people’s voice” needed to be heard. That was always a transparent lie. Now, apparently believing their candidate, Donald Trump, will lose, they are acting as though the Supreme Court is the property of the Republican Party. This mind-set isn’t just a matter of a few senators going rogue. Leading conservative groups are embracing the argument, happy to destroy a principle of American politics — to privilege partisanship over the Constitution itself… In the next Congress, regardless of who wins on Tuesday, the very survival of the court as an independent body will be at stake.

NATIONAL

► From TPM — Philadelphia’s transit strike comes to an end just before Election Day — Philadelphia’s transit strike is over. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority says the city’s main transit agency and the union representing about 4,700 workers reached a tentative agreement early Monday.

► In the Washington Post — Reed Larson, leader of right-to-work groups, dies at 93 — Reed Larson, the chief of a lobbying organization to outlaw compulsory union membership and mandatory payment of union dues in labor contracts, died Sept. 17 at his home in Seattle. He was 93.

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From the Nation — In GOP country, a small labor organization offers a model for fighting Trumpism — The Workers’ Project exists to organize Indiana’s broader community around issues that matter to working people. It is not a union, but it is supported by union members; it is not a community organization, but it is open to the community. Some of its projects, like the annual Labor Day picnic, draw near 6,000 people; others, like a high-school workers’ initiative spearheaded in the 1990s, focus on specific people left out of labor unions. Over the years, its funding and staffing have fluctuated; some projects lasted for years and others wrapped up quickly. But its mission has remained consistent, says Cheryl Hitzemann, who has worked with the Workers’ Project for years: “to help give workers some voice and power in the workplace, the economy and the community,” to act as a counterbalance to business and corporate interests.

The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.