The results of this month’s Spokane County election were certified on Tuesday, but the counting isn’t over.
Elections officials next week will recount by hand votes in the race for Airway Heights mayor.
City Councilman Patrick Rushing’s lead over incumbent Mayor Matthew Pederson grew in the latest tally to two votes.
[...]Spin Control will be on Thanksgiving hiatus, which is really just a fancy way of saying it's taking the week off.
We'll be counting all the things we're thankful for (from family and friends to work we enjoy, and even the ability to end a phrase with a preposition because it [...]
Northeast Spokane has an electoral problem that needs to be examined after the 2010 Census is complete. The problem isn’t who gets elected, but how few people do the electing.
Results from this year’s general election follow a pattern evident in council elections since districts were drawn earlier this decade, [...]
A reader was wondering about lower turnout areas in the city of Spokane, specifically questioning whether the lack of certain candidates on the ballot was responsible for the lower turnout in the city's Northeast Council District, West Central and East Central.
Probably not.
This is a map of last year's general [...]
Saturday Night Live has proved it can take shots at the Obama Administration just as it did at the Bush Admin.
For those of you who went to bed at a reasonable hour, and either forgot to set your recorder or pushed the wrong buttons, here's the Cold Open that makes [...]
A swath of central Spokane – roughly from the river to Wellesley Avenue – may have more women representing it in elective office than any place else in the country.
Eastern Washington in general is unique in the country for having women in top offices. No other voters outside the [...]
Spin Control regularly reports the voter turnout in elections as a gauge of the relative strength of different areas or neighborhoods.
But turnout is a percentage of the people who vote divided by the total people registered. Some areas that have high turnout don't have as many voters, and some with a relatively high number' [...]
Turnout in the city of Spokane for the Nov. 3 election averages just under 50 percent with just a few ballots yet to count.
But it varied significantly around the city, as is typical for most elections. This map divides the city's precincts into four equal segments based on turnout and [...]
The latest numbers for Proposition 4 continue to show it getting hammered all over the city. It lost all city precincts, so the only real question was, where did it lose worse?
[...]Rocky Treppiedi kept his District 81 School Board seat on the strength of his vote margins in the south and northwest parts of the district, which extends outside the city limits. Laura Carder did well in northeast Spokane, where she's run previously as a legislative candidate, but those precincts traditionally [...]
Late vote counts didn't really change the landscape for the City of Spokane's Fire Bond proposal. It did well in some of the vote rich regions of south and northwest Spokane, but did poorly on the north side and East Central. There aren't enough votes left to tip it over [...]
Everyone join in, please:
Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear
Washington Staaaate.
Happy Birthday to you.
Washington as a state turns 120 today. Don't feel bad if you forgot to send a card. Once you get passed 100, birthdays aren't that big a deal until you hit the really [...]
Former GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected to be autographing copies of her new book next month at the Coeur d'Alene Fred Meyer store.
Palin, who already has a best-seller before her book is even released next week, is tentatively scheduled for a Coeur d'Alene stop [...]
The only race that seems to be hanging fire still is the City of Spokane Fire Bond.
As of Friday, it had inched up to a 59.43 percent approval rating, or
29,611 for
20.215 against
It needs to get to 60 percent.
The county elections office estimates it has about 8,000 votes left [...]
Ted Sturdevant was named this morning the new director of the state Department of Ecology.
Gov. Chris Gregoire announced the appointment to replace Jay Manning, who moved from head of DoE to be her chief of staff.
Sturdevant has been with DoE for 7 years as director of external affairs, and before [...]
By late last week one question surrounding Referendum 71 was settled: The measure passed and the “everything but marriage” statutes go into effect for the whole state, after it was approved handily in most Puget Sound counties and hammered pretty badly elsewhere.
That’s really just the quick question the ballot measure generated. The longer one, which [...]
Incumbent Rocky Treppeidi inched a bit farther ahead of challenger Laura Carder in Thursday's vote count. But there's still a dramatic north-south split in the votes as shown in the map here.
[...]Andy Billig, the president of the Spokane Indians baseball, wants to play in a different league. He’s running for the state Legislature in central Spokane’s 3rd District.
As ballots were being cast and counted this week for the 2009 election, Billig filed papers with the state Public Disclosure Commission [...]
Spokane School Board incumbent Jeff Bierman is in a tight race with challenger Heidi Olson. As in the Treppiedi-Carder race, there's a distinct north-south split, as the map illustrates. Here's the latest tally, as of Wednesday evening:
Bierman 17,344 (51,35%)
Olson 16,431 (48.65%)
The Spokane School Board races are too tight to call with any certainty. But a look at the vote patterns shows a definite north-south split in both races.
It's probably most pronounced in the Position 4 race, where incumbent Rocky Treppiedi has a narrow lead over challenger Laura Carder. Current tally [...]
Spokane City Proposition 1, aka the Fire Bond Issue, inched a bit toward the supermajority it needs for passage in Wednesday evening's count. As the map shows, its support varied around the city. The ballot measure currently has a 58.85 percent approval; it needs 60 percent.
Jon Snyder continues to lead Mike Allen in the South Spokane Council District race. Latest tally:
Snyder 7,091
Allen 6,412.
[...]We're about two hours from another drop of election numbers in Spokane County. Elections Manager Mike McLaughlin said he expects 8,000 to 10,000 votes to be included in the count. That will leave roughly 30,000 votes left for the rest of the week.
The county received 22,567 ballots in the mail' [...]
There are few, if any, bright spots supporters of Envision Spokane's Community Bill of Rights will find in last night's count.
As a whole, Proposition 4 only garnered 25 percent support. It failed in all of the city's nearly 125 precincts.
The measure won 40 percent support only in four precincts: downtown Spokane,' [...]
Spokane's Fire Bond Issue didn't have the 60 percent super majority in ballots counted Tuesday night.
Click here to view a high-resolution JPG of this map.
[...]Initiative 1033 got hammered in the city of Spokane, but did well outside it.
Click here to download a high-resolution JPG of this map.
[...]As of Tuesday night, here's how the vote totals look in Spokane County for Referendum 71.
[...]The showing of Spokane City Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin -- the City Council's most conservative member -- in a district that voted for President Obama has prompted speculation that she may run as a Republican for state Rep. Alex Wood's seat next year in Spokane's 3rd Legislative District. That's eastern Washington's most [...]
Spokane voters seemed to spend a bit more time weighing their options this year. The two biggest days for ballots showing up at the elections office were yesterday and today.
The current ballot count stands at 98,968, which is 38.5 percent of all registered voters in the county. More than 39,000 [...]
Here's one of the more talked about election mailers distributed locally this campaign season.
It's from Envision Spokane, the campaign in support of Proposition 4. It hit mailboxes last week.
What do you think? Is it effective?
[...](Note: This story appeared in Sunday's paper, and through an oversight on my part didn't get posted simultaneously to the blog. So it appears here with links to the spread sheets that show the campaign spending, for those political junkies out there that eat this stuff up. Jim Camden.)
Among the' [...]
In a new video from BarelyPolitical.com, Obama Girl, aka Amber Ettinger, makes a pitch for someone to be appointed to the Social Security Board.
The plea is set to "Man of Constant Sorrow," and proves that blue-grass legend Ralph Stanley can still pick and sing, Obama Girl can dance even though [...]
