If you ever thought "it doesn't matter whether I vote"

[geniph]

I hope the governor's race this year has changed your mind. One vote may end up making the difference for Washington state.

[ken-in-seattle]

1. It will become Voter registration tool.

I remember all the people saying "my vote doesn't count" while trying to get them to register.

Unfortunatly it will work for both sides...

[Heath.Hunnicutt]

2. It also matters to volunteer

Gregoire would quite likely have won if only there had been 20 more volunteers (at one day apiece) for canvassing in King County last weekend.

Not to disagree with you on the voting. Just adding my 2c.

[geniph]

3. Oh, I agree with you

and I've done my time canvassing and phonebanking this year, believe me. Wore out my shoes!

[Heath.Hunnicutt]

4. Right on...

Oh, I didn't mean any offense. I didn't really mean to address you, directly, but really just add to your true message. I sort of figured that many people who post on DU are walkers, callers, bloggers, or otherwise fighters. :)

OTOH, I am so bummed that we were so short of votes, when I now know for sure that quite a few of our side's votes didn't get counted.

I told a Republican that I thought it was lame his side didn't make the same effort. He replied that it was revealing that I saw it as some sort of competition to round up votes. I actually saw it as amazing that they let down their constituents who were affected. I was equally amazed at the way the County elections office handled these matters. I have a feeling that the handling of mismatched signatures is a part of the process that was never so critical-path before, and this time, the government oepration had the usual effectiveness and urgency. The difference this time was, this process mattered toward the outcome. Thus, the dems did what they could to make an effective, urgent, bidirectional (to and from the voter and the Records & Elections office) messaging system.

Of course, in WA state, we ought to consider changing any number of aspects of our voting system. We ought to be able to account, at all times, for the status of every voter registration, ballot, vote, etc. If a CD store can have mostly effective loss-prevention year-round, let's try to take it to the same level in our voting process.

I also heard people talk about "Precinct Committee Officers." Interesting historical idea. I guess each party has these people, per-precinct, who are tasked with getting to know the voters of that precinct, especially constituents. It was asked why they had not been involved more directly, and my take on the response is that there had been a lack of expansive logistics due to complete utilization of human resources up to that point.

[geniph]

6. PCOs were very much involved

In my district, at least, I know all the active PCOs were out walking their own precincts as well as targeted precincts. Who said they weren't more directly involved? I'm curious what district(s) people who have that impression are in. The South King County Coordinated Campaign office worked very closely with our legislative district chairs and all the PCOs. I think it probably depends on who was running your Coordinated Campaign office, and how closely they were working with the local LD chairs.

[marlakay]

5. I told my husband the same thing the other night

We are moving up to Washington to semi-retire this summer. To Leavenworth and I checked out how they voted and it was only slightly more on the red side. Being new I won't want to offend people but I will slowly try to get people to understand our side. I think living in a more red area will be a challenge for me. I live in the bay area now. But my husbands brother he is close to lives in Spokane and I have lots of relatives in Seattle (all dems).

But I told Mike look how close the race is up there, we must never not vote and try even harder to get others to vote!