Making Sense of the Election
Analysis by Paul de Armond
Nov 16, 2003
The 2003 election season was a milestone in studied disinterest and mediocrity. It set new records for uncontested races and lopsided victories. Those who think local politics are a complete waste of time have been vindicated.
The shallow pool of candidates who filed for office this year guaranteed a lack-luster turnout. A very high number of unchallenged positions stole the wind out of the primary races. In my case, I went to the polls in September and received a ballot with exactly one race on it: the Bellingham mayor's seat.
The three top races were the EMS levy, which motivated 95% of the voters casting ballots. The Port of Bellingham race was next in interest, where 80% of the active voters registered a choice. The one incumbent launched from office managed to leave in a blaze of glory. Ginny Benton was forcefully ejected from the Port of Bellingham by a whoppingly lopsided loss (for an incumbent.) Apart from this one race, there might as well not have been an election.
The third most important contest was the Bellingham mayor's race. It turned into a vacuum of thud and blunder. Turnout statistics are not published for the Bellingham races, but the mayoral contest outdrew all other city positions. Incumbent Mark Asmundson promised nothing and will have little trouble delivering. Challenger Brett Bonner proved that being a talk radio jock in the Whatcom media market is useless for developing a grasp of issues or a feeling for what the people want in government.
Despite historic highs in the amount of money pumped into the mayoral campaign, neither candidate was able to reach beyond a shallow and insubstantial base, leaving the outcome to be determined by whose supporters feared and loathed the opposing candidate the most. None offered anything other than the promise of drifting aimlessly into the future.
The "New Politics" is mostly a story of elections where the public has no role. This is reflected in an unusually high number of ballots that were cast but which contained no choice for one or more items, a phenomenon known as "falloff." In the "New Politics," issues are mostly eyewash and entertainment value trumps decision making. The public is forced into the role of passive spectator, a consumer instead of a participant. Think of it as performance art.
I'm proud to say that I did my part for the "New Politics" this season. I served as treasurer in a Port of Seattle race promising to distribute Port graft more widely under the slogan "swag for the little man."
When the marbles were counted in September, nearly 20,000 King County voters (9%) agreed with our platform. The idea is somewhat mind-boggling, particularly if you imagine that many people gathered in the same place with the knowledge they shared this common bond. The campaign consisted of filing for office, writing a scathingly satirical statement for the voters pamphlet and encouraging supporters to write letters to the Seattle papers denouncing our candidate as a mockery of all that was good and decent. The candidate avoided media attention by leaving the area for several weeks immediately after filing. As treasurer, my job was to prevent the expenditure of funds until after the polls closed, whereupon we proceeded to buy drinks for all comers at Shorty' s Bar on Second Avenue. All in all, "swag for the little man" was more successful at achieving its intended campaign goals than any other race I' ve worked on in the last fifteen years.
What's the reason for this cynically jaded stance? The answers are not very complex and can be seen in the Whatcom election returns.
1. Political parties no longer matter in local elections. The politics of division, litmus tests and wedge issues have left both the Democrats and Republicans as hollowed out shells. Neither has anything to contribute to the local electoral process and both have opted for a 50/50 partnership dividing up the spoils while committing themselves firmly to a policy of drift enlivened by flamboyant stalemate. None of the races show any significant correlation with party positions on the issues or endorsement of the candidates. In the county, the Democrats squandered resources on McShane' s safe seat and stiffed Kaufmann. In the city, Republicans couldn't get any coat-tails going behind Bonner, sinking Yorkston and thowing Hansey to the wolves. Organizations prosper by the strong extending help to the weak. Instead, we have the regressive situation of strong candidates undermining the organizations that support them. Incumbency is all and the parties simply don' t matter in the local elections anymore. It' s every man for himself and devil take the hindmost.
2. The primary process is now thoroughly rigged in favor of incumbents. The winner-take-all "Cajun Primary" where the top two candidates are selected by district but elected at large is overwhelming biased towards keeping seats warmed by the same butts. Barring the sort of self-inflicted catastrophe that overtook Benton this year, an occupied seat is a safe seat - forever.
3. The change to a plurality of votes being cast by absentee has wiped out the possibility of grass-roots politics and made money the center of campaigns. This is because grass-roots politics is based on volunteers having face-to-face contact with the electorate. This meant that campaigns depended on people participating. Door-belling and phone banking could make the difference (all other things being equal). But no longer. The shift to voting by mail deflates the last three weeks of campaigning into a mushy fog of uncertainty. The usual rhythm of grass-roots campaigns was a crescendo of activity peaking on election day. Getting the same impact with so many people voting by mail now requires many more volunteers and many more hours canvassing. Volunteers can no longer carry a campaign. Instead, the purchase of mass advertising is substituted for people being engaged. And voters are turned from participants into consumers.
These factors show up very strongly in the voting returns and the ballot falloff numbers. Falloff is the percentage of ballots cast that are left blank for a particular race or issue. It could be considered a "none-of-the-above" vote. Typically, falloff increases the farther down the ballot you go. It is usually explained as voter apathy or indifference. It' s not apathy. If voters were apathetic, they wouldn't mail their ballots or go to the polls. I think that voters take their duties very seriously and falloff is an indication they lack sufficient information to make a responsible decision. Rather than toss a coin, they indicate no preference. A lesser factor is that they do have sufficient information to feel that neither candidate would represent their interests and aspirations. The 20,000 votes in King County in favor of "swag for the little man" show that this can be a significant number of voters.
The #1 vote-getter in the county-wide election was the EMS levy, with a 6% falloff. This is what brought people to the polls and they voted "no" by roughly 56%, an eight-point spread. Initiative 841 (barring workplace ergonomics regulations) performed similarly, with a 59% "yes" vote and a 7% falloff.
When the candidates are considered, the falloff increased dramatically. The top race in the county was the Port election, with Jorgensen carrying an astounding 71% of those who voted and 18% falloff.
The only close race in the county was the Sam Crawford / Mike Kaufman contest for County Council District 2. Incumbent Crawford eased by with about a thousand votes for a 52% majority. But this race was marked by 25% falloff, over eleven thousand ballots without a choice for either of the two candidates. If you count falloff as a "none-of-the-above" vote, Crawford was put back in office by a minority.
The same falloff happened in Dan McShane's lopsided 2 to 1 reelection over Kerry Chappell, where falloff was over 25%. It' s interesting to compare McShane's 22,000+ votes to Crawford's 17,500+ if you want a reading on whether the county likes rational environmentalism over the Building Industry Association's shill. An unresolved question is if the falloff was due to the same voters or not. That question will have to wait for precinct by precinct numbers when the final tally comes out.
The uncontested county races showed a variable rate of falloff from Pete Kremen's 34% to Barbara Brenner' s amazing 48% falloff. It's sort of mind boggling that Battling Barb nearly beat herself without opposition.
Calculating the falloff in the Bellingham elections is a matter of guesswork, since the only turnout statistics are for the county as a whole. So the falloff can only be figured in relative terms. Which is a pity, since I'd certainly like to know how many voters punched a pasteboard in my home town.
If the falloff was anything like the county races, 15%-25% falloff in the mayor's race would be expected. I suspect the falloff was in the middle of this range, due to the high-visibility mud wrestling that dominated this season. So maybe there were something like 20 -24,000 voters in the Bellingham election.
At any rate, the battle for the executive washroom at City Hall drew 9,915 detached chads for hizzoner and 8,326 for his microphone slinging opponent (as of the unofficial count on 11/14.) That's pretty close to a round 18,000 votes total. With a 15% falloff, there would have been enough spare chads to keep Brett Bonner off the airwaves if all of the undecided had swung his way.
The ceremonial re-insertion of Mayor Mark and his merry crew shows the same pattern of falloff we saw in the county races. All the incumbents retained their carefully warmed seats amid a rising tide of voter disinterest.
Bob Ryan outdid Barbara Brenner and actually managed to get less that 50% of the city ballots cast punched in his favor, even though he had no opposition for the First Ward slot. Therese Holm got slightly over half of the total votes cast in the mayoral contest.
John Watts had what passes for a close race these days, pulling about 8,000 to Barney Yorkston's 7,200. The falloff of over 5,000+ votes not cast in this Third Ward race looks pretty big compared to that 800 vote margin. My guess would be a sizeable chunk of those five thousand uncast votes are people who had to talk to John about city business.
In the Fifth Ward, Terry Bornemann pulled the now familiar 3:2 wool over Don Hansey's eyes. Hansey should take some comfort in the nearly 4,000 uncast votes being more than enough to make up the gap. The At Large position was essentially the same story, but with a slightly smaller falloff.
The smelly business of parties unable to bring their candidates together and instead retreating to defend safe seats should be a familiar situation to readers of Walter Karp's analysis of safe districts. The Democrats' failure to pull together in the county and the Republicans' similar performance in the city bodes ill for both parties. When politicians put their self-interest above all else, it ill-serves the public examination of policy and makes people the servants of government instead of the other way around. It's up to both of the parties to start thinking about whether their purpose is bringing people into the process or shutting them out.
So there you have it. Local politics is finally a complete waste of everybody's time. Whatcom County now looks like the rest of the nation.
Get your latest numbers at:
http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/auditor/elections/results/2003_general.jsp
Paul de Armond is a Bellingham resident and long-time analyst of local elections, as well as a political researcher specializing in conflict, society and political violence. Denounced as a radical by conservatives and a thorn in the side to liberals, he has abandoned ideology as a perversion of wisdom. As a research analyst, he delights in discovering he's wrong because that provides the opportunity to gain a more accurate view of the world. His views are his own and nearly as irritating to himself as to others.
Email to Paul is: jake@publicgood.us
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