From Our Corner

R-71 update: More than 110,000 names checked

Exactly one month after the Referendum 71 petitions were delivered to the Office of Secretary of State, the latest update shows that signature checkers have reviewed over 110,000 signatures.

More than 6,000 signatures have been counted since the Monday update, bringing the cumulative total to 110,288 checked signatures. Of this total, 97,261 have been accepted and 13,027 rejected for one… Read more

Nurse, can you find me that old record?

Image One of the main tasks of the State Digital Archives folks in Cheney has been digitizing records dating back many decades or even a century ago. A very recent accomplishment deals with registered nurses licensing files. Back in 1909, our… Read more

5 Questions about the R-71 check: What you’re asking

Thanks for being so curious about the ins and outs of signature checking. We’ve been getting tons of questions from you on the blog about the ongoing R-71 check. Our team will talk with you about these inquiries in a daily “5 Questions” post. Today’s topics: The third check, database dates and policies, oh my! Q) How long do you wait to do the third and final check? A) The third check – the final step that checks to catch any recent voter registrations – is ongoing and is being completed… Read more

Lost Newspaper: "Spokesman Review"

It came as a great shock to us here at the library when the Spokane, Washington newspaper, "Spokesman Review," decided it would no longer mail its publication; home delivery or the Internet will be the only options.

Now I understand about budget cuts, but really? What about all of those who don'… Read more

R-71 update: Signature count tops 100,000

Image The Referendum 71 signature verification process has reached a milestone: Signature checkers have surpassed the 100,000 signature mark . The cumulative total is now nearly 104,000 checked signatures and just over 12,000 rejected for one reason or another. The overall error rate is 11.72 percent, barely up from 11.68 percent, which we reported Friday.… Read more

R-71 signatures: Taking special care with ethnic names

With both sides of the issue watching them like hawks, the signature checkers for Referendum 71 continue to work diligently and carefully through the pile of petitions. That is especially the case when it comes check the signatures of signers with ethnic names.

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We recently received a letter from a Russian-American who said he “learned that many Russian and Ukrainian signatures are being rejected.” In his reply, Assistant… Read more

Restricted Books

Image I grew up in a library family and love freedom of information. At the end of September I will be sporting my “I Read Banned Books” button and giving out bookmarks of banned books. I speak fanatically about how wonderful it is that anyone can get information about anything if they have a library card. If I hear, “Should that be allowed in the Library?!?!?” I give a little lecture about how the only person who has a right to censor information is… Read more

Clippings, August 24, 2009

Clippings – August 24, 2009 Library News The doors of the Camano Island Library will remain open for now. The Sno-Isle Regional Libraries Board of Trustees unanimously voted to continue the Camano Island Library Pilot Project. (Photo) (Stanwood Camano News, 8.4.09) http://www.scnews.com/news/2009/0804/camano_scene/045.html The City of Ferndale held a workshop for stakeholders to discuss the library design. (Photo… Read more

Love your librarian? Nominate them!

It's time once again to nominate your favorite librarians for the annual I Love My Librarian award. Up to ten winning librarians will be honored with a $5000 award and will get to represent in New York this December. Here's the snippet: Librarians in our nation’s 123,000 libraries make a difference in the lives of… Read more

Friday R-71 fix: Another 9,000 signatures counted

The Elections Division’s signature checkers have reviewed just over 9,000 new Referendum 71 signatures . The cumulative signature check total is now more than 97,000, almost two-thirds of the total submitted in late July. Nearly 86,000 signatures have been accepted and almost 11,400 rejected for one reason or another. The signature error rate has dropped from yesterday’s 11.97 percent to the… Read more

R-71 update: Hundreds of signatures move into "accepted" pile after recheck

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As Dave Ammons mentioned in his blog post yesterday, the Referendum 71 signature checkers have been doing a “recent registration check” for signatures that had been rejected because they weren’t found in the copy of the state voter database used for checking signatures. Because the checkers have been working off the version of the database used to check the Initiative 1033 sigs earlier this summer, new voters who registered in July and… Read more

Castle Rock Library levy passing

Image Last June, we blogged about a fun run/walk event in Castle Rock to help raise money for the Castle RockLibrary, which has been struggling to stay open since voters there narrowly defeated a levy measure last November to help finance it. It appears that the second time might be the charm for the library. Updated elections… Read more

Do you like green cassettes and ham?

Image If you like anything that is green, you would be in nirvana if you saw one of the back rooms in the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library in downtown Seattle. In this storage area are literally thousands of green cassette cases that are used for shipping “talking books” (on audiocassettes) to the library’s thousands of patrons throughout the state. WTBBL has more than 60,000 book titles on cassette and it circulates statewide about 2,… Read more

Enjoying the Company of Others

Image Over the last few weeks I have had a chance to get to know our new employee. Anna is smart and it has been great training her in the procedures for the library. We have the same schedule so we have been carpooling, which is really nice, but we have also been able to talk daily and all day. I no longer only have inmates to interact with and I find that I like having a coworker work the same schedule as me ... in some ways it feels like a "real… Read more

Top 2: Federal judge keeps some party challenges alive

Image Washington's voter-approved Top 2 Primary system, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last year, got a mixed-blessing ruling from U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour on Thursday. Secretary of State Sam Reed, represented by Attorney General Rob McKenna, had urged the court to dismiss a continuing legal challenge by the political parties that has persisted ever since the voters approved the new wide-open winnowing primary in 2004 as… Read more

R-71: 9,000 new signatures counted

Signature checkers for the state Elections Division have scrutinized almost 9,000 new Referendum 71 signatures, bringing the cumulative check total to over 88,000.

Over 77,000 signatures have been accepted and more than 10,000 rejected on various grounds, bringing the error rate so far to just under 12 percent.

Image The daily update… Read more

R-71: Checking and rechecking ...

Image As previously noted, there are two wrinkles in locking down the final count for each of the Referendum 71 volumes of petition signature. One is that dozens of signatures are temporarily put in the reject pile while the voter's home county is asked to send an electronic signature that can be used to compare with the petition signatures. Many of those are eventually added to the "accepted" pile.

The other involves a check of signatures… Read more

Initiative error rates vary from year to year

Image A new Elections Division posting shows a wide variety of error rates over the past two decades. The average has been about 18.5 percent. Twenty of… Read more

Updates from the Road

Image The Washington Rural Heritage team has been criss-crossing the state consulting with project participants, meeting with potential contributors and scanning, scanning, and scanning some more. In the last month, we've seen three out of four corners of this state… Read more

R-71 update: Checkers near 80k mark

Referendum 71 sponsors now have nearly 70,000 signatures in their column, but still need another 50k to qualify for the Nov. 3 statewide ballot. The measure is sponsored by foes of the state's newly adopted "everything but marriage" law that gives state-registered domestic partners the same state rights and responsibilities as married couples.

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The Washington Office of the Secretary of State’s blog provides from-the-source information about important state news and public services.

This space acts as a bridge between the public and Secretary Steve Hobbs and his staff, and we invite you to contribute often to the conversation here.

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