November 8 general election crib sheet

Welcome to the November 8 general election ballot and recommendations

You’ve all been patient with me. Ballots are (or should be) in your hands already. Its time to vote. Don’t lose your ballot in a pile of junk mail. Remember to turn over the ballot and vote the back as well as the front. While there are thankfully a whole lot fewer candidates than in the primary, there are still a lot, along with a bunch of ballot issues.

As always, here’s the basic information:

Ballots must be returned no later than November 8.

            You can mail your ballot as long as the postmark is on or before November 8. To be sure that happens, get your ballot in the mail before 4:00 pm.

            Or you can drop your ballot into one of 5 special collection boxes at:

            Island County Elections Office             400 N Main Street             Coupeville

            Oak Harbor City Hall                             865 SE Barrington            Oak Harbor

            Trinity Lutheran Church                        18341 Hwy 525                 Freeland

            Ken’s Corner Red Apple                        4141 Hwy 525                  Clinton

            Camano Annex                                       121 N East Camano Dr    Camano

Deadline for dropping in the collection boxes is 8:00 pm on November 8.

For questions, contact  elections@co.island.wa.us

or phone 360-679-7366  M-F  9:00 – 4:00

Throughout the state level office discussions you will find references to “McCleary.” For those of you who are not political junkies or educators, McCleary is the name of a lawsuit settled by the State Supreme Court in favor of schools and teachers, directing the State of Washington to fully fund K-12 education. The state failed to do that and the court slapped it with a $100,000.00/day fine until it comes into compliance. Needless to say, this is doing interesting things to the state’s budget. Repubs are claiming they have already met the McCleary requirements (they haven’t) and Dems are saying there has to be tax reform to raise the kind of money McCleary requires. Which is why you will see much discussion of a state income tax and a state bank.

The crib sheet is arranged in the order which I found on the sample ballot on the Auditor’s website.

I’ve had to break up the crib sheet  because the blog site won’t allow such wordiness in a single post. And I’ve given up on trying to do anything techie. It ain’t me.

This is a long read, so get yourself some coffee and have at it.