Ballots surge in King County
By the time this paper comes out, every last one of you will have voted. Real Change’s hopeful prognostication is based on the deluge of ballots that have swamped the King County Election Office as the weekend came to a close, comfortably blowing past previous ballot totals for the same time during the last midterm election.
The surge in voting comes against the backdrop of the fierce competition for power in Washington, D.C. According to FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site founded by Nate Silver that goes in hard on math that makes most journalists sweat, Democrats had an 84 percent chance of taking back the House of Representatives. Its odds on flipping the Senate are much longer.
This thinking has come home to Washington where locals are seeing one of the country’s most expensive races fought in the 8th District where Democrat Kim Schrier is running neck-and-neck with Dino Rossi, a Republican with a losing record in elections.
The race is emblematic of contests across the country. Schrier is all in on Democratic talking points including Medicare For All and bringing down the cost of higher education. Rossi is seen as a reliable vote for President Donald Trump’s agenda and trumpets lines about protecting people from crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. (It should be noted here that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens).
If Schrier wins, the Democrats will be one closer to the 23 seats they need to flip to win control of the House of Representatives. According to Jonathan Swan of Axios, Republicans circulated a spreadsheet detailing more than 100 formal requests for information or investigation made by House Democrats, many of which have been held at bay by the Republican majority.
That list could translate into investigations that a Democrat-controlled House would launch that could severely hamper the Trump administration, turning it into “a 24/7 legal defense operation,” Swan wrote in August. Highlights include demanding Trump’s tax returns, details of the hurricane response in Puerto Rico and White House staff’s use of personal emails (irony).
Broken windows vigilantism
King County prosecutors say that a Seattle resident shot a man to death because he was angry over a broken window.
According to The Seattle Times, John Thomas Davis, 55, was charged with second-degree murder. He was reportedly “fixated” on what he perceived to be rising crime in his neighborhood and had been known to confront people while armed.
Davis told police that he shot Daniel Alberto, 26, and drove away because he feared for his life. Surveillance footage tells a different story — Alberto did not try to prevent Davis from leaving in his car and was walking away when he turned and was shot, according to reports.
The killing comes against a backdrop of increasingly toxic rhetoric in online spaces about people experiencing homelessness.
Ashley Archibald is a Staff Reporter covering local government, policy and equity. Have a story idea? She can be can reached at ashleya (at) realchangenews (dot) org. Follow Ashley on Twitter @AshleyA_RC
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