From Our Corner

Ron Sims' successor will be officially nonpartisan

Image In an internal memo, Katie Blinn, assistant state elections director, notes that although Ron Sims was elected KingCo Exec all these years as a Democrat, the voters approved a charter amendment last year that makes it a nonpartisan office. Thus the County Council, in picking Sims’ successor until the next election this fall, will not need a list of three candidates provided by the Democratic Party apparatus. Pierce County recently dealt… Read more

Simple Pleasures

Not all jobs are rewarding, but I have to say that working in a prison library is one of the good ones. It is not all fun and games, but there can be simple pleasure found working in the library. Not everyone will find the same pleasures, but we all have our simple joys in our jobs. Stay tuned....stories on the way.

The beat goes on ...

Image The political parties' challenge of the voter-approved, Supreme Court-approved Top 2 Primary continues to drag on and on. A federal judge has scheduled a "status conference" for March 24 in Seattle to take a look at where we are with all of the motions and cross-motions. Yes, it's true that the highest court in the land gave a green light to the new system that voters approved back in 2004 and it's true that the state ran a Top 2 Primary in… Read more

From Your Corner of Washington

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Cheney, Eastern Washington, at twilight. -Submitted by Larry C, who says: "I know that most of you over there think that Washington stops at the Cascades!"

… Read more

Library News Round-Up – 2 February 2009

Are there stories about or concerning libraries that you think are worth sharing? Please leave us a comment and provide a link so we can check it out! Here are a few of the stories I ran across in the past week that I felt were worth noting.

Libraries and Librarians

25 Famous… Read more

More on voters and 2008 ...

Check out these voter registration transactions, broken down by type, for all of last year. (OLVR = Online Voter Registration). As a refresher, during 2008, Washington State held a Presidential Primary in February, a State Primary in August, and the General Election in November:

Image *Please note: the online address change feature on MyVote was offline for the last week of May, all of June, and the first three weeks of July… Read more

It's raining initiatives ...

James Vaughn of Orting, Pierce County, has filed proposed initiatives dealing with affordable health care and replacing the main state business tax with "a fair corporate tax." If you want a copy of what Vaughn turned in, e-mail me -- [email protected] As always you can track initiatives on our website. A reminder: It only takes $5 to file an initiative, but it's not easy to qualify for the ballot. It takes over 240,000 valid voter signatures on… Read more

KingCo voters picking new elections boss

Image Nearly one in three Washington voters live in King County -- and for years, the state's largest county has been the only one with an appointed, not directly elected, elections chief. In the other 38 counties, the elected County Auditor has this task. But voters changed all that with a charter amendment -- and are currently balloting by mail for their very first popularly elected election director. Tuesday, February 3, is Election Day -- i.e… Read more

Library Angels

The following is a story told to me by a fellow prison librarian. Since I liked it so much I decided to share it. Two of the best library patrons I ever had were two older men I called the library angels. I can’t tell you they had always been angels. Obviously, they had both committed crimes that led to a prison sentence. But after many years of incarceration, they presented themselves as polite and respectful human beings. One night these men started coming to the library every night,… Read more

I vant to suck your bloooodddd...

Image Vampires in Forks, WA? Not any that we've discovered, but we’ve found scores of fans from the new hit movie and book Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The Washington State Library asked some of these willing fans to pose for their latest Washington Reads… Read more

Your Capitol: 8:15 AM

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Curious about the Heritage Center?

If you’ve ever seen a presentation on the proposed Washington State Heritage Center, you know it’s a project that is both grand AND cool. It’s something that will be interesting to all ages.

Image Yesterday, one of my OSOS co-workers, Heritage Center Director of Marketing Dana Pethia, gave a great talk about this project to a group of Thurston County Mainstream Republicans. Dana’s presentation… Read more

A family affair ...

James Pharris, Washington deputy solicitor general, is the new general counsel for the Office of Secretary of State. He'll see some familiar faces when he comes around: His daughter, Ingrid, a graduate of St. Olaf College, is Secretary Reed's executive assistant, and his son, Nick, a Michigan PhD in linguistics, is with the agency's redistricting program. Jim Pharris, known both for his legal acumen and his musical talent, succeeds Jeff Even, who has advised the office for 17 years and was… Read more

Nominate a Library for the National Medal for Museum and Library Service

Washington state is typically significantly underrepresented in applicants for this award, especially from libraries. The award includes $10,000 for the recipient library.

From Michele Farrell, Senior Program Officer, Institute of Museum and Library… Read more

So what WERE we thinking?

A guy from Kenmore writes to ask why in the world Secretary Reed is hot for legislation to require ballots to be received back at the elections office by election night, not just postmarked. This is what my reply was:

"Sam's view is that it's important for voters, campaigns, the parties and the media to know quicker who has won elections, and with about half of the ballots still not received and processed by election night, that is often very difficult. It can take days to receive… Read more

From Your Corner of Washington

Image Matia Island, San Juans - Submitted by Tom

Submit us your photo from your corner of Washington.

WSL Updates, Jan. 29, 2009

Volume 5: January 29, 2009 for the WSL Updates mailing list

Topics include:

1) WASHINGTON READS POSTERS

2) LEAD CONTENT IN BOOKS

3) CONNECTING TO COLLECTIONS BOOKSHELF, LAST ROUND OF APPLICATIONS

4) FIRST TUESDAYS FEBRUARY 3 FEATURES SUMMER READING

5) EMERGENCY AND DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

6) 2009 AAAHRP BIENNIAL BLACK HISTORY CONFERENCE AT SEATTLE UNIVERSITY

7) PRESERVATION OF AUDIOVISUAL COLLECTIONS

… Read more

From Your Corner of Washington

We invite you to e-mail your photos and stories to us as part of an ongoing feature called “From Your Corner of Washington” – we want to gather images of landscapes, homes, views, and personal narratives from all over the state.

Q) How do I submit a photo or story? A) Please send your text or image attachment (in JPG format) via e-mail to Brian Zylstra at… Read more

It's Eyman season again ...

So we get a note from initiative maestro Tim Eyman that he has just launched a 150-day effort to gather signatures for I-1033, capping state and local tax growth, including property taxes. It takes over 240,000 valid voter signatures to secure a ballot spot for November. Deadline is July 3. This measure, sure to touch off both strong support and strong opposition, can be viewed on the secstate… Read more

Exporting online voter signups?

Washington election officials, including Election Director Nick Handy, were delighted to fill in Oregon's new Secretary of State Kate Brown and her top aides on Washington's experience with online voter registration. The program was quite popular here in its first full year of operation,… Read more