Quick reminder to all the registered absentee voters among us: your mail-in ballots for this summer's primary need to be postmarked by tomorrow, August 19th, in order to be counted in the vote! More information about the Top Two Primary system can be found at the Secretary of State's website, including the link to an online Voter's Guide. And to those of you who aren't yet registered voters, now would be a great time to......

Not only will you be voting for a new president in November (finally!), but a few new measures have been added to the local ballot. Initiative 1000—the "Death with Dignity" initiative—has made it on the state-wide ballot after amassing 224,880 valid petition signatures. Washington voters will have their say on the controversial topic of assisted suicide and whether or not to allow terminally ill people to obtain a fatal prescription to end their own lives.......

The PI's Big Blog floated the rumor yesterday that Washington's own "mom in tennis shoes," Patty Murray, could become Obama's running mate. We did a double take and wondered if someone had spiked our morning coffee. While Murray has been a successful legislator for Washington State, she was a fierce Hillary supporter until throwing her support behind Obama on Sunday. She doesn't add what Obama needs to the ticket anyway. By noon yesterday, Murray's......

">Throughout the campaign we have been gathering the top political writers in the country, and asking them to discuss the presidential race. Today they discuss the end of the Democratic primary, Senator Clinton's future, and a brief look at the general. Seattlest: It's been a very eventful week, with Senator Obama wrapping up the nomination and Senator Clinton set to end her campaign, where do you see the race going now? Ryan (Time Magazine): Finally.......

This whole thing started way back on January 3, a gray, rainy winter day with a high of 47. Now, six months later in the heat of a gray, rainy summer day with a high close to 60, it will come to an end. Remember how all those states moved their primary/caucus dates up so they would be important, how did that work there, Florida/Michigan? Senator Obama has rented out the 20,000 seat Xcel......

TALK ABOUT YOUR HEALTH: Founder of Bastyr University and chief science officer for Metagenetics, Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., thinks we should be focusing on "biochemical individuality derived from genetic and environmental differences." Seems practical enough. He'll be speaking on the matter tonight and, if you're interested in the ongoing debate about how to fix our healthcare system, you should check out his talk, entitled Healthcare Reform 2008: Creating a True Health Care System. 7:30 p.m. //......

We'll be the first to admit Hillary Clinton's embarrassing statement last week (and other occasions), when she recalled RFK's assassination in June of 1968 as an example of things that can happen late in a campaign. We all know there's a possibility the first viable black presidential candidate could get shot. It's been talked about and analyzed and discussed (and, yes, joked about by the other party). But, somehow, to hear another Democratic candidate......

With Oregon and Kentucky going to the polls today, Obama ready to take over an even clearer lead in pledged delegates, and Hillary poised to trounce him in whiteland, there's a lot of discussion on the interwebs about whether or not Hillary's supporters will get behind Obama when it's all said and done. It's a valid question. Obama is an eloquent intellectual who hasn't bothered to pander to the under-educated, under-paid among us. As......

Yesterday morning, we got up around 6:30 a.m., and headed to Lincoln/Garfield High School in Wallingford to check people into the 43rd Legislative District Caucus for the Hillary campaign. Once everyone was checked in, we corralled into the auditorium, where we listened to a few hours of question/answer (a lot of people talking about whether or not you should switch your vote), a few speeches, some time-killing jokes (??), and the surrogates for each......

Tomorrow is the day that the delegates and alternates we elected in last month's caucuses will get together and go through the whole thing all over again. Wheeeee! You don't have to be a delegate or alternate to attend, so if you're as transfixed with the process as we are, feel free to show up. If you don't know where to go, you can find your legislative district caucusing location here. It starts at......

Yesterday, this Seattlest headed to the U-District library to meet with other Hillary Clinton delegates (Hillegates?) from the fightin' 43rd, and to learn about what lies between us and the national convention. Because we care, we thought we'd share the info with you. If you're not a Hillegate or Obamegate, you can just skip to reading about other things. Okay, so first things first: all alternates should really, really show up to next weekend's......

Seattlest grew up in a very small town in Central Florida. In our immediate area, we could count seven colleges. That doesn't include the University of Miami or Florida State, UWF, UNF, USF, the Art Institutes, and other colleges and universities (Obama's demographic). Florida is not, contrary to popular belief, peopled entirely by retirees (Clinton's demographic). Most of the folks around our small hometown are very blue collar, there are a lot of fern......

Now that all votes are in, all caucuses adjourned, CNN declaring it all for Obama, here's how the day fared for our Seattlest contributors: Charles: "In my precinct we gave four delegates to Obama and two to Hillary -- and yours truly is a delegate for his district and county caucuses! I heard that a few other precincts at my site went 4-1 Obama. In Shoreline a friend said it was roughly 70-30 and......

(Full disclosure: we're a long-time Hillary supporter, as you probably know by now.) It may have been held way out in the middle of NOWHERE, and we may have had to risk life and limb, climbing over trains and running across highways to get there, but it was damn well worth it. Some reports are saying there were 5,000 people there, others are saying more. It was definitely packed. We were definitely sweating our......

Are you guys watching this race? Incredible! Super Tuesday has officially come and gone, delegates divided, $250 million in campaign money spent, and still no Democratic frontrunner in sight. We at Seattlest are beside ourselves and while we may never understand the logic behind superdelegates we do know this: Washington is going to have a big say in how this race is decided. This Saturday, Washingtonians will caucus with 80 Democratic delegates up for......

This Seattlest will be heading to a private party tonight, where we will celebrate among our favorite people the fact that Super Tuesday is FINALLY here. But, if you're looking for somewhere more out-on-the-town to get your drink on and watch the returns trickle in, and pancakes aren't your bag, here's the guide for you. Most of these events start at 5pm, and they're all free. Go America! The Paragon is hosting an indie......

Last night there were tons of Ron Paul's people outside the Showbox Sodo. Before, during, and after Barack Obama's fundraising event/rally, the Paul supporters waved their signs and interacted with anyone who would give them the time of day. Too bad they couldn't afford tickets to the event due to the current tax structure--if only someone would abolish the IRS and the Federal Reserve.... Meanwhile, inside the venue was a crowd of teens, twenty-somethings,......

We really don't feel it's the day after an election until we overhear people talking about how they forgot to vote, didn't know there was an election, and how they'll definitely vote next time. If they had been paying attention from August through this morning, they would have learned that Seattle voters will not let you drive 50mph down Market Street after a few drinks, but they will let you work for an anti-gay organization,......

Why is it important to vote? Let Dan Quayle explain: “Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win.” Um, wait, what? My God, Dan Quayle is a nitwit. Yet he was elected to the Vice-Presidency--and was just one George H.W. Bush infarction away from leading the free world--because thousands of......

Prop. 1, the roads and transit measure. Supporters say it will help solve our gridlock problem. Anti-tax opponents say"no it won't" and environazi opponents say "roads are killing the planet, it's transit-only or nothing." Tomorrow's election day. Here's how Seattlesters are voting. Dan: I'm not exactly turning cartwheels as I cast my "yes" vote, but I look at it as "which is easier to get passed, roads or transit individually?" I couldn't pass up the......

Our favorite local food site has been doing some thinking about politics and the way people in different cities eat and vote. They divided the number of steak restaurants by the number of sushi restaurants in a given city to come up with a "Steak/Sushi Index." Seattle's SSI, for example is 0.75, indicating that we eat more sushi than steak; the SSI of Dallas, TX is 3.01 indicating a preference for steak. Urbanspoon has been......

Those who attended the Issaquah Village Theater’s matinee of The King and I today may have come away a little disappointed. Dino Rossi used the stage to announce his candidacy for governor. After his Eastside announcement, Rossi raced the telegraph wires to Spokane and made his announcement again this afternoon. The man who got his asshole handed to him three years ago by current governor Christine Gregoire, has been the Republicans' guy since he decided......

City Council candidate Venus Velazquez was charged with a DUI the other night, which is odd because Bruce Harell was the athlete [slide-whistle], and with that we start our Seattlest General Election Civic Election Coverage 2007. We’ve been ignoring the city council races over here, mainly because they’re really f-ing dull. We understand why there aren’t better candidates out there, spending eight months begging for money and pandering to NIMBYs look like terrible way to......

City Council candidate Venus Velázquez was arrested for a DUI last night which can't be good for her campaign for Peter Steinbrueck's seat. Apparently, she had "two drinks with her meal" and then hung around for a while to ensure she wasn't impaired. If that's what really happened, bummer. It sounds like she made a better effort than the guys we see "sobering up" at the end of the night by switching to light beer......

We failed to notice yesterday, among all the hubub over Councilman Richard McIver's arrest on domestic violence charges, a post from Seattle Weekly political reporter Aimee Curl. McIver remains in jail and has claimed he'll be pleading "not guilty" to the charges. Columnist Robert Jamieson Jr. is taking him to task in today's P-I stating, "For his sake, that stance had better just be a legal formality before coming clean -- or a typo. Otherwise,......

It's rainy which means it's fall, which means there's an election coming, which means that Seattle is all bound up in a transportation quagmire, which means it's time to devote millions of words to the problem and then eventually do nothing. A couple ten thousand of those millions of words were published this weekend in response to the Roads and Transit transportation package that we'll vote on in November. Here is Walt Crowley in the......

Jim Riches, Deputy Chief of the FDNY, is one of the producers of the Urban Legends video that questions the supposedly heroic actions of Mayor Giuliani on 9/11. Jen Carlson recently interviewed him for our sister site in New York. How long have you been in the FDNY? 30 years experience in some of the busiest firehouses in NYC. Which firehouse are you working at now? Assigned to Bureau of Operations as Deputy Chief FDNY.......

The 8th congressional district lost five-term Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn and candidate Rodney Tom in the last twenty-four hours. Dunn, who served from 1993-2005, died of a pulmonary embolism last night. She was 66. We'll always remember how every two years the Democrats would find some young Microsoft millionaire to run against her, claiming that the district's new tech money was shifting the votes their way. They were wrong. Her 2004 announcement that she wasn't running......

Jean Godden used to write a column where she would point out humorous license plates, as well as the little things that make living in Seattle the silliest. Now she is on the city council and running for re-election. Her main opponent is weightlifting coach Joe Szwaja, who spent some time on the Madison City Council. According to those in the know, "a [Madison] commuter light rail system has been proposed…but has remained on paper......

The Central Library played host last night to a host of concerned citizens and Thomas E. Ricks, author of the best-selling Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. They put Ricks in the big auditorium for good reason. Fiasco was a #1 New York Times best-seller, finalist for the Pulitzer, winner of the Gelber Prize, etc., etc. Plus it plays to the liberal instincts of Seattle's finest. The room was crammed full of business suits......