Revolution wary

Democracy isn't perfect but it's preferable to the conquering impulse

Editor, The Times:

I find Stefan Sharkansky's focus and frequent use of the word, "revolution" disturbing ("A citizens' revolution for clean elections, new media," Times guest commentary, Jan. 19).

He states his idea of revolution is not on the scale of 1776 or the unfolding story in the Ukraine. Yet, how many people will stop to consider that? How many will simply identify with that galvanizing word out of a need for a sense of camaraderie based on frustrations brought on by unrelated personal issues, and not the gubernatorial election?

I would also ask revote supporters this question: Could they instantly account for every object, every piece of paper they own, along with cost and origin?

Does it seem silly to compare personal items to a public vote? No. It's about accounting. Most citizens own, operate or work for companies with countless items that require documentation. Could those companies provide 100 percent proof of documentation pertaining to those details? No.

The recent vote had nothing to do with fraud on the part of the voting system (auditors, county employees, etc.). They did the best with what they had to work with.

The original vote included four or more parties to choose from. A revote would simply be a race to conquer. It would be an unnaturally condensed and misguided vote.
— Richard McFarland, Seattle

Every man abandon post

Beware election "reformers."

Legislation will present one more opportunity for incumbents to centralize and computerize voting. They'll even lobby for an earlier primary election when the actual obstruction to timely delivery of military ballots is the competing overburden of unjustified "absentee" ballots.

In King County alone 78,000 ballots were mailed in October but not returned. County government can surely find better use for (the money it cost)! And what of the thousands of ballots voted and returned by other than the addressee?

In contrast, poll votes are cast in the flesh, cast without need for postage, counted without any questionable signature verification process and tallied before the 11 o'clock news! Yes, photo identification would further improve poll voting but would yield meaningless overall improvement against the flood of unmonitored "absentee" ballots.

Post-election distrust in 2000 and now 2004 has proven the cost and pain of that practice greater than its convenience.

But don't expect Olympia to fix the problem. That job is for every "absentee" voter who will promote future harmony by returning to poll voting.
— Craig Keller, Seattle

The brutish are coming

The wailing of people like Stefan Sharkansky continues to rain down like the lamentations of Job. More importantly, this behavior reveals a profound underlying distrust for the democratic process itself.

Blithe assertions by Sharkansky and others like him, that they alone are privy to the true "will of the people" while casting doubt on the legitimacy of a close, hard-fought election, betrays a partisanship that is well-nigh demonic. Lenin himself would be proud of this kind of rhetoric.

Ah, yes, only the Republican Party is the true vanguard of the people, and when the people speak otherwise? Why, there can only be a bourgeoisie conspiracy afoot. Lies, slander, unfounded accusations — these are the new coin of political discourse offered up by this latest manifestation of the Jacobins.

When are the tumbrels scheduled to roll? Will Sharkansky's bloodlust be satisfied when Christine Gregoire's head falls into the basket? Or are more scheduled to follow?

Sharkansky's white-hot purity leads him to overstate his case. This is a common pathology of revolutionaries, especially those who are new to it, or the patently fake. We are asked to gasp in awe at the ability of airlines to match tickets and boarding passes. Has Sharkansky never been bumped from a flight? And how do they manage, in the frenzy of their efficiency, to lose, misdirect, or misplace actual mountains of luggage? Truly a marvel.

Alas, the true zealot is willfully incapable of detecting irony, and their lust for perfection overrides all other concerns. Except victory. Therein lies the danger.
— Bob Polwarth, Des Moines

Madness of King County

Far be it from me to accuse the King County Election Board of suspicious bias, but my 10-year-old daughter reports that one of her school assignments late last year was to fill out election ballots, by darkening the little circle, that looked remarkably similar to the real ones. Every fourth-grader in the classroom accomplished this task without fail, other than two who thought the ballots were weekly readers.

However, during the process, she spilled hot chocolate on five ballots. KCEB immediately concluded they must be Gregoire votes because Christine was once seen in public eating a candy bar. Which explains why this class of 27 cast 32 votes. My daughter reports that all these ballots mysteriously disappeared, and we suspect later showed up as provisional ballots.

Now, so impressed was I by this civic lesson that I immediately had the King County Elections Board rule on my golf scores, and was told that I held a six-under-par handicap. Truly amazing, since my best score ever is a 91. So next week I'm thinking about having them appraise my house.
— Phil Caldwell, Woodway

Content of a dream

Peace eludes her

(To) imply that Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy is fulfilled in the high government position of national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice is absolutely ludicrous ("King's dream fulfilled in Rice?" page one, Jan. 17). Dr. King was a man of peaceful, nonviolent resistance, while Rice is a proponent of violence to solve her manufactured problems (WMD?).

There is a reason Chevron named an oil tanker after her — because she serves big oil companies with her foreign policy that results in thousands of American and Iraqi deaths.

Dr. King always ruled out violence and was dedicated to trying to achieve a more peaceful humanity. It seems as if Rice has ruled out peace to achieve a more violent humanity. Someone should tell her that you can bomb the world to pieces but you can't bomb it into peace.
— Anthony Warner, Seattle

Diversity lies dormant

A straw man is a false thesis of an opponent that can merrily be knocked down with a sarcastic statement to defeat the opponent. "I just don't think that bombing people makes them love you," is such a straw man. First, it implies that our goal in Iraq is, or should be, to make the terrorists love us. Second, it implies that the U.S. has chosen bombing Iraq as the means to make that happen. Thirdly, unstated but implied by the nonviolent tradition of Martin Luther King, is that any violence carried out by the U.S. contradicts the legacy of Dr. King.

But what is far worse is that the purpose of the article "King's dream fulfilled in Rice?" is to prove that only influential blacks with the right viewpoint are to be emulated; so, young black men and women, don't be fooled by Dr. Rice's success: She isn't a good role model because she doesn't think like the author of this article or the people quoted to knock down this straw woman.
— Joel Magnuson, Renton

Security blanket

This little piggy had none

My, my! Now that we have successfully resolved the weapons of mass destruction crisis in Iraq — since no WMD exist there after all, surprise, surprise — we are immediately faced with another impending crisis, this time in Social Security.

And after our stalwart administration resolves the terrifying Social Security crisis by ruining at least an equal number of lives as has the WMD crisis, what horrifying crisis will next rear its ugly head in our beleaguered nation? The crisis of naked pigs rampant on a barbecue sign? ("BBQ owner, city divided over mural of nude pigs," Local News, Dec. 30.)

Be strong, fellow citizens! You can laugh and cry at the same time.
— Jenny Garden, Everett