Seattle Schools Community Forum

I'm going to call it a winner as well (the 1351 campaign already did). Yes - 989,754 No  - 962,794             26,960 Yes - 50.69% No  - 49.31% The gap is only widening (No has never caught up again since Election night).  The last drop of ballots at 6:02 pm was King County which is at nearly 55% in favor with 88K left.  No other county has near the ballots although, oddly, Spokane was supposed to have a new count at 5 pm and did not (they have 13,500 ballots).

I've been tracking I-1351 for most of the day.  At 2 pm, they were neck and neck with Yes- 50.07% and No-49.93%.  But as the vote totals go up - Yes had about 7500 more votes at 4 pm, then up 9,000 votes by 5:30 pm and at the last vote count, Yes had over 11,000 votes and has its biggest percentage lead at ....64%.  King County still has 121,000 votes left to count, Snohomish has 58,000, Spokane has 13,000 and Pierce has 9,000. King is solidly yes but Snohomish and Spokane are barely yes. But the trend is to the Yes side.  For me, this is very reminiscent of watching the vote counts for 1240, the charter school initiative.*  Except that, day after day, the trend never changed.  This one is changing.  As I mentioned elsewhere, the Times had not one but two whiny editorials today (and truly, there is no other way to describe them).

Election Update : 1351 is still failing but has closed the gap by about 3,000 votes, 49.58% to No, 50.42% end of update 1B passed handily.  I was surprised at the "handily" part but Seattle folks are a generous bunch. I am going to be speaking at the Board meeting tonight and I may include a bit about what the passage of 1B will mean to SPS.  (I'd lay money a draft partnership agreement is coming very soon.)  But will agreement of that partnership come with a carrot or a stick?  I wonder if the money for the Federal Reserve building might materialize (via a group of businesses, maybe)?