Marian Beddill has posted a good technical description of what happened with our ballots. She uses this serious incident to explain why computerized voting has serious problems.

9 pm - A long day of emails to the Secretary of State office in Olympia - and mostly silence from our Auditor here in Bellingham. With leadership from Marian Beddill in Bellingham nudging public officials, Olympia has urged our Auditor to rethink the process for counting those 9,211 screwed up ballots. New procedures were written up this afternoon and they will be presented to the Canvassing Board at 8:45 am Monday at the Auditor's office in the Courthouse for discussion, possible modification and approval. Ballot processing of the defective ballots will begin only on Tuesday morning. We'll see what the Herald finally prints about this supposed "minor" problem. The Auditor first learned of this on October 18 but did not even tell Olympia until October 23 and us on Oct 25. This is a serious error. And the earlier process would have compromised the secret voting of many citizens.

11 am - Seems our Auditor knew last week about this problem and delayed informing us for a full week.

10 am - Seems our Auditor knew of this problem days before she informed our local news media and us citizens of it yesterday. More soon.

9 am - Concern: 9,211 ballots were sent to Whatcom County voters without the needed barcodes that identify which governmental districts the person lives in. The Auditor is minimizing this serious error - and the Herald, while notified yesterday, did not even print a story in today's paper. This is, in my opinion, a potentially serious error that can result in candidate or citizen complaints that could throw out the election. The Auditor, Shirley Forslof, is vague about the fix and it appears her fix could reveal to election workers how individual persons vote and could result in a vote count that is unverifiable. Other activists share this concern and the Secretary of State will be contacted today. There is urgency to this because on Monday the ballots start being processed. More on this soon.

1:00 am
Dan Pike will be an outstanding mayor if we elect him. I've been involved in local politics for over 30 years on a continuous basis - motivated by a desire for the best for my community. I've watched and gotten to know hundreds of candidates. I was campaign manager for Shirley Van Zanten in 1983 when she was elected the first woman County Executive in Washington state history. She went on to three terms as our executive, respected by all.

In Dan Pike we have another person of integrity and intelligence. We can expect he will bring an open and fair process to our city hall. He has the experience and training to provide city departments with solid management. Our Bellingham city government really really needs good management. And I am confident that Dan Pike is the better candidate to provide that for us.

While I have respected Dan McShane's environmental concerns and his efforts on the county council, he is simply not as good a choice for mayor as is Pike. Along with others who have known McShane for years, we do not like his preference to work behind the scenes and his attitude that he knows better than the rest of us. The reconveyance of property on Lake Whatcom is a good example. And, with or without his approval, his campaign people are running the dirtiest campaign I've ever watched. They have little respect for the truth and seem to take sport in smearing those who endorse Dan Pike.

We have a rare opportunity in Dan Pike. I've gotten to see how he thinks during the past few months and this guy is really intelligent. We need that. Lets do ourselves a good turn and get the best person in as our mayor. As we try and solve some of our challenges in neighborhood planning, waterfront development and ensuring that we protect our water reservoir in Lake Whatcom, we will really appreciate having a really good mayor. Please join me in voting for Dan Pike.