More on the Seattle car registration fee referendum

I guess I didn't make it clear that of course, being a transportion person, I favor the fee, but I do understand concerns about lack of specificity.

Brock writes:

You have a ton of facts in your article, but your assessment is fundamentally wrong. "Virtually every organization" has endorsed YES on Prop 1, not NO. Sure, you listed a few on the other side, but it shook out to be old (really old) guard liberals v new progressives.

Also, in terms of the regressiveness, I feel the endorsing organizations speak for themselves. YES has 4 social justice groups & 12 labor unions, NO has 1 irrelevant labor union.

YES also has a bigger campaign. Two flights of mailers, robo calls, phonebanks, 2 canvasses, online media strategy, yard signs etc. NO just has yard signs and one poorly designed lit piece that landed on Oct 18.

Polling in July revealed voters supported an $80 car tab by a two-thirds margin. Certainly the editors at the Seattle Times (who have never supported transit measures -- except when lots of roads are part of a package) has done its best to thwart the YES campaign. Sophisticated polling hasn't been done since July, but anecdotally from interactions from more than 2,000 likely voters, I'd say the support is similar right now.

Finally, you mention that no other city has passed a car tab in excess of the $20 level. I'm not sure any other city has tried.

My money is on a YES win. We'll see how big the margin is tonight.

I desperately want Brock to be right. (While I can't find it at the moment, I know that in previous Washington state election cycles, there have been attempts, not in Seattle, for a greater than $20 registration fee assessment.)

Also see "Vote for Proposition 1, Vote for Faster Transit, Safer Streets, More Choices" from the Friends of Seattle Blog.

-- Streets for All Seattle campaign