US Postal Inspector Explains Why Voting By Mail is a Terrible Idea

Check out this article:
http://www.snopes.com/legal/postal/sendcash.asp

And then watch the video at the end, and ask yourself if your vote is worth stealing?

Jason Osgood is Not Qualified To Run King County Elections

Recently Jason Osgood ran a pretty lack-luster campaign for Washington’s Secretary of State. As the Director of The No Vote By Mail Project, I endorsed Jason for that race. Many factors originally influenced this decision, including the fact that Sam Reed is about as bad of a Secretary of State as I could imagine (other than say, Kenneth Blackwell or Katherine Harris).

However, the backstory that I never wrote about was that I had a meeting with Jason Osgood and another election integrity activist prior to Jason’s announcement that he was running for Secretary of State. At this meeting I was asked not to run as a Democrat in the primaries because Washington’s Democratic Party had asked Jason to run against Sam. I agreed to this deal, because Sam was unlikely to be beaten this year, and because in 4 of the past 5 elections, I have run several campaigns and been a candidate myself, so if my desire for someone to run against Sam would be carried out by Jason, that was ok by me. Campaigns are exhausting to say the least.

However, another agreement was made at this meeting. Jason Osgood directly told me that running for Secretary of State was simply a precursor to helping elect a truly qualified candidate to the posistion of King County’s Director of Elections. At the time Jason and I, and the other election integrity activist at this meeting, all agreed on who we would all be backing for that election.

So it came as a great suprise to me to find out that Jason Osgood had gone back on his word to me and others who have helped him, literally for years, understand elections, technology, and campaigns, and announced that he would be running for the position of Director of King County Elections.  Jason, if you’ll lie to those people who have helped you, as your friends, tirelessly, for years, why should anyone trust you as a politician?

Besides which, anyone watching your campaign for Secretary of State would already realize that you don’t know how to run a campaign. You got virtually no press coverage, and even the little bit of free press I lined up for you was ignored.

So Jason Osgood, let me be the first to say, you are not qualified to run King County’s Elections. You have no experience in office, you have no skill for campaigning, you are not a man of your word, and even worse, from my perspective is your lack of desire to fight against vote-by mail in King County. Which is evident in your post over at Horsesass.org:

30. Jason Osgood spews:

Hi Daniel @ 25.

Very good question.

My job as Director of Elections is to run the elections, not make law. The King County Council legislates and I would abide by their decisions.

So I have no interest in revisiting the vote by mail decision.

By this statement alone Mr. Osgood, you have convinced me that you are no longer insterested in fighting for true voting integrity. By going against your word and now running for a position for which you pledged to support a different and more qualified candidate, you have shown yourself to lack personal integrity. And throughout your campaign for Secretary of State you proved a highly ineffectual candidate. Really, in a Blue State like Washington, in a Blue year, you lost and lost badly. 

But other than being unqualified, the biggest problem Jason presents for King County, is that he may split the vote of King County’s Democrats, leaving the door wide open for people like Pam Roach, who would be truly awful.

Update 1
King County is one of the largest single voting juridictions in the entire nation. The complexity of the system requires someone with serious expertise. The kind of expertise that someone like myself, who has studied the system for years… does not posses. Personally I supported Jason against Sam Reed for the same reason the Democratic Party supported Jason Osgood, he wasn’t going to win. Seriously. He wasn’t going to win. So a one trick pony who is running an issue based campaign, gets the job done. And that job is questioning the incumbent, and pointing out the failures in the system that provide you with an issue based platform. But even in endorsing Jason, I knew he was not qualified for the job.

However, now that Jason’s jumped into a race that many activists have been working on for years, his decision can have grave ramifications for Washington State at large. Dean Logan proved unworthy. And he had a lot more qualifications than Jason. All I can hope now is that someone truly qualified stands up and stands up soon to run for the position. Otherwise Jason, you’re going to throw this race to the strongest Republican who stands willing.

Update 2

Could someone please explain to me in the comments below why Jason Osgood IS qualified? The way I see it, he is a computer geek, who acts like a child, gets called paranoid and sweaty by The Stranger, doesn’t know how to talk to the media, has no real experience leading large groups of people that I am aware, and is a very partisan Democrat running for a non-partisan position. He has never run anything near the size of the job he is applying for, and he has turned around on vote-by mail, and dissed his friends and allies along the way. Oh, and he lost the statewide race, as the ONLY Democrat in a blue state, by wide margins. To a Republican not very well liked by his own base.