1. Yes, there’s a loss of the secret ballot in some cases. I don’t worry about it much, though, since you’re talking about a handful of dominionists. I would note that your argument has parallels with one of the central arguments against women’s sufferage — that the husband would command the wife to vote his way. But I do acknowledge the secret ballot is less secret. If you wanted a truly secret ballot, you’d ban the absentee ballot outright. (And that would include sub ballots. I mean, a CO could well insinuate to subordinates that voting against the CO’s wishes would result in things becoming very uncomfortable.)

2. This argument, to me, doesn’t wash. Take those judge races way downballot. Half the time I have no idea what to think about the candidates. Their voter guide paragraphs are basically “I want to be a judge” and “I’m a good lawyer, see?” In all likelihood I will never actually encounter one of these judges. Should I disqualify myself from voting because I am underinformed? In general, I don’t think there should be an “effort” threshold to determine whether someone votes or not. The process should be simple. Throwing up barriers, anyway, disenfranchises people who may not be able to make the effort due to physical reasons (the elderly, the infirm, people with physical disabilities). Given how we treat that group as a whole in this society, I think closing off their voice entirely is a disaster waiting to happen.

3. The risks are very small. Ballots are trackable. If you didn’t get yours, they’ll reissue it and void the previous one. Signature matching is honestly better than most forms of voter ID — it’s awfully hard to forge a signature when you have no idea what it looks like, where forging a driver’s license is far easier (see any college campus). OTOH, how many “missing ballot boxes” have we had in the last 10-15 years? Hell, there was a case of someone leaving a ballot box in their car for days in some major election recently. And mail-in ballots beat electronic machines without paper trails (as seen in 11 states) in terms of safety.

4. The advantage to mailers with a ballot is minimal. It’s all about timing, and you can’t time it perfectly. What if you lay it aside for two weeks and only get to it when that day’s mail comes in with a different set of fliers? It’s all random chance. If there really were an advantage, then your mail would be nothing but fliers with the ballot.

5. This is a fault of Washington’s system. Oregon requires ballots to be 8pm day of the election, and they’re done counting 90% of the ballots by 11pm. I’m with you here that we need to fix this, but this isn’t a problem of mail-in ballots — this is the problem of a screwed up system.

6. An ounce of paper in a sunk cost delivery and return system, I would bet, is still environmentally better than having 3.8M people travel to the polls + all the setup/takedown of the polling places + volunteers, party observers, lawyers…. Remember, one reason we have vote by mail is it’s cheaper than the old polling place system.

I think the only good arguments against the current WA system are the possible erosion of the secret ballot and the postmark-based deadline. But the former doesn’t seem like a huge worry right now (I mean, no more company towns), and the latter is easily fixed with a law change or an initiative (get on it, Tim Eyman). OTOH, vote-by-mail lowers the convenience bar, is as safe as any absentee ballot, and is certainly less hackable than the other electronic systems. The novelty will wear off — Oregon’s sufferage rate has dropped consistently since mail ballots were introduced — but I think it’s a plenty efficient system and on the whole better than what people in Florida are going through today (long lines, buggy machines, not enough paper backups, some systems without any paper trail).

I don’t understand how they got so many awards when their transactions and accounting don’t even add up.

That said, I do think the NHL will be at a significant disadvantage if they entered the Seattle market. On top of established MLB and NFL franchises they will face a rejuvinated Sonics fanbase and a Sounders fanbase that is unlike anything in any other city. The NHL will find success if they manage to capitalize on the things the Sonics and Sounders cannot do; create loyal fans in surrounding states and most importantly in Portland and capture disenfranchised fans from Vancouver.

Don’t let lousy customer service be victorious.

On the customer support email they answer like 1 of every 3 emails.

I’m still using Mint. I’ve just had to find workarounds for multiple issues. Luckily none of my issues have been as major as yours.

Seattle Sounders fans were the fourth largest crowd to watch a soccer match anywhere in the world on Saturday night. Only FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich had larger attendances.

That’s what the editor of World Soccer magazine wanted everyone to know when he saw the 64,140 fans who packed CenturyLink Field for the Seattle Sounders’ hair-raising 2-1 win in Kasey Keller’s final regular season home game.

(via mlssoccer)

Attendance is what you are missing from your analysis. We already know the Sonics attendance records and we’re only talking about an average 17273 fans per game for NBA. NHL comes in with a slightly higher 17322.

Yep, some folks might have to cut their prices to keep attendance up in the future, but it is a business after all.

(Note – Profit may not be the correct measure since it includes soft expenses like depreciation. Revenue is probably better because it includes TV and ticket sales.)

As to the poster that tries to compare this stadium to a park: Get real. Public parks (to use your example) are non profit spaces. NHL and NBA teams are for profit businesses, plain and simple. Paying for their “factory” with public monies is straight forward corporate welfare – they’ll be sucking at the teat of the taxpayer. Look up the Reason.com articles on the Washington DC stadium for a great take down on the so called economic benefits of publicly funded stadiums.

Seattle and the state of Washington have sunk over a billion into the two albatrosses that are the current stadiums when the streets and water / sewer systems of the city are falling apart. But hey, the masses need their circuses while the city figuratively burns.

Counting the NBA and NHL, as well as the University of Washington football team playing in a new stadium, Councilmember Larry Phillips said the area could have seven major teams.

I didn’t include UW football just because it would be too difficult to figure out which college teams are big enough to count as “major” in all 27 other metro areas. It’s not like I’m getting paid for this or anything, it was just a quick analysis to answer a simple question that was posed by the Councilmembers.

Most sports entertainment dollars spent in a typical US city go to what many consider the big four leagues (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA). I think this is one of the major contributing factors of why the MLS has struggled to take hold in other cities. Seattle is quite unique in their support of the Sounders. Sounders aside, Seattle only has two of the big four leagues represented, whereas the other top 13 markets all have at least 3 teams from the big four leagues. There are even several markets much smaller than Seattle that have 3 or 4 teams in the big four (Tampa, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland).

If you re-analyize your numbers using just the big four leagues you will find that the approximate population threshold to support one major league team is about 600,000 per team. Even a small city like Green Bay/Appleton with a population of around 530,000 can support one team. Seattle could definitely support the big four plus the Sounders without much difficulty. If you factor in future population growth, when the Seattle area grows it will be even more able to support the teams.

Great discussion!!

@ David – Jacksonville may be the largest city in Florida, but it is the 4th largest area in the state and only a fraction of Miami, Tampa, and Orlando metro areas. Jacksonville has been aggressive about annexing everything around it. It’s actually a very small market, comparable to Milwaukee, WI or Oklahoma City. I think it’s #29 in market size among NFL teams (only Green Bay, Buffalo, and New Orleans are smaller).

Also – the WNBA is not a major sports league simply in terms of attendance. Not even close. The MLS would be considered a major sports league depending on the market. If you look closer you will see there are a handful of teams that draw very well and more who do not. In Seattle, the Sounders would outdraw both the Seahawks and Huskies football on an annual basis with their currently scheduled home games.

You have to include the SeaTac region in general. The Mariners recently said that 40-60% of their attendees come from outside the city limits or drive from more than an hour away. As we see with baseball tv deals, franchise value is incredibly dependent on the value that team will fetch for television rights. The Seattle market is the primary market not only for Washington, but largely Oregon, Idaho, Montana and parts of B.C. The Seahawks and Mariners own the rights to those territories, so thus, the value of the television deals will be incredibly valuable. Exceptions would be seen in Oregon for the NBA (Blazers) and MLS (Timbers & Whitecaps), but the NHL team would own rights to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

As you say there needs to be a more thorough look that includes factors such as average incomes, but also local businesses. The reason KeyArena did not function for the NBA’s current economic structure was because of a lack of suites. Businesses will spend hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, for suite ownerships with specific teams. As we well know, Seattle is ripe with many elite companies. Their presence alone make it an attractive market for NBA and NHL.

Denver is the best possible comparison to what the situation will be like in Seattle (though you seem to discount them because of a lack of a WNBA franchise, but as I said earlier, its a stretch to include that as a definitive pre-req). They are easily able to support the NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB. They struggle a bit with the Rapids of the MLS, but that is still a league that has yet to capture mainstream attention. The Rapids are part of what MLS fans call “MLS 1.0″, whereas the Sounders are “2.0″. MLS 2.0 began with the introduction of Tornoto FC in 2006 and the next wave of expansion. Since the arrival of Toronto FC, every MLS expansion market sense has been widely popular and much more profitable than 1.0. In Denver the MLS is still growing, and is perhaps the one franchise that is not supported as well.

The only time Denver has not supported a team as well has been the teams don’t perform well. The Rockies are a prime example, and could be compared with the current Mariners situation. In the late 90′s, early 00′s the team was terrible. As a result the team went from leading the league in attendance (like the Mariners in ’00 and ’01), to one of the lowest in the league. However, beginning in ’06 the team began to win, in ’07 went to the World Series and last year improved attendance by over 1,100,000 fans from the bottom level of 2005. If the teams win, fans will support it.

And I’m not “assuming that all pro sports teams have similar market demands,” I was just trying to answer the fairly straightforward questions posed by the Councilmembers: Does “any other ‘midsized major market’ support [six pro sports teams]?”

By the way Detroit has a WNBA team, along with the major 4′s.

I’ll just leave this here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dl9VzmnuNs

Have a nice day! :D

Well, okay a Phoenix isn’t quite the same as an eagle, but it’s definitely not a melting bottle cap….

http://www.phoenixclosures.com/

So many options! :-)

– Matthew