Bacon leads Port Commissioner primary with 58%

Incumbent Port Commissioner Connie Bacon leads in the early counting for her August primary race with 58% of the vote. Congratulations to Commissioner Bacon!

Too bad the Port was unable to run this race as a RCV race. Bacon would have won a majority of the first choices in a RCV race in November without having a separate primary. A very efficient outcome for the voters.

Too bad the Port had to run an expensive two election process to find out what a RCV race would have found out in one election. About one-third of Pierce County voters had only this one race on their ballot. The Port's bill for the August primary will likely exceed $300,000 for an unneeded election.

Too bad for the taxpayers; too bad for the Port

Today I will sit down with my ballot for the Tuesday primary. It has a single race on it, for Port of Tacoma commissioner.

The only function of my vote is to eliminate one of the three candidates (Bernardo Tuma, Connie Bacon, or Bill Casper) so that voters will have only two candidates on their ballots in November.

More than 130,000 voters around the county are in the same position. Most of them are likely to decide this is not worth the effort or the stamp.

Printing and postage for these 130,000 ballots is not cheap. In addition, the Pierce County Elections Department has hired poll workers and will open polling locations Tuesday for all of the precincts, including those 146 precincts where only the port race is on the ballot. Some precincts will likely experience less than 10 percent turnout.

Is there a better way? Yes. We can see the better way here in Pierce County this November.

To read more, see here.