Darcy Burner Can't Tell the Truth About Her Voting Record
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The Seattle Times hosted Darcy Burner today for an online Q&A (Dave Reichert will do a similar appearance on October 16th). More on a couple issues later, but for now, let's look at a glaring gaffe Burner made on the topic of her own voting record.

Here's the online question:

Darcy, is it true that you only voted in 6 of 15 elections that King County records show you were eligible to vote in from 1999 to 2003? If so, why is your personal voting record so spotty? If this is not true, can you tell me how many elections you were eligible for within that period per your records and how many of those you voted in? -- Bob Nix, Kent
D.B.: First, the voting record that matters is Dave Reichert's: he has missed 30 votes as a Congressman in the past two years, including skipping an important vote on the Iraq war when he chose to be here raising money with George Bush.

As to the Republican smear, King County elections does not identify which elections a voter is eligible to vote in, only which ones they have voted in. My attackers are wrong: They identify elections I could not legally vote in, since I do not live in Redmond's city limits.


Burner seems to be able to come to grips with the fact she has a terrible record voting in elections prior to 2004. Stefan has laid out the facts quite clearly. Contrary to the implications of Burner's response, I (and probably Stefan too for that matter) can attest it is very easy to examine a list of which elections in which someone did or did not vote, and the relevant voter registration addresses for those elections, to determine in which voting jurisdictions a voter was eligible in a given year, and thus, whether or not a voter missed any elections.

In this case, the record is quite clear, Burner voted in only 6 of the 15 elections she was eligible for from 1998 through 2003 (apologies for the typo in past coverage which said "from 1999 through 2003") - or 12 of 21 elections from 1998 through this year's primary if you want to slice it another way. Yet, she claims: "They identify elections I could not legally vote in, since I do not live in Redmond's city limits." Stefan, who one can guess knows a thing or two about the King County Elections Office, has shown quite clearly that Burner did not vote in 9 of the 10 elections cited by the NRCC. Moreover, the 6 of 15 figure noted above has nothing at all to do with City of Redmond elections, which Burner seems to be using as her alibi.

If Burner wants to change the subject to Reichert that's fine; such moves are a time-honored tradition in politics. But she shouldn't lie about her own record when confronted with it.