A regular reader of mine last night sent in a PDF of the July 28, 2010 edition of the Chinook Observer, a local paper read in Washington's third district. On page B6 appears a list of candidates who will feature on ballots used in the area for the August 17 primary. And guess what? According to the Chinook Observer, Denny Heck (the leading contender for a spot on the November ballot, and a Democrat) is actually a Republican!

Oops.

What's the story here, I wondered? Well, in speaking with a source in Washington who was alerted to the error yesterday and did some investigating into the cause of it, I am told that the Chinook Observer is not at fault. In fact, my source says, the Pacific County Auditor, Pat Gardner (like Heck, a Democrat) is.

This looks like a bit of a FAIL, I daresay-- though one, it also bears noting, that the Auditor's office seems to be assuring folks has not occurred on actual ballots, where Heck's designation as a Democrat is correctly reflected.

One does wonder, however, whether Cheryl Crist might wind up taking a slightly higher percentage of the vote among Democratic Chinook Observer readers than does Heck-- or indeed among a broader swath of Pacific County residents, if Gardner put this misinformation out more broadly. One also hopes that no low-information would-be Republican voters rely on this particular edition of the Chinook Observer and tick Denny Heck's name on the ballot without checking what the ballot does, in fact, say....

I am one of those pesky libertarian bloggers who did, in fact, have a problem with surveillance policies initiated by George W. Bush's administration, even though I am a Republican, just like I'm not a big fan of a very, very powerful executive branch, despite my "Republican-ness." That has tended, in past, to result in protracted moments of sympathizing with Democrats, generically, when they raise concerns about things like the executive branch's method of collecting intelligence and advocate for checking, curbing, or constraining executive branch authority in a variety of ways.

I say "sympathizing" as opposed to "agreeing with enough to vote for," though, because when it comes to things like intelligence-gathering, just for example, I don't see the fight as being between left and right, or Democrat and Republican. I see the fight over use, oversight and abuse of executive branch authority in this realm and others as being, well, between the executive branch and the other branches of government. The executive branch always wants more power, a free rein; the legislative and judicial, unsurprisingly, aren't on the same page. We know Bush's executive branch wanted more power always, especially when it came to security and security-related matters. Bill Clinton also wanted and pursued expanded wiretapping authority as President (which he didn't get)....