Elections 2012

On the eve of the election, Ross Reynolds takes the pulse of listeners and asks, "Is the nation better off today than it was four years ago?"

Scheduled for The Conversation, November 5 at noon.

Ross Reynolds talks with Secretary of State Sam Reed about how he is prepping for all the tight races. 

Nate Silver is the statistician and New York Times polling whiz known for his accurate forecasts of the 2008 presidential election.  Four years ago Silver called the correct outcome in 49 out of 50 states and picked the winner in every senate race.  But he got his start in baseball, using statistics to project how well players would perform over the season. Marcie Sillman spoke with Silver about this year’s election and the benefits and limits of data-driven analysis.

This election day, the U.S. Department of Justice will have federal attorneys in every state, ready to take complaints. It's a long-standing program aimed at combating election fraud and voter rights abuses. But the hotlines tend to be pretty quiet in the Northwest.

The election day program has been around for decades. But attorneys in Oregon and eastern Washington say -– at least in recent memory -– they haven't gotten any complaints. Western Washington received a few calls in 2008 about voter registration issues.

This year campaigns are able to make faster and more nimble use of ballot returns than ever before and target those voters who have yet to cast their ballots.

Democratic Party activists in the state of Washington were in high gear this weekend conducting a massive get-out-the-vote campaign. Hundreds of volunteers manned phone banks and fanned out across neighborhoods to encourage people who hadn’t voted to turn in their ballots.

If Initiative 1240 passes, public school funding would finance each charter school created under the law.

OLYMPIA, Wash. – New polls show Washington’s open race for governor remains close. Already hundreds of thousands of Washington voters have returned their ballots. Many more will do so in the coming days. But county auditors have a warning to voters who wait until the last minute.

In Oregon you have to have your ballot in by 8pm on Election night. But in Washington you just have to have your ballot postmarked. That means for days after the election ballots keep on rolling in and they get counted -– unless the postmark is past the due date.

We speak with Karen Porterfield, candidate for Congress in Washington's 8th District, and Priya Guha, Britain's top diplomat in the Northwest. Plus, we hear live music from members of the award-winning Roosevelt High School Jazz Band and get a weekend weather forecast from Nick Bond.

A newly released poll of likely Washington voters indicates that the race for governor is virtually tied with Democrat Jay Inslee slightly ahead.