Special Series
Seattle's Great Viaduct Debate
In a Series
Does No-No Mean No?
It's been nearly a month since Seattle voters rejected both of the officially sanctioned options for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The final tally: 70 percent of voters opted against the tunnel; and 57 percent voted against rebuilding a new & bigger elevated freeway.
As far as such things go, it was a landslide -- a resounding "no" to both options. But does that end the controversy? Probably not.
You see, it was an oddly designed ballot: voters could vote for each option independently. Some folks voted "no" on both options (as the Stranger and P-I recommended), while others voted "yes" to both (on the theory that either option would be better than a stalemate). Plus, some voted on only one, and abstained on the other. And some even handed in blank ballots, as the Municipal League recommended as some sort of protest.
Now, I'm not complaining about the ballot design. The other viable alternative -- with voters allowed only to choose between the elevated or the tunnel -- was even worse. Tunnel vs. Elevated was a false choice.
Still, the unusual ballot may have muddied the waters a bit, making it harder for attentive politicos to figure out precisely what the voters actually meant -- and easier for one side or the other to claim a tenuous victory where none was warranted.
So I spent some time with the vote file to try to clear things up a bit. And as far as I can tell, "double no" was the most common vote combination in the election, while "double yes" -- i.e., a new highway any cost -- was the least common.
