Sneak peek: Abortion, SCOTUS, housing, school funding lead Citzens Agenda concerns

It’s no secret that abortion, female reproductive rights and the selection and tenure of U.S. Supreme Court justices have melded into a single fireball of national political angst this spring. And it’s not surprising that with election day looming, that heat is felt all the way up in the far Northwest.

It’s hard to say whether that will send a wave of angry voters to the polls this month, in a primary election where initial turnout looks underwhelming.

But an early peek at ongoing reader voting on questions submitted through the annual Cascadia Daily News Citizens Agenda process shows those subjects front and center. Other leading contenders include perennial local issues such as affordable housing, school funding, infrastructure and climate.

How do we know?

Unlike the official voting process in Whatcom and Skagit counties, ballot-handling procedures for votes being assembled in CDN’s newsroom have a comparatively flimsy chain of custody: call it marginal security.

Nobody’s going to be able to stuff our ballot box. But we do have a few unmonitored envelopes laying around in between news releases and Doritos bags.

This allows potential ne’er-do-wells, including yours truly, to sneak a peek at a voting contest which remains live until the end of the day Monday, Aug. 5.

Which, of course, I have.

Leading questions as of press time from the list of 54 presented in last week’s CDN Primary Election Extra (kidding aside, this reflects an actual count as of Thursday):

Group One (federal and state offices)

• Should a woman have access to abortions, and what about in the case of life- and health-threatening pregnancies?
• Are current U.S. Supreme Court tenures too long and restrictions on conflicts of interest too lax?
• Do you think the president should be above the law? And does the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively make that the case?
• Do you support Project 2025? If not, how will you protect citizens against its ideology?
• Do you believe our current options for health care in Whatcom County are adequate? What more can be done to make that happen?
• Do you support universal health care?

Group 2 (state and local candidates)

• What will you do about our housing crisis, not just the lack of stock but lack of average and middle-class affordability, and predatory investors and landlords?
• What will you do to bring fair and equitable funding to all public school districts in Washington? (Is the state’s “adjustment factor” working?)
• Do you think the current state infrastructure (utilities, transportation, parks, etc.) is up to the standards that taxpayers expect? If not what specific things would you do to change that?
• Are you in favor of ranked-choice voting and open primaries?
• What is your stance on state Initiative 2117, which would repeal Washington’s Climate Commitment Act?

A couple quick points here:

At the risk of sounding like a huge suck up, we have some smart voters here. These are all solid, timely questions, and the fact that readers articulated them and got like-minded individuals to make them priorities is encouraging. Pat yourselves on the back.

And if these questions really chap your (insert chap-prone body part here), or offend your sensibilities, there’s still time to vote for others that better represent your concerns. You can do so online, or by getting us a paper ballot, clipped from that Primary Election Extra, by end of day Monday.

Extra print copies of that section are being delivered today to public libraries in Bellingham, Ferndale, Blaine, Everson and Skagit, and the Bellingham Senior Center.

We’re here to help with official election choices, as well. All of CDN’s comprehensive election coverage can be found online (free, outside our paywall, as a public service). You can also look for some of our election coverage, and that of other civic-minded news partners, in the Cascade PBS/Crosscut online election guide.

We’ll count every Citizens Agenda ballot, as is our custom, and announce winning questions Aug. 9.

What we unfortunately can’t do is start the process over, from scratch, and ask an entire new list of questions not in evidence on the ballot, as a (very) few people seem to desire at this point every year. Questions on the ballot are not, in fact, our choices: They’re your choices, which is the entire point.

We only clean them up a bit (you’re welcome, parents of small children) and combine some that are repetitive. But otherwise, this is all crowdsourced. And if you want to be sourced, you need to join the crowd — by sending in your own questions.

Most of our readers get this and say they welcome the chance to toss issues directly at candidates, using CDN as a proxy. We take this responsibility very seriously and will faithfully put the top questions to candidates in writing, then publish their answers in our comprehensive Northwest Washington Voter Guide on Oct. 18.

In the meantime, plenty of chances to participate in public election discussions still exist:

We’re always open to additional input about election coverage. Don’t hesitate to send us other questions that failed to get addressed, which we will share with CDN’s reporters and editorial board members. Just drop a note into our newstips@cascadiadaily.com inbox, subject line: CITIZENS AGENDA.

And please don’t forget to postmark or drop into a ballot box your real ballot, due by 8 p.m. Aug. 6. Find a list of locations in our Election Extra section.

With Washington’s efficient mail-in voting, election nights aren’t as impactful as they once were. But any real newsie treasures breaking election news, our purest dip into the machinery of representative democracy. Those nights are all-hands events in CDN’s Bellingham newsroom, and the pizzas are already on order.

Time for you all to carry it over the finish line.

Ron Judd's column appears weekly; ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com; @roncjudd.