This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

The economy being what it is, many Washingtonians have watched the union contract talks at Boeing with wonderment and perhaps even envy.

Before the Boeing Machinists went on strike in early September, the aerospace company's had offered the union's members an 11 percent salary increase over three years (5 percent in the first year), a minimum wage increase of $2.28, a ratification bonus of $2,500, a lump sum bonus worth about $5,000 and another large bonus linked to profits.

Out-of-pocket costs for the company's chief health plan would have gone up – but the coverage would still have been generous by most standards. Overall, even the original offer would have looked like heaven to most Washington wage-earners.

Now, after striking for nearly eight weeks, the Machinists appear ready to ratify a new offer that does not appear dramatically better. The lost weeks of work cost the rank-and-file members dearly. The hit to the company's profits may well exceed $1.5 billion.

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According to the Pierce County voter's pamphlet, "the world will be watching" to see how ranked-choice voting is handled here. What it's going to see is a needless delay in releasing the results.

Only Boeing's Machinists can ultimately decide if their interests were served by this year's strike. But the frequency of these long strikes – Boeing sees one roughly every five years – bodes ill for the survival of aerospace manufacturing in this state.

The Anchorage Daily News had this to say today about the conviction of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens on corruption charges.

Alaskan of the Century, convicted

A jury of ordinary citizens rendered its verdict: No one, not even Ted Stevens, the Alaskan of the Century, is above the law. If a powerful politician is going to collect a steady stream of gifts and home improvements from a powerful lobbyist, he must report them as the law requires.

The public had a right to know about the intimate financial relationship Sen. Stevens had with the state’s most notorious power broker. Sen. Stevens let Bill Allen rebuild his house and stock it with furnishings — and then hid the cozy arrangement from public sight.

It’s a shame to see Sen. Stevens’ once-great career end in scandal. No single person has done more to transform life in Alaska than Stevens, the longest-serving Republican U.S. senator in history.

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Here is Auditor Pat McCarthy's response to Dave Seago's posting below in which he argues for releasing all ranked-choice voting results on election night. Attached is a letter she sent to candidates explaining the process, which includes a results release schedule.

We are running elections in two different ways in Pierce County this year with two different ballot cards. One requires simple counting or tabulation of the results of the traditional ballot card and one requires a counting program that tabulates the results based on the ranking of candidates on the ballot. To do what the Ranked Choice Voting advocates want will stop the process for counting or tabulating all of these ballots, traditional and ranked choice in order to accumulate the results for just the ranked choice ballots. I am running twenty-four hour employee shifts beginning on Election Day to meet the high voter turnout and twice the number of ballots normally returned.

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