November General Election results have now been certified by the King County Elections Department.

If you voted an "absentee" ballot, then there is no way to be certain it was tallied unless you phone 296-VOTE.

If you voted at the polls, then you should be pleased to know that no human hand intervened between your marking of your paper ballot and its tally as reported on the 11 o'clock news that night. Its processing also did not cost you or King County a postage stamp nor the massive mailing and counting operation that absentee ballots demand. Furthermore, your ballot's tally was balanced against its issuance by one of hundreds of extremely civic-minded poll judges. Such is the reason poll ballots are not subject to the unsettling discrepancy that always exists between counted absentee ballots and returned absentee ballots. If you voted at the polls, then you also may have purchased a cookie or two from a PTA or church group.

If you care to preserve a 230-year American celebration of democracy, then please phone 296-VOTE and request a return to poll voting. Governments will continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars mailing voter guides for kitchen table deliberations. Nothing will change there! Do it today, for once you disown this privilege you will have forever deprived yourself , your neighbors and future generations of this most open method of suffrage.

Yes, don't forget how others suffered and died to gain that privilege for themselves and their posterity.

Craig Keller

Genesee