Recall last August when I exposed Ron Sims's claim of having a "very, very good plan" for the transition to mail-only voting as a baseless fabrication? In this Aug. 18, 2006 e-mail, Bobbie Egan confirmed that I was correct:

The report we released in January was intended to be an assessment of the impact moving to VBM in 2006 versus 2007 would have on our organization. The January report identified the need for a project team whose job it will be to provide an implementation plan. Ultimately, the funding we received from the Council was to fund a VBM team and I believe we only rec'd that funding in June/July.. We are in the process of hiring that project team that will develop the detailed work plan and outline for moving King County to all mail voting

some half-baked brainstorming and at best, what one source close to the situation called "a plan for a plan".

It reminds us that the Executive made a decision to rush into mail-only voting without the benefit of sound research into the costs and technical implications, and that the Council irresponsibly gave its stamp of approval without doing proper due diligence. Now that it's a fait accompli and a team is tasked with actually delivering on a mail-only plan, they're boxed in. They have to deliver something, anything, whether or not it actually works very well. The results are predictable -- a "business case" for new technology that doesn't stand up to scrutiny and a lot of time and money wasted on a politically-motivated push to mail-only voting, instead of on sensible and effective improvements to existing processes.