In looking over my newly arrived King County Voter's Pamphlet, I observe a different format than previous years---a format which has the appearance of being a built-in advantage for democrat candidates for public office.

It used to be that candidates for each partisan race, whether it be federal or local, would be grouped together. i.e., for U.S. Senate you would see all the democrat candidates followed by the republican candidates in the same section. Then for the next race--e.g., state legislature, you'd again see each party's candidates listed in the same section for that race, etc.

This year's pamphlet is vastly different: A "blue section" lists each race from federal on down to local--but ONLY the democrat candidates for all those offices are listed in each contest category . You have to flip all the way over to PAGE 21 before seeing any republican candidates whatsoever.

The people that put this pamphlet together HAVE to know that many people may not make it all the way through it and stop reading after the first few pages. So that would mean that they would only have read about the democrat candidates for all the offices, and in some instances people may believe that ONLY the democrat candidates are running for each office (I know, I know, you and I wouldn't make that mistake, but remember how many people marked their ballots in amazingly unintelligible ways in '04 and '05?? And the extreme difficulty the canvassing board had in trying to discern what the heck the voter meant?? These same voters have received this voter pamphlet!)

Some will argue--"well, this is just a differently organized way to present all the different contests involved for the primary". I say, bull--they used to group all parties represented in each race under the same section even for the primaries, so that voters could see ALL the candidates in the race instead of making it look to a casual observer that only democrats are running for these offices unless you look much further into the pamphlet.

I'm highly suspicious about this new format and call on King County Elections to go back to the old way of formatting the pamphlet, so as not to give democrats an unfair advantage. KCE is run by democrats, and they should go out of their way to ensure that it does not look like they are trying to give themselves an advantage by the way they have laid out the voter's pamphlet.

Of all the complaints I heard from voters about the '04 election debacle, not once did I hear them say that the KC voter's pamphlet was part of the problem, and in need of revamping in this way!