"I did a double take when first checking The Seattle Times website for breaking election results the evening of Tuesday, August 7. By 8:30 p.m., in the race for Washington Supreme Court Position 8, the votes of 87,000 Washington citizens had been counted for Bruce Danielson, who had not campaigned for the position. Even worse, at that moment he was leading incumbent Justice Steven Gonzalez by nearly 16,000 votes.

I then realized that the early returns were mostly from Central and Eastern Washington. I felt mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was relieved that populous King County — where then-Judge Gonzalez spent 10 years on the Superior Court bench — had not yet submitted its results.

But I was completely dismayed that more than 87,000 voters — which when all was said and done became 438,867 voters — chose Danielson, an unqualified candidate for our state’s highest court. Tragically, many of those 438,867 citizens chose Danielson over Gonzalez because one of the candidates has a Latino surname. Let me explain."

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