Not good, but getting better (and no aspersion on Olympia City Government).

Below are some quotes:

Sunshine Week Series: Don’t count ballots in the dark

As we celebrate Sunshine Week, we must include election transparency as an essential piece of open government. Our state and national election experiences of the past decade have only underscored the need for the light of accountability to shine on the election process. As usually happens, citizens and reporters have been at the forefront of the effort to bring ballot boxes out of the dark, primarily through the use of public records. Unfortunately, Washington legislators have introduced two bills reducing access to election records. Senate Bill 5566 and House Bill 1742 would prohibit access to birth dates in the state voter registration database and would prevent the copying of ballot signatures. If passed, these bills would make it nearly impossible for citizens to investigate illegal voting. . . . The stated purpose behind the bills is to protect privacy, but no one has shown any evidence of ballot signatures being used for identity theft. Even Attorney General Rob McKenna, a tireless advocate for consumer protection, recently told a gathering of newspaper editors that he knew of no occasion when these types of records were used for identity theft.

In foreclosures, that is.  The reason?  Subprime borrowers, by some accounts.  But that seems a bit disingenuous, doesn't it?  The problem lies not with the borrowers, but with the subprime lenders who peddled the loans to folks of marginal means in the first place.  New Century, the USA's second largest subprime lending "specialist", has run out of cash to pay back its creditors, lost 90% of its market value in a period of about two months, and has terminated employment of 300 personnel - likely with more on the way.  Another half-dozen smaller subprime firms have fired some 5,600 employees in the past year.  And they brought it all on themselves: many of those now in default were sucked in with artifically low "introductory" rates; other lenders required no documentation of income whatsoever.