Company for the People

In Good company

I just wanted to tell you how wonderful I thought Nina Shapiro's article on Costco was ["Company for the People," Dec. 15]. Two and a half weeks ago, I was hired in Costco's travel agency. I have been in total disbelief at how different the whole atmosphere and attitude here is than at any other job I've had. Never before have I felt so genuinely cared for and taken care of, as well as actually trusted to be a competent employee rather than micromanaged.

I feel so incredibly blessed to have been hired here that I've thanked my lucky stars every day since, and I really appreciate that Shapiro gave Costco's wonderful employee treatment the attention it deserves. There are so many things to hate about corporate America, but this corporation allows me to feel important and have confidence in my future and in knowing that I'm working for a company I believe in and that is doing good in the world.

C. Schultz
Seattle

The Costco Class

"There's a class element" to Costco's success, writes Nina Shapiro in her attempt to show that Very Kerry Costco is so much more sensitive (wages! women! health care! Democrats!) than BushMaster Wal-Mart ["Company for the People," Dec. 15]. That class is Slumming Blue-State Yuppie.

Costco is a People's Company, asserts the article's headline. The People at the People's Company are high-end metrosexual consumers savoring the frisson of power shopping for an "array of high-end products" sold under stadium lights. The People, in other words, are snobs who linger over overpriced coffee, overpriced real estate, designer jeans, designer drugs, and Seattle Weekly.

Cody Kerns
Seattle

Buying Time

Nice job on the Costco story ["Company for the People," Dec. 15]. In an era when time poverty whups financial poverty in my household, I implicitly trust the value proposition Costco provides. I can buy any item they offer and feel confident that when the cost of my time is factored into the purchase price, I always do best at Costco. Or in the plain language with which I counsel my son in college, who has his own Costco card, "You can never have too much toilet paper in the house."

John Robert Hill
Everett

Verify the Vote

Great article about the gubernatorial race and the need for election reform in Washington ["The Ballot Botch," Dec. 15]. I'd like to clarify one thing, though: If King County were using VoteHere VHTi as its independent audit and voter verification technology, King County Council Chair Larry Phillips would have known that his ballot was missing from the final results much sooner. Better yet, he could have alerted Dean Logan's staff and kicked off an audit process to trace the problem to its source.

Here's how it would work: The VHTi voter receipt is like an ATM receipt, which you take home and later reconcile against your bank statement (though we add protection of the voter's privacy and ballot secrecy). Phillips and other voters would get a receipt. Meanwhile, Logan would publish the "Election Transcript" for independent audit by the D's, R's, League of Women Voters, and others. The Election Transcript includes all the ballot, receipt, and chain of custody data in the election. That's the transparency part described in the article—anyone can scrutinize all the data, end-to-end, from the election.

Then Phillips could verify that his vote was counted (and counted properly) against those independently audited results. He would compare his receipt codes against the audit results from the D's, R's, LWV, or whomever he chooses to trust. If his ballot were lost, he'd know immediately and could kick off an audit to trace the problem to its source. All voters who verify their receipt against the independently audited election results would be able to alert Logan in a timely way and with traceable evidence to assist in finding errors.

What we're doing is new and novel in the world of elections, but we're just bringing levels of auditability and voter (customer) verification in elections up to the same levels we take for granted in banking, e-commerce, credit card, and other trusted transactions we make millions of times per day, safely and verifiably. Until we improve auditability and verification, there is no incentive to improve election accuracy, because there is no voter (customer) accountability and verification built into the system.

Tom Mereckis
VoteHere, Bellevue

Shame on Steve

Steve Wiecking just doesn't get it [Small World, "Blue Boy," Dec. 15]. If he doesn't like beautiful music sung incredibly well, I feel sorry for him.

His scathing review of Clay Aiken's special stunk of special interest. His own. So he doesn't like the guy. Maybe if Aiken knocked over a liquor store or raped a neighbor and got arrested for drunk driving, Wiecking would be happy.