The Seattle monorail referendum is the only major issue on this year’s mid-term local ballot. (There’s also a statewide highway levy, and the ritual re-elections of unopposed congresspeople and state legislators. But the monorail’s the one ballot item assured to change the region’s future.)

Since the movement’s start in 1996 by ex-cabdriver Dick Falkenbury, through two initiatives (the second was to repeal the city council’s actions to kill the project), and now on to the vote to actually build a 14-mile phase-one line, the monorail’s been loved by almost everybody except the big guys.

Thus, the three-month barrage of questionable “facts,” innuendo, and outright smear tactics by assorted political and business “leaders,” whose chief spokesman is a former scandal-plagued port commissioner.

The shallowness and shrillness of the anti-monorail drive has only helped confirm my suspicions that this isn’t just a vote on building an in-city transit system. It’s also being treated by many as a referendum on the “Seattle Process” political machine itself. This machine believes it has the sole right to paternistically decide what’s best for the citizenry (which usually means whatever the Nordstroms and Paul Allen want). The machine’s m.o. is all about the deserved primacy of “experts,” planners, and authorities. It can’t stand the threat of actual citizen-driven democracy.

Seattle needs an economical, efficient, out-of-car-traffic transit system designed just for in-town everyday movement (as opposed to suburban commutes). The process machine needs a comeuppance. There are other reasons for Seattle residents to vote for the monorail, but these two are the most important.