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February 17, 2010 at 1:26 PM

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Posted by Emily Heffter

I wrote last week that Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's school-levy ballot arrived at the King County Elections office too late to be counted.

McGinn's spokesman said the mayor dropped it into an outgoing mail pile at City Hall. The elections office said the envelope arrived without a stamp, and for reasons unknown, mixed in with the county's interoffice mail.

I got e-mails all weekend from readers wondering why the mayor didn't put a postage stamp on his personal mail.

"Does the Mayor expect the City of Seattle to buy his stamps for him?," wrote one reader.

"I do not think it is right for the Mayor, or any city employee, to use taxpayer funds for private purposes, this includes mailing private letters," wrote another.

Mark Matassa, the spokesman in the mayor's office, said McGinn "made a mistake."

"He certainly didn't expect taxpayers to pay his postage," Matassa said this week. "He just made an error in dealing with it in the city at all."

In the future, Matassa said, the mayor will walk his ballot to a mailbox and mail it himself.

