Obama might not be on the ballot ever again, but today is an election day and even local elections have consequences. If an election is happening in your state then stop on your way home and vote for someone.
Do you live in PA like I do? In all seriousness, get off your ass and find your polling place. We have an unprecedented three open Supreme Court seats today. That means today will basically decide the direction that PA will take for a very long time to come. Having the Governor’s office is nice but he or she only gets to work within the boundaries that the state courts set. Turnout is especially low in mid-midterms so your vote counts three or four times as much as it does in a Presidential year. Now git or I’ll start with the Zeppelin clips again.
Is anything interesting up for grabs in your neck of the woods? Talk about it here.
Open Thread
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
We have no elections today, which is a relief, because there were some years when we have had four (4) separate elections in a single year. There will be three next year: municipal elections in April, primary elections in June, and the general election in November.
TaMara (BHF)
Two interesting things going on in Colorado this election. One is Pot Money – because of Tabor (I think) many cities and counties could have to give the excess back – so instead there are ballot measures in most cities and counties to keep it.
And Jefferson County School Board Recall – students, parents and teachers are revolting having that rethug board jammed down their throats last election. If they succeed, I think other districts will attempt it as well.
geg6
My John and I will be heading to the polls after work. Some big county elections happening here in Beaver County, PA, along with the Supremes. The weasly local state rep is a GOPer and he has nefarious plans for taking over the county. I hate the little shit and I’m voting for people I really don’t want to just to make sure he doesn’t get his way. Sometimes, it’s all about voting against, not voting for.
NonyNony
Ohio has its weird marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot that is simultaneously the most cynical thing I’ve ever read and the most likely path to decriminalization that the state has for the next decade or so. I’m really torn and am still on the fence mere hours before going to the polls, which as an opinionated and cranky old man doesn’t usually happen to me. So well done authors of Issue 3 – you’ve confounded this grumpy old person.
But it’s pushed out of the news that there’s a redistricting issue on the ballot for Ohio this year. Admittedly it’s for state-level districts only but it’s a big Biden deal for Ohio. It would take our current mess and replace it with a slightly less bad mess – a bipartisan commission drawing up the state level districts with public input and some restrictions on how districts can be drawn written into the state constitution. It’s a small change, but could be an important one.
Also Columbus is electing a new mayor for the first time in 15 years. Which is a weird thing to contemplate (the lack of term limits on Mayoral candidates means that as a chief executive they hold that position for a looong time, and it’s odd to think about how much the character of the city ends up being influenced by them).
Also the Columbus Zoo has a levy renewal on the ballot. It should be an easy pass, but the anti-tax nuts will be out with no counterbalance because they turn out for every election, not just in presidential years.
Bill Arnold
Voted this AM; NY State, 3 (IIRC) State Judge elections.
No Democrats ran for any local positions; they were pure Republican. Since this is NY State, there were a lot of party lines besides Dem/Rep. (Green, Working Families, Conservative, Reform, and one or two others.)
Botsplainer
Judging by the election ads that are being run in Kentucky, a vote for any Democrat is a vote for the third term of Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Hopefully, there is a big GOTV push in the mosques, union thug halls, GLBT Gaia worship centers and synagogues here in the People’s Democratic Soc!alist Sharia Kenyan Republic of Louisville…
Xboxershorts
Here in Potter County, PA the Democrat6s actually ARE republicans.
No, really, 4 or 5 positions open were for incumbents endorsed and running under BOTH party labels.
Yes, I voted for 3 democratic supreme court justices. It was the right thing to do.
Because I hate my legislature.
balconesfault
In Texas all the state GOP/Tea Party bigwigs (Abbott, Patrick, Paxton) are pounding the drums for Prop 1, which represents a very modest property tax reduction in exchange for a constitutional commitment to never tax real estate transactions. On it’s merit, I’m somewhat agnostic … but given who is backing it I had to vote no.
Steeplejack
Voted here in NoVa this morning. Bunch of obscure local stuff, so I took the Democratic election guide on the way in and voted like a Tammany Hall zombie. No line, no waiting, very efficient. There was only one other person voting when I went in about 10:30 (elementary school gym).
On the way out I gave the Democratic guy the election guide back so he could recycle it. I almost asked the Republican—a cheery woman in her mid-thirties (white, of course)—which presidential candidate she was supporting, but I didn’t trust myself to keep a straight face.
trollhattan
A rare-as-hell no-ballot first Tuesday in November for us. Usually there’s a special election, dog catcher or utility board selection, this or that proposition we have to vote on but not this day.
I have never seen presidential yard signs so early–some have been out since August. (Yes, a sign can be presidential; I think two or three are competing for the Republican nomination.)
CarolDuhart2
@NonyNony: Vote yes on 3, no on 2. Two is designed to amend the initiative process in order to make initiatives like 3 (or anything else) less likely.
Also yes one, the creates a non-partisan commission for leglislative redistrictring. Establish the principle now, and perhaps later these can be used for Congressional Districts as well.
BTW, I have an idea but not sure how to carry it out. For years, I’ve been vexed by the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a site where a person could look up when elections take place. I tried one back in 2008 for the Democratic campaign, but it didn’t get much traffic, and the calendar format doesn’t really allow for much detail. Today I realized that it probably needed a spreadsheet/database solution. Now I can handle spreadsheets, but don’t know how to make it searchable like a database. And I have never learned or mastered Microsoft Access, so that beat me right there.
And if you can, vote by mail. After seeing tablets used for verifying state id (thanks Republicans and Kasich), I’m not sure anymore about verification and who’s able to really vote at a precinct, i voted anyway (we still have scanned ballots). Go the Oregon way-all paper, and the scanning of ballots is done with representatives of all parties watching the process. Which isn’t possible to do in every precinct.
NonyNony
@trollhattan:
And they’d probably poll higher than at least 4 of the clowns who have been onstage during recent debates!
NonyNony
@CarolDuhart2:
Oh Issue 2 was a solid NO for me a while back. It’s almost as cynical as Issue 3, in that it seems that the crafters are using the genuine outrage at how Issue 3 was constructed in order to hobble the initiative process in a lot of ways that aren’t getting talked about (like it blocks initiatives from having tax rates in them, which is ridiculous).
Of course our Initiative process is messed up in this state – the only way to do things by popular ballot is via a constitutional amendment. And we wouldn’t need to do these things if our assembly would just do its job instead of doing nothing.
zzyzx
I’m really enjoying this vote by mail only thing WA does these days. I knew I’d be by a dropbox on Friday so I filled it out then.
Geeno
A couple county elections to vote on here. At the town level, all the Republicans are running unopposed – BAH!
Peale
I guess I’m supposed to get rid of my mayor because she represents the “same old same old”. I think she’s been in two terms. That is according to the flyers that get slipped under my door on behalf of her competitor – the former mayor. But if she’s the same old same old, isn’t he the same older same older?
Goblue72
Nothing here in Oakland, but SF has a tight Board of Supervisors race between two horrible options – Julie Christensen, a Mayoral appointee and lapdog; and Aaron Peskin, a previous two term Supervisor running for his old seat and who thinks the solution to SF’s housing affordability crisis is to build less housing.
The Mayor is up for election but his opposition is a guy named Broke-Ass Stuart and a couple other literal nobodies.
Plus the usual string of ballot propositions, including an affordable housing bond measure, a measure to practically ban full-time AirBnB hosting (aka running a hotel out of your apartment), a ban on new housing in the Mission neighborhood, a measure to give the green light a mega development along the waterfront on 28 acres owned by the SF Giants, and a mess of sunshine/public disclosure stuff.
I miss some things about living on that side of the Bay Bridge. The crazy making politics ain’t one.
MomSense
We have a clean elections referendum question, and some bond questions on the ballot. Lots of local town council, mayoral, and school board races.
Hoping for good turn out.
CarolDuhart2
@NonyNony: If anything, I think we need to improve the initiative process rather than relying on the sometimes slow legislative process.
I think the anger over Issue 3 is misplaced. Yes, there’s 10 growers, but given both the legal and financial risks (pot is still illegal Federally) there was never going to be a lot of people who were going to be suppliers. Maybe in 5 years and a new Congress, that won’t be an issue, but for now. I’ll settle for legalization and rolling back of drug penalties.
A person could still grow their own plants anyway for personal consumption if the retail price is a bit too high (which is personal freedom not allowable before)
Kay
@NonyNony:
I did yes on 3, no on 2 just because 3 may lead to fewer arrests and fines/jail/prison terms. Other than that it’s horrible in every way. My sense is it isn’t going to pass, partly because of the incredibly cynical and dishonest campaign, but I’m basing that on conversations I’ve had- nothing more. No on 2 is a no-brainer, IMO.
Bobby Thomson
PA turnout is very light. Not a good sign.
Elie
Here is the subtext of what is driving the Republican/Tea Party disaster and politics from local to national results…. what is happening to white middle aged Americans….
“Analyzing health and mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from other sources, they concluded that rising annual death rates among this group are being driven not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse: alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids.”
…”the declining health and fortunes of poorly educated American whites. In middle age, they are dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case found.
The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.”
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Interesting, because over in Pasadena we do; we’re having an election for the local community college district board. It’s really stupid, because we had municipal elections earlier in the year and they really should have been consolidated. I’ve read that holding municipal- and in many cases state- elections at a different time from federal elections was a Progressive Era reform that seems to have turned out badly these days. The idea was to prevent smaller scale elections from being taken over by the partisan spirit that dominated in federal elections. Instead, we get incredibly bad turnout because there’s no spirit at all. We should switch local and state elections to be back in sync with federal ones.
gene108
In my area of NJ we had state assembly and county wide offices up, plus the local school board. The local school board ran unopposed, but as I do not have kids, it is not a big deal to me.
Other offices, I voted straight Dem.
The county wide offices used to be all Republican, but a few years ago (maybe 2008?) a coupe of Democrats broke in. There were some attack ads run against them the last few weeks. Hope those do not have a big impact.
JPL
I left the house at 6:45 am to wave signs. I’m taking a break and will head out again at four. The current city council has been bought and paid for by developers. The house where Jimmy Carter vacationed in the summer during his Presidency, has already been rezoned. Although, the house can’t be removed, you can now surround it with five other houses. It’s an uphill fight since local incumbents tend to win, but that doesn’t mean, we won’t try. I hate that they want to destroy the historic district.
JPL
@Bobby Thomson: Odd year elections are like that. I think odd year elections should be outlawed.
SWMBO
We don’t have an election today. Last year I took the Democratic Party handout and voted straight party line. Rick Scott still won. Goddamnit. The good thing about voting the party handout if is makes choosing judges easier. Here there is no political affiliation on judges on the ballot so you have to know who you want to vote for. The handout makes it much easier. I’m hoping the Democrats upstate do this and make it easier to choose in the Orlando area. They wouldn’t need a lot of them printed and they could be recycled so that more folks could be helped.
NonyNony
@Kay:
This is pretty much where I’m standing as of now. I’m also concerned about the medical usage – this passing would make it legal for people to use it medicinally, and that’s worth the crappy implementation. Cynically, I also figure that if it passes then a “fix” will come down the line to expand it eventually (because money talks), so the small step forward towards decriminalization is worth putting up with the obviously cynical implementation that they’re pushing here.
As for it passing, I have no idea. My usual conservative-leaning suburb-bordering area has folks with pro Issue 3 signs up in their yard and nobody with an anti sign up. I’m not sure what that means.
CarolDuhart2
@JPL: Amen. I am fairly tuned into politics, and there have been some special elections I’ve missed because they are in off-years.
This is one of my pet peeves about off-year elections and why they should be abolished.
Beneftis of going back to even year elections:
Higher turnout for all elections and easier to keep up with them: divide by 2 and you know when to vote.
Consolidating these elections would save money in just about anything to do with election management.
Off years can be used for internal party politics and for giving the public a rest from political advertising, and voter registration.
Redshift
(Feedly got confused about which thread was the most recent, so I’m reposting this here.)
Voting is underway here in Virginia. This is always the lowest turnout out of the four year cycle, because there are only state legislature and local offices, but in my precinct at least, the turnout seems to be higher than usual, relatively.
Ordinarily, this would be a good thing, because we’re a Democratic precinct, but for some reason I’m feeling nervous. Low-turnout elections are such a wildcard, and a difference in turnout could go either way. There were apparently some predictions that the early focus on the presidential elections might have more people paying attention to politics than usual, or that it might just be energizing Republicans, but no one actually knows, of course.
I started out being a bit nervous because we had a young African American woman come through who wanted help in figuring out how to vote for the candidate who would “stop all those tolls.” This is a reference to a blatantly false attack ad that the Republicans have been using against every Democrat, with just the name and picture changed (which I tried to explain), so that was worrisome, but there weren’t any more who mentioned it. (Plus, our delegate and state senator are running unopposed, so she couldn’t vote for “that candidate” anyway.) It also made me nervous that the voters who were coming through in the early morning were more Republican, but I’ve seen that other years; morning people seem to be more likely to be Republicans. It swung back the other way by late morning.
I’m also trying not to be nervous for my friend Jennifer Boysko, who’s running for the House of Delegates in Herndon. She should be a shoo-in, because she lost by 32 votes last time against a Republican incumbent who has since retired. But again, off-off-year election, and their nominee this time is a Latino Republican in a district with significant Latino population, who is doing a “one of us” campaign in Spanish which carefully avoids mentioning his being Republican or his stance on almost any issue. Since there were some virulently racist Republicans elected there in the not-too-distant past, hopefully that will run aground when they see the R by his name, but who knows.
Elie
We have a lot at stake in our elections but its not clear what will happen. The subtext is a gigantic coal terminal that is being proposed at a site (Cherry Point) of environmental importance and fragility. The pro coal terminal people are arguing that there will be jobs — but they exaggerate what we already know to be the case — the declining non automated jobs in the whole resource industry. Today, Alcoa aluminum announced that they were closing their pot shed — putting 100 local folks out of work — making the argument about jobs even more intense but not fundamentally changing the underlying reality that the jobs are almost all automated anymore.
The coal in this proposed terminal comes from the Powder River basin and is intended for China… though there is confusion around whether China would actually use it since it has such problems with air pollution. In the meantime, the 10 or more trains loaded with this poisonous shit to the environment and people, would be dumping it in an 80 acre site to be transported by freighter to China (which actually has a lot of its own coal but can’t access apparently). The coal pile will be 60-80 ft tall and the owners swear up and down that they will cover it and wet it down and make it certain not to leak into the adjacent marine habitat or bother people’s asthma while being trained in (yeah, right). All this to say that today we vote on the composition of the body that will vote this thing up or down — the Whatcom County Council. Right now, the progressives are a majority, but this will be a close one…
cintibud
@Kay: Most of the stoners, libertarians and stoner libertarians I know are voting against issue 3 since they believe, rightly, that it is incredibly flawed. They think that something better can come up for a vote in the near future. However, after a lot of going back and forth, I voted yes because I think this is the best shot at legalization we will get for some time. I doubt it will pass due to the lack of support from the most die hard legalization supporters, but the pro-issue 3 advertising has been incredible – cops, prosecutors, celebs like Nick Lachey and sports legends like Oscar Robertson on TV pushing for pot. Mailers out the wazoo in my mailbox. Folks are spending a lot of money – they still might carry the day.
I don’t think folks are fooled by issue 2 though. A lot of no votes on 3 will also vote no on 2.
ETA – It should be mentioned that Nick Lachey and the big O are big investors in the proposed MJ business!
Iowa Old Lady
I voted for our mayor and a millage for a museum. The mayoral election is non-partisan which makes decoding the campaign literature lots of fun.
NonyNony
@cintibud:
Are they voting against it, or just not voting at all? The vibe I’m getting from folks I know who are against issue 3 seems to be more of a “I’m not bothering to go vote for this thing that I’d normally be in favor of” rather than an “I’m going to actively go out and vote against this thing I’d normally be in favor of” vibe. (And yeah, as an old man I know old stoners. And more than a few old stoner libertarians – who I’d say will turn out to vote against it on principle, except I know they won’t because they don’t vote except in presidential elections.)
Redshift
@JPL:
Yeah, they should. I would love to have every other year off.
Off-year elections in Virginia are apparently a vestige of the Byrd Machine, and were apparently designed help national Republicans (who they were in sync with ideologically) win Virginia in presidential elections but still elect conservative Democrats to to state office (because federal elections and state elections weren’t held in the same year, so no coattails.) And I’m sure depressing turnout to make outcomes easier for party bosses to control wasn’t an accident either.
So, evil and antidemocratic all around, and they should be eliminated. But since evil and antidemocratic helps Republicans, it’s not going to happen until they’re well out of power in the state.
Kay
@cintibud:
I keep getting this kind of savvy “they can’t fool me- this is a monopoly!” reaction but that might just be too many lawyers in my “sample” :)
I had a magistrate ask me “this isn’t the hippies, is it? There’s so much money behind it”. Because I’m the spokesperson for “the hippies”.
I did the same thing you did- if it keeps one person off the probation/fines/jail merry go round I’ll be okay with it.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Goblue72: Good summary. We’ve also got Sheriff (featuring our delightful incumbent, Ross Mirkarimi, who can’t carry a gun – and therefore isn’t supposed to wear a uniform – because he was convicted on a domestic violence charge, running for re-election. I had the pleasure of telling him to his face that he should just resign when I saw him campaigning a few days ago.
NonyNony
@Kay:
Honestly my cynical self wondered if the creators of Issue 3 just went out of their way to craft something that would piss off as many liberals as it could just to make it a strong selling point to the conservative half of the state, banking on the idea that when the liberals were in the voting booth they’d just go ahead and pull the lever anyway because of the medical/decriminalization moral calculus.
cintibud
@NonyNony:
(sorry, the helpful blockquote guide isn’t visible and I don’t remember it)
“re they voting against it, or just not voting at all? The vibe I’m getting from folks I know who are against issue 3 seems to be more of a “I’m not bothering to go vote for this thing that I’d normally be in favor of” rather than an “I’m going to actively go out and vote against this thing I’d normally be in favor of” vibe.”
Considering most of the above folks I know are politically active and/or posted a lot about it on facebook, I would expect that most will vote against it and issue 2 as well. There is also a controversial parks levy on the ballot in Cincy that has folks I trust going either way. That will drive a few more to the polls as well.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Congratulations! A lofty and esteemed position most of us can only dream of attaining. :-) Now take the afternoon off and listen to “Europe ’72” out of sequence.
cintibud
@NonyNony: LOL, we need a “Like” button for that!
max
Voted in VA an hour ago. They switched to paper ballots over voting machines! HOT DAMN!
Since the races mostly consisted of unopposed Republican candidates, I wound up voting an all-female ticket, two of whom were registered Democrats. (The others are independents.)
I started to write in various Toho monsters against the unopposed Republicans but that would have taken 15 minutes and I wasn’t sure I could come up with enough different monster names, so I skipped it on this go-round. (I came up with Godzilla and Mothra immediately but I still needed like 12 more.)
Paper ballots are way faster and more sensible. And less fraudable.
max
[‘8 years here, 8 straight elections.’]
Kay
@NonyNony:
Yeah, conservatives can be reached on incarceration based on the cost. We have a drug court here now, which is absolutely amazing- not that “drug courts” are amazing- they have a mixed record, but that they agreed to one here. It’s out of control. People get into the system and they cannot get out. It’s particularly bad for juveniles because in Ohio they can keep them under court control for years. OMFG, I want to scream -“let them goooooo!” It is incredibly frustrating.
Elizabelle
@Redshift: No hot races in my neck of the NoVA suburbs. I voted yellow dog Democrat.
Wondering how Boysko and Murphy and Foust will do. Worried about the ridiculous ads re I-66 tolls.
Do you think the Democrats could take the State Senate? Appears to come down to 2 races (per WaPost), in Manassas and exurban Richmond area. Big issue for me is Medicaid expansion.
I think they should do away with offyear elections, and frankly do away with midterms as well. Congress does not turn over enough for it to be truly representative. Let a big electorate choose the Congress; not just GOP ratfvckers obstructing the president in smaller turnout elections.
Bobby Thomson
@Redshift: 538 has a piece up blaming odd year elections on the evil teachers’ unions.
Redshift
@Bobby Thomson:
I’ll have to have a look at that. Odd year elections here date to Reconstruction, and I rather doubt there were influential teachers’ unions then.
NonyNony
@Kay: Cost is about the only argument I’ve been able to make that gets through to my conservative parents. And even then, the idea that you can put a price on “law and order” is a struggle with them.
Thoughtful Today
Last one to vote is a rotten egg.
Elizabelle
@TaMara (BHF): I’d love to see that school board unseated. So thrilled with the students who protested. Faith in the future.
Redshift
@Elizabelle: The common wisdom seems to be that the Senate could go either way; I don’t have any particular insight.
The one thing I do feel comfortable about is my local county board election. We have a challenger running as an “independent” in a Democratic district. This “independent” was a Republican precinct captain until a month before she announced her candidacy, and was a signer of an anti-immigration reform Tea Party letter to Congress. And her literature was on the Republican table. I’d love to know the real story; I’m guessing either they knew she had no chance as a Republican and thought there was a chance they might get away with it, or the local Republicans refused to nominate her, and she ran anyway. (The first seems more likely, since the VA GOP campaigns seem to be even more thoroughly lie-based than usual this year.)
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
Connie Schultz (on her Facebook page) is compiling anecdotal information about voting irregularities in Ohio. Last time I checked, there were well over a hundred comments. You might want to have a look; I think you in particular would find it interesting.
CarolDuhart2
I read that 538 article that talks about resistance to consolidation being from teachers and others who hope that off-year elections would prevent big party money from entering races and local issues being drowned out by national noise.
But off-year elections in my view also mean that you get more fanatical voters instead of moderates. It also costs money and leads to political burnout.
Giving voters years 3 and 5 off from politics would mean:
1) Less money spent on elections
2) Fairer elections-fewer dominated by groups that do not really represent the city/state/county as a whole
3) Hopefully more time that can be spent on voter education, registration, party organization-since there won’t be elections to gear up for.
4) A rest from politics would also eliminate electoral burnout that leads to non-voting and non-participation.
RSR
If you’re in Philly, vote for Kristen Combs for Phl City Council at-large. She’s a progressive, Green party candidate and a Philly public school teacher. http://www.combs4citycouncil.com/
RSR
Also, speaking of PA Supreme Court, a staffer for our state rep explained that getting 25% turnout in Philly should be enough to swing all three seats Democratic. Turnout is currently running a little ahead of expectations at our polling location (just voted about 30 mins ago) and we’re just getting into the after work peak times. For instance, public school teachers had professional development today (no students–many schools are polling locations) and I’m guessing most of them are voting after school, not before. And public education is a huge factor in this year’s elections, so we’re expecting a significant turnout from the teachers.
Nate Dawg
Okay, so having spent some more time on the comments today, I’m really not cool with the line-spacing. Far too large. Like a high school term paper.
Oatler.
The big deal in my town town today is a referendum on a sales tax. It will be voted down, and the City will continue moaning about the lack of police, all the while keeping the ban on pot dispensaries. And they just CAN’T think of any possible way to bring in revenue…
jmt
A school improvements millage proposal is on the ballot here in Grand Rapids, MI. Koch brothers via Americans For Prosperity has funded a ‘anti-tax’ push against it. Hoping that the voters remember that better school facilities are better for local prosperity than neglected and substandard buildings are.
I was the 100th voter in my precinct today at 3:30 pm. NOT a big turnout.
Kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks. I looked it over and I don’t see anything that would be a huge red flag. I think voters are much more vigilant now, and that’s good.
I’m doing a presentation on voting for the 5th graders at the middle school in May. Just process- I’ll be rigorously non-partisan. I hope I can make it slightly less boring and rules-based than it is. We had a bizarre mix-up here a couple of years ago with a school levy – they called it as voted down by 5 votes and then they found 21 early-vote ballots “on a shelf” and it passed. It went for review by the state and there wasn’t any irregularity besides (obviously) an error but it was hugely embarrassing for all concerned. I thought I’d tell them about that, see what they think.
Matt McIrvin
I hope nobody in Kentucky liked having health insurance.
SWMBO
Did Kim Davis have to run for reelection today?