Don’t forget to vote in your local elections today if you have them. Where I live, in Monroe County, the Republicans have dominated county politics for years, but there’s been a big shift in registration in the past three years, amounting to a 3-4% net gain for Democrats. I asked a friend if Dems have a chance this year and he said no because they don’t turn out for county elections.
Commenter MikeJ once said that too many liberals were
too cool to actually approve of anything. The whole thing smacks of effort, man. Democrats are also famous for only liking the first album (or better yet, the unreleased demos.)
Don’t be that guy. Go out and vote Democrat today no matter how uninspiring your candidates are.
Baud
Wow. 2012. Maybe we should consider taking a good hard look at ourselves.
Cheryl Rofer
Headed out to vote now. All very local elections, but we should vote in every one.
Rusty
Live in Pittsford, for town council at the last election we elected Democrats for the first time in at least 75 years. Hoping we can add to the number. The town is slowly trending blue. Your point however is well taken, Democrats suck at voting in off year and local elections. I give our local Democrats credit, they have pushed very hard. We have never gotten so much mail and reminders for a local election.
FlyingToaster
One simple trick… [yeah, I know]:
If you can get the 20- and 30-somethings to go vote for local elections, and bring their elementary school kids along, then you’re programming the next generation.
The biggest problem is impressing upon young(-ish) Democrats that local elections matter more than national ones. That’s a messaging issue that state and local Democrats seem to be missing.
mali muso
Voted in Virginia this morning! We went out and helped canvass on Sunday and I’m going to make voter calls during my break later this morning. Hoping we can pull out a blue shift in our legislature.
O. Felix Culpa
@FlyingToaster: That’s a messaging issue that state and local Democrats seem to be missing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
there was an article being tweeted around yesterday about how one reason Dem candidates did so well in VA last time around was that a lot of them focused on traffic issues. A columnist for the Atlanta JC said Jon Ossoff would have won if he had focused on highway gridlock in his district (that person may be a crank, I don’t know). I tend to think Dems/Dem-leaners tend to focus more on national issues and less on local ones– I know I tend to. In the ’06 CT primary, Lamont’s internet supporters were all about the Iraq War, Lieberman’s supporters kept talking about the London military base he kept open.
OTOH, Charlie Pierce told the story of going to a county GOP meeting in Iowa where they were going to pick a candidate for county ag commissioner (IIRC). All five candidates talked about abortion and “religious liberty”
O. Felix Culpa
@O. Felix Culpa: Oops, sorry about the block quote fail.
Citizen Alan
Annoyingly, I did not start getting barraged by texts and calls urging me to vote until after I’d turned in my absentee ballot last week. All Dem groups; apparently the GOP voting groups learned their lesson after I called them up and dog-cussed them about contacting me.
Disclaimer: I did, after careful consideration and agonizing, vote for 1 Republican in this year’s elections. He’s the incumbent county prosecutor, I’ve known him for nearly 40 years, and he was running unopposed, but it was a close decision. I did leave two other offices blank because the Republican was running unopposed.
Patricia Kayden
Bruuuuce
I can haz did my civil duty. Waited for Election Day because of mobility issues that make it ideal to take a bus to my polling place (which has a stop right there) and another home (fiom a different stop for the same line, going the other way), ALSO right there. Tempted to display my two “I Voted” stickers (they gave me one with the Scantron form and one at the scanning station), but some imbecile take it literally and scream about me voting twice. Off to bed, where I shall sleep like the dead until tonight[‘s work shift.
Sab
Went to vote this morning. All local. Amazing young guy for city council. I bet he’ll be mayor someday. School board candidate had his mother in law canvassing in the parking lot (far side of big parking lot, so it was legal.) Also another school board member was canvassing. My husband switched his vote to her just from that contact. Weird. Most years they are begging people to run. This year six candidates for three slots.
ETA: haven’t voted on election day in years. Glad to see we still have paper ballots. They get scanned, but there is a paper trail.
Jeffro
I took my daughter with me to vote this morning – not as a tag-along like in the previous 8-9 elections but as a first-time voter. Very cool!
We are TOTALLY going to flip this dumb VA legislature blue the way it should have been for years now, and then we’re going to keep it that way. VA trumpublicans are nuts and I hope they keep running on their platform of fear, abortion, soshulism!, and more fear. It turns voters off and we’re not going back.
chopper
Political hipsterism is going to be the end of this country.
Zinsky
Great message, DougJ! I intend to vote today, even if it is just for the local freakin’ dogcatcher! Please everyone, take local elections seriously! The right certainly does.
I have been trying to build a neighborhood-up approach to political organizing. Identify people you live nearby and vote and organize as a bloc, peacefully of course. Then,
VOTE THE RAT BASTARD REPUBLICANS OUT PERMANENTLY!
Mousebumples
I endorse bringing your kids with you to vote. I grew up in the super conservative parts of wisconsin (Sensenbrenner’s district) and always went with my parents. I now vote all the time and am trying to get my husband excited about voting for stuff like Superintendent of Schools.
No elections for us in Wisconsin today – though I did double check to make sure I hadn’t forgotten something with my new mommy baby brain issues…
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: Yea! Kudos to the brand new voter. First civic duty of many.
Just signed up to cover a local polling place that had no coverage from 2 to 7:15 p. Least I can do! All those local candidates — yellow dogs will need sample ballots cuz who knows who they are?!
I like our chances in Virginia. I think the voting enthusiasm is definitely on our side. We also have beautiful, mild weather today.
Frankensteinbeck
I just voted. Unfortunately it’s Kentucky, and I think the odds of a Democrat winning the Governorship or any state wide office ever again are remote. But if we don’t vote, it’s sure never going to happen!
Barbara
I voted this morning. I feel a little guilty for not having gotten more involved this cycle, but I worked a lot last year and the year before (for Northam et al.). In my own local cocoon, most of the races don’t even have Republican candidates (e.g., state delegate and senator and even school board). I think this is the first time that has happened in the more important races. Local Republican party has been dying for a while, but there is usually someone who runs as an independent. Things have quieted down a bit locally since the known “big spender” board member retired (a genuinely good guy, just a little loose with money in a way that is easy to target).
Barbara
@Frankensteinbeck: I had a co-worker who was originally from the midwest who lived in D.C. and had Republican proclivities. I told him that voting for a Republican candidate in D.C. was the ultimate expression of civic virtue.
I should add that most people in the District who are Republican usually find a way to stay registered where they are originally from and don’t actually vote in the District.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mousebumples: We have weird spring elections and a second primary in August, but November of odd years never has anything. But good on you for making sure.
Miss Bianca
Turned in my ballot yesterday. Only local elections were school board. It disturbs me that in one district, we had a guy running unopposed, and in another district, we had his stepmama running as one of two candidates. Need to ask the SB if they are going to consider an anti-nepotism clause in their by-laws, that’ll make me one popular gal. Meantime all the liberals in the area (and there are a few) are twittering away about positive things they can do for the community. How about RUN IN LOCAL ELECTIONS, all y’all?
Some of them can’t because they are part-timers, but still… sigh.
glory b
@FlyingToaster: I have been emphasizing this for a long time. I’ve been super frustrated about the emphasis on the feds about criminal justice reform. Pushing a local candidate for District Attorney is MUCH more valuable than complaining that Hillary said the word superpredator 35 years ago. 95% of prisoners are in state and local jails, not federal lockups.
errg
Thanks for this post, local voting is important! I voted this morning in NYC, a straight Dem ticket of course, altho the only contested was for Public Advocate…. There were also 5 ballot measures, one for ranked choice voting for primaries and city elections, which I hope passes, no election system is perfect (Arrow’s Theorem), but I think ranked choice is much better than first past the post.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
God help me, but I voted Libertarian for mayor this year.
There was no Democrat running and the only other candidates on the ballot were the incumbent Republican and a self-described ‘constitutional conservative’ pastor.
Though I did vote Democratic for all of the other partisan offices.
Barbara
@Jeffro: They have officially gone nuts. As I noted above, there were not actually any Republican candidates running for state senate or delegate in Arlington, and I really think that’s a first. The Republican bright young thing is now Nick Freitas, who blames the “abortion industry” for the Parkland shooting, whose wife poses for sexy pictures with guns, and who couldn’t manage to file his election paperwork in time for his name to appear on the ballot. Since he is running in Culpeper he is still expected to win as a write in but it would be sweet, sweet if he lost.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Frankensteinbeck:
I live in Evansville and our TV stations carry Kentucky political ads since we’re on the Ohio river, and if I see one more ad for Bevin or the Republican AG candidate, I think I’ll puke.
Kelly
Our ~500 household water district has a $1.15 per thousand property tax measure to fund replacement of 60 year old infrastructure. Biggest piece is a 500,000 gallon wooden water tank. The large contingent of “government is the problem” neighbors always leaves tax measures in doubt here in the hinterlands.
Sab
@Kelly: I feel for you. In the 19th century people knew they had to pay for nice things. I’ve been reading Grant’s memoir. His people were early in Ohio. If you want a road, you have to pay for it.
Dupe
I already voted this morning. Admittedly, it was easy for me since I have to walk one block to the local elementary. It took me all of 15 minutes to walk, vote, and walk back.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frankensteinbeck: /sigh/
I was hoping for a Beshear upset
Honus
Doug- which Monroe County?
Taken4Granite
New Hampshire resident. Our cities have municipal and school board elections today, but towns (I live in a town) do those elections the second Tuesday of March, which is the traditional Town Meeting day.
Municipal and school board elections are non-partisan. Usually not a problem for me because I live in a blue town, but I do have to check candidate statements as we get the occasional kook running for School Board or Town Council.
Kelly
@Sab: I live at the end of a half mile of private gravel road shared by a couple dozen households which has no formal maintenance arrangements. I pass my hat every couple years and the same 15~16 households kick in for gravel and occasional grading. The free riders are always thank me for my efforts and are going to pay me later.
Matt McIrvin
My town elections are all “non-partisan”. Avoided voting for the city councillor who just keeps repeating “no taxed to the max”.
ThresherK
@Rusty: Pittsford NY or VT? I have been to both.
Redshift
I voted in Fairfax, VA this morning after handing out sample ballots starting when the polls opened at 6am. The local races are all officially nonpartisan, so there’s no party ID for the candidates, but they’re all “endorsed” by one party or the other, so it’s an extra effort to make sure our voters know who they are, and vote for the down-ballot races.
On top of that we have to deal with the “independent” candidate for commonwealth’s attorney (county AG, essentially.) He ran in the Democratic primary (where Republicans tried to get people our to vote for him), lost, then ran as an independent claiming to be a “centrist Democrat” even though he had worked in the Trump administration, and when that wasn’t working, about a month ago the county GOP endorsed him. (It was too late for him to be their actual nominee at that point.)
His father, who is a Democrat, lives in my precinct and was campaigning for him. He was nice; I refrained from asking him what went wrong to turn his son into such an underhanded character.
StringOnAStick
My husband and I voted within moments of receiving our ballots weeks ago and I took them to the ballot drop off the next day. Then I got an email telling me my ballot was accepted for counting, which I suspect means that my signature was verified as actually me so therefore it was a legit ballot. I wish every state has this system.
RAVEN
All we had was a Special Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) and we dutifully voted. We’re a island of blue in a sea of red so it will probably pass.
Chyron HR
I voted three weeks ago.
Redshift
@Sab: I had a voter come through this morning asking which candidate would “get rid of the tolls.” (I guess one of them ran on that; one of the Republicans, I assume.) We’ve had an explosion of toll roads “public-private partnerships” in VA in recent years, because Republicans know people want roads but don’t want to spend the money. I told them that in more polite terms, but they kept talking to the Republicans, so I suspect they’re a Republican who doesn’t want to pay for roads with tolls or taxes.
Mousebumples
@Omnes Omnibus: I was pretty sure there wasn’t anything to vote for but I’ve been hearing that repubs in state govt might add -another- spring election to try to split the judicial and presidential primary races in 2020… And they really can’t be trusted so… Yeah, always gotta double check.
StringOnAStick
One other thing: even though school board positions are usually supposed to be nonpartisan and are therefore held on odd numbered years here (CO), our county SB was captured by complete wingers 4 (6?) years ago. They proceeded to aggressively enact their agenda and spend like drunken sailors on an outside attorney (avoiding the in-house one) and a “perceptions management” firm, among other things. The recall elections driven by a huge outpouring of angry parents won by almost 70%. I’m sure it helped that this was the first time it was an all mail-in ballot election.
Locals don’t sleep on SB elections around here anymore, the army of fierce and dedicated moms guarantees that.
opiejeanne
I subscribe to the idea that all politics is local, so I sat down with my ballot yesterday and worked out who to vote for. (We vote by mail) Took me about half an hour because the ballot had a lot on it, and the Voters’ Guide was pretty thick. The “who/what to vote for” guide from the Democrats was helpful in sorting out the candidates, since there was no indication what party they belonged to. The two guys running for water commission seats were not in that guide, so I read about them in the official guide. The incumbent had no degree (not necessarily a disqualification) but down toward the bottom of his long personal statement he bleated out the words, fiscal responsibility. That capped it, I voted for the guy who had been to college and graduated. Yes, I’m an elitist snob.
This morning we’ll take our ballots to a nearby dropbox. It’s become our voting ritual. Mike J mentioned that yesterday.
schrodingers_cat
If there are elections where you live, listen to the kitteh.
Marcopolo
@Mousebumples: @Omnes Omnibus: Hey you WI BJers! Can either of you give me an on the ground report on how Ben Wikler & the WI D party are doing? I chipped in some dough this past weekend when I saw a lot of social media coverage of their weekend canvassing event. It sounds like they are organized and energized & I am hopeful that if that is true that in 2020 WI is a good bluer state than 2016.
Dog Mom
I mentioned on a thread below that I voted on Saturday at the Mall – Thanks to our new early voting law. I was excited that my small town in the South of Monroe County had competition for most seats – such a good thing !
Tazj
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: We have a local candidate for county executive who’s running on fixing the roads and decreasing taxes and I thought about the elections last year in Virginia. She claims she’s an Independent now but spent years in the county legislature as a Republican.
Nancy
On our way to vote because it is what we do and because I want all Republicans to get the message that they can’t hide behind being local when the national party destroys and devastates.
opiejeanne
@StringOnAStick: Santa Ana had a similar epiphany, but it wasn’t over spending. It was a group of Bible thumpers who took over the majority of the School Board seats. They started messing with the curriculum and trying to enforce other pet Republican peeves, putting out ridiculous statements about appropriate reading material and something else, possibly something about sexuality. I forget, it’s been 15 years and I was in the Anaheim district. Anyway, after 2 or 3 School Board meetings it all blew up and the recall was swift.
chopper
@opiejeanne:
yeah, long ballot this year in seattle. had to pay extra attention to the school board stuff, the supernintendo wants to gut my daughter’s program.
CaseyL
Dropped my ballot in the box this morning on my way to work. FSM bless vote-by-mail!
City Council races were the hot spots in terms of elected officials, but the ballot also had one initiative to bring back affirmative action in the public sector and education, as well as a slew of initiatives brought by Perennial Anti-Govt Grifter Tim Eyman. I was very happy to vote against every one of Eyman’s eyesores, and in favor of affirmative action.
opiejeanne
@chopper: The sample ballot we got in the mail was only helpful to a point. No recommendations for a lot of the seats in our area. Our school district is Northshore.
opiejeanne
@CaseyL: I thought he just had the one this time, 976. I voted against it with gusto.
Another Scott
I voted this AM and J will vote later. Here’s hoping for a nice big blue wave in VA!
Cheers,
Scott.
terry chay
My locality (San Francisco) only has Democrats (or nonpartisans to the left of Democrats) on the ballot. Still voted to express my support for a few, displeasure (with non votes) for some uncontested, and to tell Juul to go take a flying fuck on their ballot measure.
Kent
Sent my mail-in ballot 2 weeks ago here in Camas, WA (across the river from Portland).
Mostly all hyper-local stuff like nonpartisan city council and school board elections that are mostly populated by centrist community volunteer types that compete in the voters guides to see who had held the greatest number of volunteer posts. I don’t know how some of these people have time for their own lives with as much volunteer stuff they have on their resumes. Or maybe half of it is bogus. Who knows. Some of the neighboring towns like Battle Ground get infested with the winger gun-rights and patriot movement types in their local elections but this area is too affluent and suburban for that.
Our biggest local political issue was whether to approve the bond for a new community pool and athletic complex that will likely fail because some local tea party types have spent big on a vote no campaign and have signs up everywhere. Bonds need 60% to pass here so a vocal minority can pull the plug pretty easily. Here in WA there was also a repeal of car tab tax on the ballot put there by eastern WA wingers who are trying to pull the plug on all the transit funding for Puget Sound cities like Seattle. I’m afraid it might pass which will pull the plug on a lot of transit expansion in the greater Seattle area unless the legislature steps in and finds alternative funding. They could easily do so by raising the gas tax which they should fucking do but may not have the courage. The state legislature is run by Dems so they *could* do it.
There aren’t any legislative elections of any kind so it is all pretty tame.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@opiejeanne:
The League of Women Voters ballot guide wasn’t very helpful for me. Many candidates, some incumbents, didn’t send in a response, which is shitty. I often find I don’t know much of anything about local politicians/issues, positions like township trustee, fiscal officer, or school board members.
It doesn’t help that the local newspaper is now owned by Ogden Newspapers, a consortium with a history of printing fake editorials in their papers in support of McCain in 2008.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@terry chay:
Let me guess, it was about “taking back your freedom” to smoke a e-cig that will kill you?
Barbara
Okay, this is just a really lovely story that features our blog host’s very own state. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2019/11/05/this-little-butcher-shop-in-rural-west-virginia-is-turning-out-world-class-burgers/
CaseyL
@opiejeanne: All those “advisory” initiatives seeking to repeal a bunch of taxes are his, too.
The Moar You Know
@StringOnAStick: We had the same thing happen. Then one of the “fierce and dedicated moms” decided to run, backed by the full county GOP establishment. We almost ot taken over again, and the only thing that saved us from a GOP takeover was a completely unrelated court decision that forced both the city and school district to run districted elections. We were not ready or prepared and frankly are getting less so by the year.
Barbara
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I know, who would have thought that inhaling wet droplets with miscellaneous chemicals might cause lung infections? Everyone knows that to be sustainable, an ugly habit has to kill you over a lifetime, not a matter of weeks.
Jacel
Here in San Mateo, vote-by-mail is becoming the norm. Also, for a number of years offices have been moving to even-year elections. For today’s election, there was only one item to vote for on one local school board where you could vote for two out of three declared candidates. After reading what each candidate had put out on their websites, they all looked decent for that position, but I voted for what I hoped were the best two of them.
My wife and I went yesterday to City Hall to vote in order to try out the new voting machines. The electronic systems we’ve had locally for about a decade have been pretty good and enable a paper audit of the vote. The new system seems even better, printing out the readable ballot (plus a QR data blob) that you drop through a slot into a box. Sort of overkill for voting on one thing, but I wanted to give the new system and the poll workers more experience with real voting this way.
JPL
Our election is non-partisan. The three city council candidates that I support raised less money together than one of the other three. It’s pretty much developer money against the rest of us. The biggest problem with local elections is getting out the vote. I am pretty sure that the developers will get out their base. I placed signs near a poll by six this morning and then waved signs till 10:30. My grandson has a cold so I was called upon to sit. As I type I have a nine month old spread out on my lap sleeping.
Marcopolo
About to head out & see the Harriet Tubman biopic. Which means I am actually putting off pulling the last two air conditioners out till later this afternoon (2 down 2 to go). Has anyone here seen it yet?
On my way out let me leave you with:
A nice video promoting voting for women candidates.
And a really horrible thing to do to a Turkey…but it is so American.
Have a great day everyone. Get out and vote like your Democracy depends on it.
artem1s
this is absolutely not true of Democrats that I know…especially rust belt, union Democrats. I do get the sense that there is a segment of ‘liberals’ (glibertarians) that can’t abide real world conversations about governing. And I think it’s why there is a style over substance issue with the old white-guy Democratic party and the MSM that can’t ‘hear’ POC and women. They are constantly in search of the next best Kennedy-esque hairdo. I would say there has been an arc toward town hall activism during this administration that is training younger liberals on the truism that ‘all politics are local’. And they are beginning to get very involved in community issues and running for local office, as well as working on larger national campaigns. so this comment seems a little outdated to me.
Tata
Voted by mail a few weeks ago. It’s fabulous to have that out of the way when you first think about it.
Steeplejack
@Honus:
Monroe County, New York, I believe.
Alain
Voted. Met my state Senator and saw many of Indian-American candidates for school board, etc and their lovely families. Of the approximately 16 people outside the school, 15 were proud Dems and 1 a quiet independent or Republican.
Go Team Blue, we need to win Virginia today so we control redistricting.
Alain
@Tata: yeah, that is something I miss a lot from my time in Colorado. Vote by mail is awesome as is two weeks of early voting!
mali muso
@Barbara: Zomg, I know the owners of that place! It is just as good as the article would suggest.
Barbara
@Jacel: It sounds like the machines we use. One really nice thing about this set up is that it can be made to accommodate many more voters filling out ballots at the same time. Whereas the old machines were self-contained, and it was one voter one machine. They also had no paper trails. No one ever thought that anything bad happened, but in 2006, when George Allen lost to Jim Webb by a vanishingly small number of votes, it was made clear that there really wasn’t any way to track individual votes, and a recount would only look at voting precincts and match the voter rolls with the number of expected votes. Since that time, a paper trail has become desirable for other reasons.
tarragon
I’ve got a ballot with vote for 2 out of 3 candidates for State Supreme Court. The one on the D line is an easy choice.
Now I’m stuck on whether to vote for the slightly lesser evil (only very slightly) or deliberate undervote.
NeenerNeener
@tarragon: I chose the deliberate undervotes. As I’ve been telling those oh so earnest pollsters who called me every other week in September and October:
I’m never voting for another Republican for anything for the rest of my life.
Matt McIrvin
Massachusetts has no-excuse mail voting and early voting, but for now, only for the statewide elections in even-numbered years. So I went down to the middle school today to vote in person. (Schools typically close on Election Day to make it easier to do this, though I think they schedule teacher training for today; my mother-in-law and her wife have my daughter for the day.)
My wife was disenfranchised by being called out of town on business too late to apply for an absentee ballot, the problem with this sort of thing.
Honus
@Another Scott: we need the blue wave this year to finally flush the republicans out of Virginia. Virginia went for Hillary and for Obama twice (the first Democrat since LBJ to carry Virginia). Republicans haven’t won a statewide election in ten years. The state was so gerrymandered the congressional delegation was 9-2 republican until 2017 when it flipped to 6-5 dem. The general assembly was the same way and it almost flipped in 2017. With new maps it should be a cinch.
Ken B
I voted today in Fairfax County (Northern Virginia). Beautiful weather, and I walked to the polling station, first real walk since I twisted my knee a couple of weeks ago.
My precinct is sky blue, to the point that the GOP doesn’t even bother to hand out sample ballots anymore, they just leave a stack on a table out front.
They had someone handing out cards for a Trumpublican running for prosecutor, which was interesting. Non partisan elections unless someone’s running unopposed. The first three slots on the ballot were unopposed Dems.
Took the Dem sample ballot and voted in perfect harmony with it. It was nice to see Dems running unopposed (more than usual) and no GOPers running unopposed.
Also, no bullshit amendments or ballot initiatives to appeal to the goobers.
Hoping for a blue wave to wash the GOP gerrymandering and their unfair distribution of election resources away. If that happens, then the GOP is on the path to irrelevance here.
Miss Bianca
@Ken B: A year or so ago my friend D and I were looking at relocating from CO to VA, mostly because we were thinking about starting our own meadery, and VA has the distinction (?) of having the best liquor laws in the country for our purposes.
Stories like yours make me think about it more seriously, particularly if we could acquire something for under $300,000, which looks feasible in the western areas of the state.
Then I close my eyes and mumble to myself, “bugs and humidity”…
tarragon
@NeenerNeener:
And… That’s the argument that convinced me. Undervote it is.
Death Panel Truck
This is why states need to go to vote by mail, so lazy fucking liberals can vote in local elections without having to leave the comfort of their goddamn houses.
Miss Bianca
@Death Panel Truck: And also so that it’s harder to suppress the vote.
Barbara
@Miss Bianca: It’s less buggy at higher elevations. I realize that “high” elevation in Virginia doesn’t mean the same thing to you, but still, it is less humid as you move westward. To understand Virginia politically, basically, Northern Virginia, Richmond, Hampton Roads and Charlottesville are blue as blue can be — Fairfax County alone represents 25% of the voting population of the state. Being so large, it is not the “midnight” blue of Arlington or Alexandria, but it’s not a swing jurisdiction by any stretch. In other parts of Virginia, what you see are mostly islands of blue cities in a sea of red counties. So Harrisonburg (site of JMU) will be blue, but Rockingham County will be red. To win as a Republican in Virginia you have to drive turnout in rural parts of the state to levels that are harder and harder to fathom, or you have to do better than expected in Northern Virginia while still losing. Mark Warner nearly lost in 2014, but there has not been a statewide elected Republican since Bob McDonnell in 2009.
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara: And those blue islands are quite visible on election maps, because of Virginia’s political oddity of independent cities which are disjoint from the counties surrounding them. I didn’t realize this wasn’t the norm nationwide until I moved out of there–there are a few other independent cities (St. Louis, Missouri is one), but the vast majority of them in the US are in Virginia.
Miss Bianca
@Barbara: Sounds like rural CO, to be honest. I personally am a blue droplet in a sea of red, and that’s been true for 20 years, despite the “blueing” of the cities and suburbs along the Front Range. Gunnison County is a rare blue rural area, so is the San Luis Valley, but Gunnison is a college town and the San Luis Valley is heavily Hispanic, so exceptions to the rule.
Barbara
@Miss Bianca: College towns and African American populations are largely the reason that many independent cities in Virginia are Democratic or Democratic leaning. One of the most gerrymandered places in the state is Charlottesville and its surrounding counties, which are intentionally districted in a way that dilutes their population among much more rural counties, both south and north.
Miss Bianca
@Barbara: It’s interesting you mentioned Rockingham County, I think that’s one of the counties we were looking at!
It’s funny, I never thought I would consider moving back east of the mighty Mississip’, but almost all my family is either in New England or Michigan, so the possibility has crossed my mind lately, more than once…
Matt McIrvin
@Death Panel Truck: Someone who’s just too lazy to go in person when it’s easy to do so probably isn’t going to fill out a mail ballot either. (I often vote early when I can, because I’m interested in the process, but I don’t vote by mail because I have a strong tendency to miss stuff that’s in the mail.) Somebody who has an impossible work schedule, on the other hand, or who faces the prospect of standing in a four-hour line at an undersupplied city polling place in a big election, might find it a godsend.
Voting in my suburb is never physically hard for me. Even in presidential elections, there’s not a significant crush at my polling place; you can be in and out in a few minutes; check in, fill out your ballot in the little cubby, check out and stick it in the slot. I’m always amazed at the unfairness of the scenes of big-city voters standing in line all day at crowded polling places with malfunctioning voting machines. Inevitably many of them are going to give up. It’s the most obvious form of vote suppression there is.
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
Talking about relocating to VA from CO to open a business…
While there is nothing like the Front Range east of the Mississippi, there are mountains in VA, and if you get high enough it isn’t as bad as out in the Piedmont area. Think Blue Ridge, SW VA… There are great high valleys with old farm country.
Barbara
@Miss Bianca: It’s the county surrounding Harrisonburg, the home of James Madison University. It’s a great little town in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley.
opiejeanne
@CaseyL: Oh geez, I didn’t realize. But I wondered why we had to affirm something that had just been voted on by the legislature. I read through them until my eyes glazed over when I was voting, finally took a look at how my own two reps and senator voted, and followed suit. They were all the same, each one proposing to take money away from a project that needs funding.
Wasn’t Eyman ordered to cut it out a couple of years ago, by a judge? Maybe I’m remembering something from Orange County, CA.
J R in WV
I thought I read about a large stash of “undeliverable” mail-in ballots being found, I’m thinking it was in Florida. There was a tiny error in the address the ballots were being returned to, so the USPS “couldn’t find” the place where ballots were otherwise being returned to for counting.
Couldn’t have anything to do with the voting tendency of the zip code where these ballots were mailed from, could it? Naw, that’s just a paranoid thought pattern! Democratic votes being mailed can be intercepted by a crooked Postal employee, which we’ve already seen happen.
There is no voting scheme that can’t be worked on for fraudulent purposes. Polling places where paper ballots are used need transparent ballot boxes to make it harder to pre-load them with special ballots already marked up for a particular candidate for just one more issue with ballots.
CaseyL
@opiejeanne: No it was here – but the case was a campaign finance issue brought by State Attorney General Ferguson. All that happened was “non-monetary sanctions” ordered against Eyman, and hefty fines levied against groups that funneled money to him. I can’t find anything stating he was ordered to quit the initiative racket.
Steeplejack
@Barbara:
Thanks for pointing that out. Put it in the Garmin GPS unit for a future road trip. About 90 miles from me, not too bad. Would be a nice day trip.
Geek digression: I use Google Maps on my phone for most of my car navigation, but a couple of years ago I picked up a Garmin DriveSmart 61 at a big discount. I like the 7" display (the doughty Kia is old [’09] and doesn’t have a built-in dashboard display), which has proved very useful for sorting out the gnarlier situations in D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia. (“Which of these eight lanes should I be in in the next 20 seconds?”) And the routing and trip-saving features are pretty good, once you figure out the interface.
But the big, unexpected benefit has been that it is a great repository for restaurants, stores and points of interest. I have built up a pretty good database of places I’ve been and places I might want to go to. The device is pretty basic and the software is basically one app, so there’s not a lot that can go wrong.
Mousebumples
@Marcopolo:
I live in suburbia in Gallagher’s district so I’m not sure that this is the primary focus area. I also have a new baby so I’ve been way less involved in grassroots than I have before (ie I canvassed for Obama and Hillary), so it’s hard for me to say. I’d think Milwaukee might have more rich targets to pursue (getting id’s and arranging for transportation to polling sites) and that is not in my neck of the woods. Sorry I can’t offer more insight. But, yeah, I’ve seen Ben’s posts on Twitter and such and am hoping it helps. *fingers crossed*