By Holly the Assistant
Yes, there’s a Presidential Election.
But who and what else is on your ballot? Have you looked yet? Figured out who is running for those down-ballot races and how crooked they are? What that deceptively worded proposition actually means? This is where a lot of the shaping of how this country runs happens: if you liked your governor stepping up to support Texas, your Attorney General filing that lawsuit or amicus curiae brief, your county commissioners telling that federal agency to shove it . . . this is where it happens, and this matters, quite possibly, more than the national votes, because of how our country runs.
A lot of these are local or state matters, so I can’t give you a brief overview of what you’ll see on yours. But please, don’t wait until Election Day to figure it out. I know at least one of you has an Anyone Would Be Better Candidate for something because someone always does. Probably more than half of you, honestly. Sometimes just getting a different crook who isn’t part of the current scheme in is enough to upset the rotten apple basket.
And, while we’re at it, here’s my most useful emotions based anti-mail-in voting argument, if you should happen to have anyone you need to talk to about it:
County Sheriff is an elected position. Prosecutor, too, here. So if you have mail-in ballots, and you’ve got an abuser who is getting away with it because he’s got a buddy in power who declines to charge or fumbles the investigation on purpose, you’re giving him his victim’s vote, as well as his own. Someone who will beat his wife for other things will beat her to make her vote right, and if he can watch her vote, she has no chance against his buddies in power. Some of these rural county votes will swing on a handful of people: I’ve seen votes as tight as three here. If you support mail-in ballots, you support abusers getting to keep their buddies who protect them in power.
According To Hoyt 
c4c
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Did that yesterday for the propositions, the Corporation Commission and the judges. Don’t have the flyer for the others yet; if it doesn’t show up by this weekend, I’ll have to get online to dig through who. (Although it’s fairly easy for the Federal and State level people – anyone not a member of the Grijalva Mafia is automatically better, and I know who THOSE are.)
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Here in NY State we have the over-reaching Proposition 1, which would amend state constitution, supposedly because of abortion rights, but NY already has virtually unlimited abortion and government support for same.
“New York Proposal 1, the Equal Protection of Law Amendment, would add language to the New York Bill of Rights outlawing discrimination based on “ethnicity, national origin, age, and disability” or “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” The current anti-discrimination clause in New York’s Bill of Rights prohibits the denial of rights based on “race, color, creed, or religion.” “
Critics argue it will take away parental rights, allowing children to get abortions without parental notification, and allow children of any age to decide they are trans and the state would enforce the child’s declaration.
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I’d be willing to bet that it can be plausibly argued that abortion is a violation of the discrimination against age AND disability.
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Now that’s an interesting idea, one I hadn’t seen before. And I’d love to see it argued before the USSC.🤔😊😊
Assuming, of course, that they’d take it; so very many cans of worms there.
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We haven’t GOTTEN our ballots yet. Yes, we find this highly suspicious. But I live in rural WA and my voice is systematically stifled. The Gregoire/ Rossi debacle showed most of us what was what.
Last gubernatorial election, Jay-Jay (Inns lee) started in with his victory address TWENTY MINUTES after the dropboxes closed. Clearly no one is bothering to count.
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Haven’t gotten Oregon ballots yet either. We are not rural Oregon. We are in Eugene. OTOH our county ballots, printed here, mailed here, have to go to mail distribution center in greater Portland. Should be here sometime this week or next. While not rural, our votes will be stifled too, by the nursing home and dead votes.
For the record, my household (based on years now of grousing) voted “No” on mail in voting. Just saying.
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I just checked Flyover County’s website, and there’s not yet a voter’s pamphlet for November. I think local ballots go to the Medford center. Once we fill them out, they go to the drop box next to the county clerk’s office (all inside, so a bit harder for shenanigans of the boxfull-o-ballots variety).
The only proposition I’m familiar with is OR-118, taxing the “rich” corporations, so a sales tax done once removed. My general philosophy is to vote NO on propositions unless I can figure out a damned good reason for YES. OTOH, Portlandia drowns out us Deplorables. I wonder how many votes represent honest legal ballots returned.
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I can’t see a reason to vote for 118 either.
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In AZ we got our voter’s pamphlet (actually, book) a couple of days ago. 13 state-level propositions; there are also quite a few local ones not covered in the “pamphlet”. So far it’s 7 “yes”, one “oh, HELL, no”, and 5 yet to be researched, mostly for potential “unintended consequences”.
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My default tends to be “no,” but I will say that a funding proposition half a dozen years back did the right thing. It wasn’t “fund our schools,” it was “our school will get X amount of funding, which we will dedicate to Y and Z.” It passed, and then they did exactly what they said they were going to do (mostly building improvements.) That’s how it *should* be, with actual effects and accountability for said effects.
As a side note, this means each of my kids has gone to a physically different junior high and high school, despite attending the same schools. And the changes are still ongoing, mostly because the schools in question are aged and decrepit, from the mid-20th century (and so therefore not old enough to have real longevity, though they’ve moved the “portables” of four decades over to the junior high while they tear out a wing, because those old portables last longer than the hew ones.)
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So long as the purposes weren’t already budgeted for. Then, because money is fungible, they take the budgets away and spend.
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When the Democrats say FEMA’s emergency response money wasn’t given to illegal aliens, they’re not quite lying. The money was diverted before it ever got to the National Emergency account, you see, so it wasn’t emergency response money at the time.
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So money appropriated for FEMA was diverted before it got to FEMA, so no FEMA money was diverted.
I believe that’s usually referred to as either sophistry or false rationalization. Either way it’s dishonest. But then, it is the Feds… :-x
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We are in a different school district than the one I went to school in. All 3 of the grade schools I attended are gone. One rebuilt. Other two, wiped off the ground. Middle school, same name, different building, different “spot”. High school same. Each are on the same property but different locations on the property. Our district asked for funds to add on to couple of grade schools. About 10 years ago. They did just that. Now they are closing two because they don’t see the students incoming. The grade school near us was going to be a third closure, but that didn’t happen (the other grade schools are too far away, we have a grade school in the other district that is < 1/2 mile walk). Middle schools harder to close, technically there are 4, but two are k – 12. High school, there is only one, and an “alternative” option. Don’t see those combining anytime soon.
Grade schools went from being over crowded to under utilized in < 10 years. Grade school near us (we can see it from the house), not only has preschool pod, but pre and post school daycare. Under utilized because of lack of children, and our district gets more of the homeless population, for reasons. Some homeschooling, especially on our side of the tracks (where most the non farm/ranch money is) but as a district as a whole? Homeschooling is not a trend.
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Both grade schools I attended are in existence as buildings, but the K-2 is now Adult Education. That was a mid-century special; lots of subdivisions built in the early-mid 1950s. Pretty much a blue collar suburb, so I assume not so many kids. Especially since I seemed to be at the peak of the baby boom there. (Born 1952)
Grades 3-6 were at an old sandstone building, perhaps dating the 1885. (Same age as the town, it was the oldest school there.) The old (deconsecrated church, maybe) annex was torn down, and an attached gym was added in the 1970s. Now it seems to have been sold to a firm doing after-school homework/activities/babysitting. I think the town’s kid population is still fairly high, but it turned into a magnet for Catholic upper management types, with a couple of good CatholociK-? schools in town or next ‘burb over. A lot of houses in town were built for large families. Kind of liked the place, though I haven’t lived there for over a half century nor set eyes on 10 years.
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We’ll see. Currently house sales are slowing way down in Eugene. Neighbor just put her house on the market. Should go “faster” as it is a nice single family home, nice backyard (compared to newer construction postage stamp backyards). Built ’73/’74. But it also can see the grade school from the house (third house from intersection, school is across from intersection). Downside is it is the smaller district … OTOH smaller district single HS has a popular program that none of the 4 HS in the other district has (or did, don’t know what shutdown 2020 might have done to it).
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The two flyers I’ve gotten in the mail regarding 118 makes it sound like a VAT.
Doesn’t matter, it’s a tax, I’m voting no.
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Likewise, and we’re in FL. Very suspicious, that.
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Also in Florida. I don’t do mail-in voting, and won’t do early voting unless I absolutely positively won’t be here on Election day (thus my daughter coming home from college in a couple weeks to vote early). I do have my sample ballot, and Hubby and I sat down and went over everything on it, including some research about the people and amendments.
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We haven’t gotten the sample ballot yet. Frustrating.
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Just got my sample ballot yesterday. Polk County, if that might make a difference.
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Rural Western WA here. No ballots yet, just received the official pamphlet Saturday.
We’re swimming upstream one-handed here, but I’ll keep trying (and photograph my ballot before I place it in the drop box).
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Voter pamphlet arrived yesterday in NW Washington so ballots probably aren’t too far behind. SOS office says “at least 18 days before election” so that’s still a ways out. At least this way people get to see more news about what an idiot the current VP is before they vote. As far as down ballot, Ferguson is worse than Inslee and will win in a landslide. He is horrible but it makes little to no difference who runs against the Democrat here. We’ve also had a string of bad candidates (our last R gubernatorial candidate couldn’t even figure out how to get a statement into the voter pamphlet about his views). Reichert is moderate but better than the last couple, but the infighting in the R party between the moderate wing and the hard core conservatives has gotten pretty bad so I’ll predict that a lot of Eastern Wash Republicans won’t vote for him, even though that makes Ferguson’s win even easier.
/end Washington political rant
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You’re absolutely right on all points. We’re in South Thurston County, near the county line. So CULTURALLY we align more with Lewis County than that festering pile known as Olympia.
Our household has tossed around the idea of a pool on how many minutes after the dropboxes close Ferguson will announce his victory. So far the longest estimate is half an hour.
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Btw… I did notice that Trump had Christopher Macchio sing the Schubert “Ave Maria” again, at the return appearance in Butler. I don’t know; maybe he is signing up for OCIA, maybe he’s just schmoozing Jesus’ mom like a boss….
It was nice, though.
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Melania is a baptized Catholic, although the extent to which she practices the faith is unclear. But I have read that she prays the rosary regularly. Who knows, maybe it’s having an effect…
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Born and raised Catholic myself. I’ll support the Catholic community, but I have zero faith in the clergy sans personal individual contact and experience. There are a few good men in the hierarchy. Unfortunately, too few IMHO. They haven’t excommunicated me, yet.
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Yep, we’re a church full of sinners — why they even let ME in! :) Good news is, the church doesn’t excommunicate you; you have to excommunicate yourself. So hang in there.
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Biden is a baptized catholic, as are a bunch of donkuloids, so not a great indicator.
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Wheat, tares, harvest. (Come quickly, King of Kings!)
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Here in Ohio we have Issue 1, which is supposed to appoint a “non-political” group to draw district lines, and there’s no way after that to fire them or oppose their district lines.
Because the Republican-controlled state legislature didn’t let the Democrats gerrymander all kinds of crazy districts, and therefore this is the way to counter our elected representatives.
Vote NO on Issue 1.
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We were getting harangued by Issue 1 supporters while waiting for the shuttle bus for Dayton Greek festival a month or so back, the first we had heard of it. But yeah, as soon as we started looking into it it became clear how bad it was.
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Haven’t been there for years. Need to make a run to the Greek place down by the Dayton Mall for a Gyro fix!
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Roger That. Knowing nothing else about it, I’d vote against just by the condescending attitude of the folks in the pro commercials.
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Support them or not, Kalifornia sends everybody a fraud-by-mail ballot. When I owned the rental house they got ballots for tenants that moved out years before.
I got a fraud-by-mail ballot Friday. I take those things to the poll on Election Day and tear them up in front of the poll workers.
‘Early voting’ is another fraud scheme. Gives them weeks to stuff all those bogus ballots into the unsecured drop boxes. The graveyard vote always comes in early.
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At least in my parents’ Florida County, the early voting drop boxes are secured within a county building – Risk Management – with both video and in-person monitoring. I think the county administration was making a subtle joke or point with building selection.
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The drop boxes in California are actually a Republican idea. The Dems use ballot harvesting, so drop boxes aren’t needed for them. Random guy off the street can legally drop two hundred ballots off at the election center. But Republicans don’t like handing their ballots to strangers to deliver. So the state Republican party set up drop boxes at locations that Republicans frequent.
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I use the mail-in ballot but never mail it; the last couple of times, there has been a polling center at the veterans’ building where my son’s scout troop meets, so I drop it off there. Otherwise, it goes straight to the county drop box on the day of.
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We seem to have very few ballot propositions here in Kansas. C and I are going to the polls on 5 November to vote in person. I’ve researched the candidates for the various offices, though on most of them it’s just a question of voting against the Democrat; our district for the lower house of the state legislature has ONLY a Democrat running, and on the other hand our district for the county commission also has a Libertarian, but they look like a flake and don’t say much about their campaign positions. But I prefer the ritual of voting in person, and it also is one more vote that the Democrats don’t know about in advance.
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Ah voting, the useless, futile thing I do every chance I get. I live in California where I’ve seen zero ads for Senator, so we’ll end up with the proven lying, treasonous, bastard Adam Schiff as our next senator to follow the long disgraceful heritage of Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Kamala Harris, and any other Democrat to sleep with some rich guy to get their name on the ballot.
I’ve already figured out most of the ballot propositions. Increase taxes, sell bonds–hard no! Proposals longer than 30 pages, no! The state is so damn blue that I’ve seen numerous ads denouncing a local Republican I don’t even like, by saying in ominous tones, “He admitted he voted for Trump!” If the local candidate isn’t homosexual or female (preferably both), they have little chance. Ah, remember the days when candidates used to tout their happy families? Locally, a gay conservative once tried running for Congress, but was torpedoed when a male volunteer claimed he was molested by the candidate, with a month before the election. The accuser was later successfully sued for his outright lie IIRC, but that was after we got the current long-term incumbent Democrat congressman.
Despite all that, I WILL VOTE. Losing is no excuse to not vote. If they execute me for my heresy of voting for freedom, I’ve already got my funeral paid for, so screw them!
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Ah voting, the useless, futile thing I do every chance I get. I live in California where I’ve seen zero ads for Senator, so we’ll end up with the proven lying, treasonous, bastard Adam Schiff as our next senator to follow the long disgraceful heritage of Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Kamala Harris, and any other Democrat to sleep with some rich guy to get their name on the ballot.
I’ve already figured out most of the ballot propositions. Increase taxes, sell bonds–hard no! Proposals longer than 30 pages, no! The state is so damn blue that I’ve seen numerous ads denouncing a local Republican I don’t even like, by saying in ominous tones, “He admitted he voted for Trump!” If the local candidate isn’t homosexual or female (preferably both), they have little chance. Ah, remember the days when candidates used to tout their happy families? Locally, a gay conservative once tried running for Congress, but was torpedoed when a male volunteer claimed he was molested by the candidate, with a month before the election. The accuser was later successfully sued for his outright lie IIRC, but that was after we got the current long-term incumbent Democrat congressman.
Despite all that, I WILL VOTE. Losing is no excuse to not vote. If they execute me for my heresy of voting for freedom, I’ve already got my funeral paid for, so screw them!
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Never forget that in 2020 Pennsylvania counted almost 2.6 million fraud-by-mail ballots — but they only ever sent out 1.8 million. Where did those 780,000 ‘extra’ ballots come from? Huh? WHERE?
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Here in Florida we have a whole raft of amendments we’re voting on.
One of them is Right to Fish and Hunt. Which is great because the Donks here have been attacking the fishing and hunting for quite a while.
We also have both Legalize Pot, which is a very bad amendment, and Legalize NY Style Abortion, which is also a very bad amendment.
The rest, like requiring School Board candidates to tell us what party they belong to, are just plain sensible.
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Oregon started with “Medical Marijuana”. Not sure, but I think $SPOUSE fell for the line, while I sniffed a trojan reefer. Sure enough, we have retail MJ, at least in Flyover Falls and one other city. Banned by proposition in the county (one I was willing to vote YES for), but moot, since the population centers are in F-Falls (mostly, a third of the county’s population). The other town is smaller, but a center for the local tribes.
Amazing what happened to car insurance rates after legalization happened. (I’ve seen enough disasters and close calls to figure out why…)
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Tell me about it. Ours has gone to $1600/year for two vehicles. Insurance keeps telling me it is because we are both over 65 and hubby is over 70 (pull the other leg, it has bells on it). Son’s runs $1500/year one car. None of us have any traffic infractions. Not even any not at fault accidents. Okay the stupid traffic rocks tend to nail the Santa Fe windows, requiring replacing (not a choice, rock hit, window crack runs almost immediately, or close enough). Son drives a Veloster N. Although it is theft proof, it is not an automatic, and the reverse is weird (I can drive a stick, but the reverse has me baffled).
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But the Libertine-ians assure us that There Are No Bad Things From Smoking Dope!
Does the 2A cover Chemical Weapons? Becasue that ditchweed s(HONK)t my neighbor is smoking gives me debilitating migraines. (Even a whiff of “good” stuff can do it. But the neighbor’s s(HONK)t is -vile- fire-in-a-plastics-shop s(HONK!)t).
Had a neighbor a little while back who was also an absolutely gifted handyman. Fix a rainy day kinda guy. But he had to toke up to really do well. Totally weird. “Scuze me for a sec. Forgot a tool…. (puuuffffffffff). …….Okay. ……Got this. Need to ….. frizen frazzen the framizat…. buzzzz… Works!” And it did.
He also didn’t drive much. Would not go anywhere near a driver seat unless “pilot sober”. Also hermetically sealed his place, so I never smelled it unless he was out on the porch, and then only if the wind shifted.
(Note, he moved, Fred, so no freebie busts today. Assuing anyone still enforces it.)
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Here in TX, it’s another Liberaltarian dream, open borders. Uninsured motorist coverage is thru the roof. Even though liability coverage is supposedly mandatory, the typical illegal immigrant just doesn’t bother.
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@11B, I don’t think you’ll offend anybody if you type “shit”. :)
Ditchweed was common at the U of Redacted in the early-mid 70s. I was too cheap to buy more than a couple of ounces lifetime and didn’t care for the buzz. Back when I could drink I preferred good whiskey or really good beer. A few business trips to Bavaria spoiled me for American beer (never tried the small craft breweries, especially once the budget said “hell no”), and no more whiskey for the same reason. Had a tiny bit of (cheap Trader Joe’s) wine for a while, and then medical issues aroused that made drinking A Really Bad Idea.
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bUt PoTHeAdS dRivE SlOwlY…..
:snorts:
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If it were possible to pick one over the other, I’d rather share the road with potheads than drunks. Potheads know they’re stoned, and tend to overestimate their degree of impairment. That’s why they drive slow.
Drunks, OTOH, don’t really believe they’re impaired. Just ask one.
The Worst Case is the pothead who’s had a drink or two. Each drug interferes with the ability to compensate for the other.
It’s best to assume that every driver on the road is a drunk, stoned, furious psychopath who has just lost a fight and wants to take it out on you.
PS to our BBESP (or her faithful minion): Couldjaplease free my last post from the spam bucket? Thanks.
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If it were possible to pick one over the other, I’d rather share the road with potheads than drunks. Potheads know they’re stoned, and tend to overestimate their degree of impairment. That’s why they drive slow.
That hasn’t been true for at least 3 decades, possibly longer.
We lived on a road that lead to the pot shops.
You could smell the guys going 60 in a 35, and sometimes they looked like they thought Cheech and Chong had the right idea.
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We have a number of city ballot issues that are getting more coverage than anything but POTUS. And rightly so, in my opinion. People are especially concerned about a “well meaning nice idea” proposal that could lead to all sorts of Constitutional messes, which will cost money as well as making the city look less-than-smart. And some property tax “It’s just a teeny, tiny little minor baby increase. Trust us!” stuff.
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I’ve voted for two tax increases over the years. One back-door, since it was agreeing to annexation by the nearest fire department (the state borked the NGO one for $TINY_TOWN, along with all the other NGO operations because reasons), while the second was for modernizing the 911 system. I had experience with them in the late Aughts, and they badly needed more and better equipment. (And more radio towers; we have some interesting radio propagation–rather lack thereof–in parts of the county.)
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Oregon has a proposition to tax businesses a percentage on gross sales. Yep. No way that is inflationary. “Just on the business!” They have no clue it’ll just get passed on. Like the “sales tax”, um I mean “luxury and dealership taxes”, on all new vehicles. “They don’t have to pass it on!” Like dealerships make money on new vehicle sales (they make a lot more on used vehicles). Dang Idiots.
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They’re hoping the voters are idiots.
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I’ve come to the conclusion that for many dealers, new-car sales are “loss leaders”; they make little or nothing (or less) on them, while making their real profit on used cars and “service”. At the prices they charge I certainly do feel that I’ve been”serviced”…or would, if I ever went back after the first “servicing”.😒
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Agree. We’ve been buying new vehicles since late ’80s. Then we (usually, have been *exceptions) run them until 10+ years old. Pickups we sell. Sedans usually trade in. But we always get top value regardless of which way we go.
(* Love it. When we asked to go, it went. But we had to let the Dodge Intrepid go. Never had the mechanical problems that others we knew had one. Our problem was we couldn’t get rid of the “Hit me” sign off of it. I swear. First 7 months we had two different cars hit it, and it had a decent baring horn! Three years later someone nailed it again. Nothing major but dang. Fourth time, got it fixed, and traded it in.)
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I haven’t bought a new vehicle since, IIRC, 1975. That one lasted until around 1993, and the three I’ve bought since then were all “pre-owned”. And all quite satisfactory.
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We started out buying vehicles that were a year or two old. But these days those cost MORE than new, and interest rates on them are higher.
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Our 1993 GMC 3500 is still running around town. I know the family who bought it put another 70k miles on it (130k last time I talked to them). It is now working daily as a yard truck.
The Tacoma xcab 4×4 1/2 ton (too close to the limit for trailer tow) was sold before the paper signed ink was dry (if not before), and we got more than we paid for it. (Only truck we traded in.)
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When we retired and moved to AZ in ’07, I sold the Cherokee (in MD) and got an ’02 CR-V when we got here. I still have it and it still runs fine. I no longer needed a “snow-capable” regular ride, and the CR-V with AWD gets me to all the fishing spots I need it to, and gets decent mileage; it’ll probably be the last one I’ll have.
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Knock on wood, we won’t be replacing the Santa Fe’s (yes plural, we have 2). Well I might. I have at least 30 years to go. (Mom is 90, mid November). Son drove the ’04 Elantra for 14 years (dad had it first two years. Nov ’03 – Jan ’20). Dealership did take it in on a pity trade but wasn’t reselling (we’d just bought the ’19 Santa Fe).
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My current vehicle is a Saturn with 358,000 miles on it. If there is one thing I most despise zer0 for, its killing off Saturn.
So far, haven’t found anything quite like it, without getting into stupid-expensive high-end stuff. And I loathe the modern “drive a laptop” control layout of “modern” vehicles. Asked some dealers if they have an all gage option for “enthusiasts”. Nopers.
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I hear you. It’s not just cars; try finding a home appliance with no electronics and all manual controls (just why does my refrigerator need wi-fi?!? And why does the washer need a microprocessor?). I can (sort of) see it for cars; microprocessors and the associate sensors allow EFI to work, and EFI (aside from the vulnerability to EMP) beats carbs in just about all ways.
But for home appliances it jacks up the price and trashes reliability with no real benefit; we’re on our second wall oven since ’07; I replaced the control board in the first when it died after a few years (bad design; excessive heat from the oven box below it, and home stuff does not use either Mil-grade or automotive-grade electronics), and the replacement died in less than 3 years. At least the new one has cooling for the electronics; it’s still working after (amazing!) 7(?) years. We rented a house back in th early ’70s that had appliances bought in the early ’40s; they all worked fine even if they couldn’t share gossip over wi-fi.
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Our current refrigerator is (OMG) 19 years old now. The last one got replaced because hubby caught me in front of it going “Die! Die Already!” It was 27 years old. We halved our electric bill when we replaced it, I swear. Not fancy. But does hold 4 gallons of milk in the door. Bottom drawer freezer. The digital readout for freezer and refrigerator temps are dead, but who cares. Never change either. Never used the ice maker except to freeze the cooler ice bricks. It will go out the door when it actually irreparably dies. We are limited in space for the refrigerator, no room for a fancy one.
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Remember the good old days, when anyone who thought household appliances had secret microphones was insane?
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I tried to reply to this, but apparently WP (which, DE) ate it. Sobeit.
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A-a-a-a-nd it finally showed up today, only 30+ hours after I posted it. WPDE.😒😒😒
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Hey, WPDE makes up for the posts it buries by repeating other posts 19 times. It all averages out, right?
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“just the tip!”
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Early voting starts October 21st in Texas. We are in a decent “Republican” county, so not really any election day shenanigans, like the nearest large Demon county, so no problem voting early. Fully expect lines on early voting like 2020 and 2016.
The election spam texts are much lighter than the primaries. I sent so many fowl responses back this spring, I probably ended up on a “Do Not Disturb” list. But there is still time to test the limits of my creativity!
Races for US Senator and US Rep. Plus bunch of the state and county offices. Our city elections were in the spring.
Still need to complete my pre-election, pre-CWII shopping if my knee holds up this next week end. Just have some horse swapping and some bit and pieces.
This is the first major election since 2016 that I’m not assiting with election audits of the local counties. There’s enough other people that have picked up the baton and since no serious legal action has occured in the past don’t expect much locally in the future.
My job gets busier the worse the economy is, so if there is enough structure left, next year should be extremely overwhelming. It is the barely calm before the MF storm.
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The spam calls are light right now. Haven’t had the survey outfit calling (never answer, Caller ID FTW), and even the usual commercial calls are light. One possibility, our landline was cut off due to a wildfire in September. (Fiber optic trunk got destroyed, and it took 10 days before they could reconnect the town to the system.) That might have reset the robocallers.
Having to depend on cell when the reception is spotty sucks, but it’s been better the past couple of years.
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Dad’s job was counter timber cycle. When timber economy was booming, the company wasn’t as busy. Minute timber went in a down cycle company was swamped. Dad’s company were the engineers for building, and reequipmenting existing, timber and paper mills. Yes, the permanent timber crisis hurt the firm. But they did a lot more international business. Wasn’t long before dad was medically retired.
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I get spam calls for Texas, and Texts are national (my phone number is an 817- area code) but I have gotten mid-term Michigan texts.
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Idaho has Prop 1, which forces parties to have open primaries AND implements ranked choice voting for every election the state holds ever.
And also a constitutional amendment forbidding foreigners from voting.
I think it doesn’t go far enough – I’d like to see an amendment that forbids people for voting unless they’ve lived in the state full-time for 10 consecutive years and are currently full-time residents – but I suppose it’s a start.
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Jungle primaries allow Democrats to choose the Republican candidates, or just swamp the field and crowd everybody else out. It’s how Kalifornia gets 2 Democrat candidates, bad and worse, for most state offices. Ranked voting all but guarantees that candidates nobody really wants win. Both are corruptions of democracy.
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They need a law saying anyone trying to enact ranked voting and open primaries is shot, drawn and quartered. The first Trump wannabe assassin was registered Republican because he was part of Act Blue’s attempt to force their preferred opponent
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That instance had nothing to do with ‘jungle primaries’, but was part of an attempt to corrupt the normal primary process. One I can’t see any practical way to prevent.
Unless you want the political parties to conduct background checks before allowing somebody to register.
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I can think of a couple ways to slow it down.
No same day primary registrations. You must register in advance. How long? I’d go for a week.
Check the opensecrets.org donation databases. Using Trump’s assassin as an example: “You donated $XXX to the Democrats last week. What changed your mind?”
The party can also take 5 minutes to run an address lookup. Vacant Lot? Boarded up apartment? Hmmmm.
The thing to remember is that the party is supposed to be able to run its’ own primary process. It isn’t denying voting rights for them to actually do so.
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No ‘same day’ registration at all. If you can’t bestir your lazy ass to register a couple of weeks before Election Day, you don’t get to vote in that election. Tough Shit. Register now, you can vote in the next election.
That is Yet Another election fraud scheme. What’s to stop bad actors from registering and voting in 6 different precincts? Why, nothing, that’s what. Which is why the Democrats are so hot for it.
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Forbidding same day registration for the general election gets into a number of legal and Constitutional questions. The primaries are the parties alone.
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No. it was just an example that they can still mess with the current system, but by doing so, they then can’t vote within theirs. I sent the reply sent before finishing, I guess.
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The first Trump wannabe assassin was registered Republican because he was part of Act Blue’s attempt to force their preferred opponent
See, I don’t mind that as much, because it at least forced the Democrats to do some work in order to spoil the Republican nominations.
Apparently they’re tired of having to exert effort to ruin other people’s stuff and therefore want to change the law so that other people’s stuff gets ruined automatically.
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they do prefer making it easier for them to sabotage things, by hook or crook
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This is also part of how the Donkuloids f(HONK!)d Bernie out of his likely nomination. They encouraged college kids to “counter-vote” the Republican primary to select Trump as “easy pickins”. Or not-trump, same-diff. But that cross-the-party effort drained away likely Bernie supporters from the Donk primary, thus giving HRC “her turn”.
And she still dodges credit for that scheme. Just as she still dodges credit for “Obama isn’t a born citizen”, which dates to the Donk primary, not the hapless Rhino efforts later on.
That evil scheming corrupto-c(HONK!) doesn’t get half the credit she deserves.
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Ranked choice is apparently a rolling disaster in Alaska.
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It’s rolling out here in PDX this cycle. Thankfully, it’s only PDX, but I also think I heard something about a ballot measure for the whole state to implement it.
Fuckssake.
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Okay. Then. Another one to vote against.
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It’s concerned me for a long time that we elect “justice-related” positions, like judges, sheriffs, DAs, etc. Unfortunately, leaving it up to elected officials to appoint them would also be a disaster. I wish there was a better way. For police, we “try” to have a police academy to train them but I have no doubt that those have been completely infected by now.
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Yeah, someone managed to get open primaries and ranked choice voting on the ballet here in Potatopia. That’s a hard NO.
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Long ago a PoliSci teacher related the story of a county position held by, let’s say Joe Doakes, of one party. It didn’t matter who the other party ran, if they ran anyone. Joe Doakes always won. Eventually Mr. Doakes died…. and somehow the other party found a fellow willing to run who happened to go by the name of Joe Doakes… and thus the position changed parties, for Joe Doakes always won that spot….
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Got an acquaintance in the Tampa area who has decided to “be brave”. Dip(HONK!)t won’t evacuate. Dude, its a (HONK!)ing wet nuke coming. Moses parted a nice calm sea, not a hurricane. Cant even “Baker Act” the dweeb, as was advised they would have to arrest a quarter of Florida for -that- suicidal act.
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Been seeing a lot of reports that after the last one there are more that can’t afford to evacuate. Hardest ones are the RV FB groups. Oh, they are being told to evacuate, especially their RV’s. But there are the ones that go “How? We lost our house in hurricane ABC, X years ago, been living in an RV because can’t afford to rebuild. Do not have the means to evacuate us, let alone the RV. RV is all we have. Give us ideas on how to survive!” Kiss your assets good-bye is not an appropriate response, on any level, no matter how tempting.
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Get to the central hilly part of northern Florida. Abandon the RV and seek any structure shelter. Some parts of that area are 50-150 feet above sea level.
Or keep going north on 75 a while longer.
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I gather several state officials are telling the stubborn to write their SSN on their arms in indelible ink so they can identify the body.
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My in-laws are in a 55+ Mobile Home Park over by U.S. 27 and I4. We’ve been trying to get them to come to my house (block construction, steel roof, 175MPH rated windows) but they’re stubborn. Lost my mom last year, don’t want my wife to lose her parents this year.
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Have you considered a kidnapping, seriously? I can’t imagine trying to ride this out in a trailer.
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Amen. We rode out Tropical Storn Ian a couple of years ago, on the other side of a (substantial) sand dune from the Atlantic, in our fifth wheel. It was exciting, but not fun. Not one little bit. And we kept power and even satellite. Of course, we also pulled in the slide outs and rattled like peanuts in an almost empty jar anyway.And had insulation torn out of the underside of the RV.
That was only a Tropical storm. We would have been in Richmond or points west for anything more (and maybe should have been for this).
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New Hampshire at least doesn’t connect their voting machines to the internet., yet. Unfortunately, the poll workers are nearly 2/3rds Democrats in our town, and probably similar proportions everywhere south of Rt 4, and up the I 93 corridor.
Generally speaking, unless you want a socialist-Marxist nightmare, you vote Republican. For local and legislature, that’s pretty easy. Just vote for all the down ballot GOP candidates. Unfortunately (again), the GOP candidate for governor, Kelly Ayotte, leaves A LOT to be desired. Not enough to vote Dem; but most of us are probably going to be holding our noses as we fill in the oval next to her name.
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That’s common; almost no candidate ticks all the right boxes. I’ve voted against, rather than for, almost every presidential candidate since the end of Reagan’s second term. The only one I voted for was Trump in 2020. Pretty much the same applies to the down-ballot candidates, although not quite to the same extent.
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I HOPE NH has addressed this issue from 2016.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/7/voter-fraud-alert-over-5000-new-hampshire-presiden/
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In the OT/ entertaining ourselves dept, twice in the last few days Biden has bestirred himself to appear before the press and either tie Kalmala to his every decision or contradict her version of something. He has done this during times she’s making a public appearance. Sure looks like he’s not a happy camper.
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“Looks like”?
Sorry just flat out say “He’s not a happy camper.” He isn’t. He is pissed. He has that alzheimer/senility anger going on. He may not remember much. But he definitely knows he’s been thrown under the bus, ran over multiple times, and by who. He is lashing out.
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I answer any suspect call in Klingon. Seems to help. Don’t get many repeats.
(bluntly) “nuqneH?” (What do you want)
(bot) “is this …”
(rudely) “nuqneH, P’takh?!” (Freak)
(Actual human) “Hello. We are hoping we can count on you to vote Donk (blah…)”
(Loud, extra spit) “tokhe straav’!” (Willing slave)
For some reason, the local donks quit calling….
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I start with, “Good morning/afternoon/evening.” The bots are expecting, “Hello?” and it throws them off. After that, since I then usually get a boiler shop, it’s either, “You’re working for people who commit Medicare fraud. You need to find work that doesn’t make you lie to people. God bless you and have a nice-” They usually hang up somewhere around, “fraud.”
My other response (to causes I support) is, “I do not do telephone solicitation of any kind for any reason. Thank you very much and have a nice day.” All spoken as one long word so they can’t break in.
My beloved just says, “This is * Dimock, IRS enrolled agent number 123-” and they hang right up, usually at the letters, IRS. And he is an enrolled agent, so he’s not even lying. They just don’t know what an enrolled agent is.
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I used to make a game of stringing the spamcallers along as long as possible, always being just on the point of swallowing their hook.
Alas, these days that would just be training an AI to better mimic you.
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I answer in Czech, German, Finnish, or Estonian. Or a combination, depending on how persistent the pest is. I had one lady get angry when no one who spoke English could take the call! Snickers in an evil kitty sort of way.
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I don’t say anything until they speak first. It weeds out all the robocalls that will hang up after 10 seconds or so of silence. If it’s a solicitation, I just break in and say, “Thank you, but I’m not interested.” Then I hang up, regardless of whether they’re still talking.
My sister answers any number she doesn’t recognize with, “County Morgue.” It’s amazing how many people just hang up after that. I may need to start using that.
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“Muggs Mortuary, you stab ’em, we slab ’em, may I help you?”
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Was listening to my local afternoon talk radio show driving home the other day and one caller said that he’ll ask the local donks standing the required distance away from the polling place for their list of candidates and then he knows who the judges are that from the other party. They don’t list party affiliation for judges when they go up for election here in Ohio.
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My default is “Vote out the incumbent,” especially with judges.
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Hear! Hear! “No” on all the Propositions and Questions that we don’t REALLY, REALLY NEED (maybe we’ll get one of those someday), and oust every incumbent who doesn’t stand out as worthy of re-election (ditto). THAT is the way “Term Limits” is SUPPOSED to work, and the only way that doesn’t further a get-it-while-it’s-hot mentality among the pols; especially–but not exclusively– in their final term.
Nevertheless, I’ll bet that every last one of the dumbdonk Questions–including Ranked-Choice–will pass, and every incumbent will be retained. (At least, there will be No Evidence™ to the contrary.)
The ballots around here used to label the incumbents with a parenthetical (INC). They stopped that some 20-ish years ago when a low-key anti-incumbency talking point started spreading–not that it noticeably affected our tendency to vote for them. “Name recognition” is all you need to get at least a third of the vote. Forgive us, Father, we know not what we do.
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The only 3 bills I want to pass currently is national:
Never happen, any of them. But that is what I want.
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I’d back those. How about “Next year’s expenditures can’t exceed (some fraction of) last year’s GNP.” (And no fair counting last year’s gov’t spending as part of last year’s GNP!)
Yes, put the SS money back in its as-originally-promised “lockbox”. Also, quit using SS numbers as IDs (also as originally promised.) I get peevish when some voice-on-the-phone at a utility company insists on the last four digits of mine. Those digits open up too many doors–especially if Scammy-Pants also knows your birthday and address.
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I would do that, if I could, but here at least the incumbent is the only one on the ballot, and I have zero people who I would want as a judge.
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Write-in Judge Roy Bean. :-D
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Yes. Here too in Lane County. I just do not vote on that race. Been tempted to write in “someone else” or “anyone else” to vote for (exactly that) but I really don’t want that kind of attention.
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Go the Bruester’s Millions route and write in ‘None of the above’.
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