It is election time in Washington state. Like me, you probably have a ballot and a voter’s guide sitting on the kitchen table.
Sometime this weekend, Kathy and I will sit down at the kitchen table and discuss issues and races as we fill out our ballots. And no, we don’t always vote the same way, but usually. When there is uncertainty about a race or ballot measure, perhaps she’ll pull out her Mac Air while I fire up my my Windows netbook, or maybe she’ll grab her iPhone as I grab for my Android phone and we’ll engage in a friendly research competition. Despite our “platform heterogeneity” we typically end up agreeing politically. The winner gets there first.
One of my favorite on-line resources is Fuse’s Progressive Voters Guide. Their statewide guide can be found here. County-specific and even city-level guides are available as well. So, if you live in King County, check this one out. Seattleites go here.
As much as I lament the demise of the voting booth, I welcome voting as a new and interesting (if brief) family activity.
Make sure you vote this week! It just might be fun.
I am surprised that you have voted yet. Why wait?
We have a galley kitchen, so all of our Norman Rockwell moments of Americana by mail occur in the dining room.
We plan to vote the full anti-Kemper ticket, against Jane Hague (who has turned virulently proxy-negative out of desperation), against Eye-man, against Costco.
Hmm, the shape of politics to come, I’m afraid.
oops! I left the not out. # 1 should read; I am surprised that you have not voted yet.
Evergreen Libertarian,
It is not so much that we are “waiting.” Rather, we struggle to find the time to sit down together and go over it. This is a very busy time of year for us.
I haven’t mailed my ballot yet, either. I need to research a few of the very local races which had slipped under my radar.
@1 I wait until the last minute to see what the October surprise is.
Not much going on down this a-way.
Voted for Jill Guernsey for Gig Harbor city council. Not super excited about her, but she’s super knowledgeable about land use regs, the city council needs someone like that on it, and she seems like she’ll do well enough.
Voted against the Costco liquor thing. I’ve decided that I really don’t care if we have state liquor stores or not, but I absolutely don’t want corporations involved in state government at that level.
Voted against The Tim for all the usual reasons, plus see above.
Voted against the rainy day fund. Sorry state legislators, if you need a law to force you to do your job, you don’t belong in Olympia.
Tacoma’s got a few good folks up for re-election for city council, Ryan Mellow, David Boe, & and Lauren Walker. They should all win, nothing to worry about there.
Tacoma also has a pot initiative on the ballot, making pot officially the least of police worries, like in Seattle.
Spokane’s Mayor Mary Verner is up for re-election, she’s running against Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, oops I mean David Condon who’s a moderate, middle of the road, NP kinda guy who just happened to work for McMorris-Rodgers…
Spokane also has a few city council seats up for re-election, other than Ben Stuckart (Stuckart’s a huge friend of the cycling community and Spokane’s rapidly transforming into bike town USA) for council president I don’t know anything about the folks.
For more checkout:
http://spovangelist.com/
Yes, voting as a family activity. Too bad in some families, the dominant member can now control the votes of other family members. Back when we had a secret ballot, that wasn’t the case.
9
A friend of mine had grandparents who lived into their 90s. He always thought they were Republicans because that’s what Grandpa said they were. When Grandpa passed on, however, Grandma announced she’d never voted for a Republican in her life. She just played along because it was easier that way.
@10:
Were I
an assholea Republican, I’d make some sort of tasteless and cruel crack about Grandma and dementia.RR @ # 6: It looks like the Hope camp has unleashed their “October Surprise”, a little late.
Apparantly “someone” made a complaint to the Snohomish County Prosecutors that Aaron Reardon had diverted public money for his own use. This afternoon the news media is reporting that Snohomish County is turning this over to the Washington State Patrol, which is par for the course in allegations regarding a prominent county official.
I’m guessing the complaint was supposed to hit the news a week ago, but the time it took to digest the substance of the complaint, turn it over to the State Patrol, have them digest it, and issue a press release, delayed it for a few days. So if the complaint is intended to affect the mail-in-vote, it missed quite a few opportunities since a number of people have already mailed their ballots.
Nobody knows the contents of the complaint. The State Patrol is cautioning that the investigation is just beginning, and they will proceed carefully to reach the correct conclusion, and they are offering no opinion on the merits of the claim. But the best guess is that Hope is trying to get some final milage out of his lame attempts to portray Reardon as wasting public money by “wining and partying” in Paris at taxpayer expense.
The reality, of course, is quite different – he was attending the Paris Air Show with Gov. Gregoire, as they were lobbying aerospace manufacturers to locate their industries in Snohomish County. Mobile, Charleston, and a lot of other areas from around the world were also there, making the same effort. Reardon would have been negligent in his duties if he hadn’t made the trip.
But any results of the investigation won’t be final until weeks or months after the election. Expect some Hope ads to hit the mailings and airwaives very soon on this issue.
@12
Geeyawd, the WSRP can’t even get ginning-up a good little scandal right.
Also, expect that the wingnut Trolls will try to get some milage out of today’s arrest of a 62 year-old Tennessee man on charges that he left two profanity-laden messages on the GOP Speaker of the House, Eric Cantor’s voicemail. In the messages, the FBI said that he referred to Cantor as a “Jew Boy”, and threatned Cantor’s wife and daughters.
Of course the trolls will try to say that this is typical left-wing behavior. But this incident occured in Lenoir City, Tennessee, which is south-east of Knoxville, between I-75 and Maryville, Tennessee.
I happen to have been through Lenoir city a few times. It’s a small rural Tennessee town in north-eastern Tennessee. That means that the area’s Republican roots go WAY back, as this was a stronghold of Unionist sentiment during the Civil War. It’s also full of it’s share of hicks and bigots. The “Jew Boy” reference pretty much demonstrates that this is no liberal Democrat talking.
So whatever set this guy off is probably not Cantor’s Repubican party affiliation. I’m guessing that the primary motivation was a combination of anti-semitism and alchohol. And knowing the area, it was quite likely “untaxed” liquor”.
@11
Well as a democrat, it sounds like you beat everyone else to the punch….
I voted early and often. I wrote in Gus Hall for Burien City Council (all three positions).
GENERAL STRIKE!
@14
Not a whole lot of anti-semitism going on on the left.
16
I, too, have voted several times. As loyal Democrats, we must continue our long and storied history of stealing elections. As we all know, if not for voting fraud on our part, the Republicans would never lose an election. “Why, yes, I would like another ballot, if you don’t mind.”
# 17: At least not since the mid-1960’s. After that, bigots and anti-semitists got the message: reform, or leave.
Awfully quite day for posting. The trolls must be out getting their marching orders on how to surpress the vote. A little late, it seems.
Either that, or they are so confused at how to respond to the Herman Cain scandal that they need a conference to decide on some new talking points.
@19
Seems to me that after the early 70’s all sorts of bigotry, ant-jewish, anti-catholic, anti-asian, started fading fast.
I thing the thing to note @ 14 is that the guy preaching the hate was 62.
# 21: The passage of the Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, Voting Rights Act, etc. about 1964 or 65 (I forget the exact dates) was a watershed moment for the Democrats. They had to chose between continuing to belong to the Democratic Party and accepting those reforms, or leave. The Republicans were more than happy to welcom them into their arms, and Nixon’s 1968 “Southern Strategy” was based on appealing to those dissafected Democrats, letting them know that while Nixon couldn’t publically spout bigotry, he was “one of them”.
By the very early 1970’s, making fun of bigotry and anti-semitism was safe enough for it to appear on network TV in the persona of Archie Bunker in the series “All in the Family”.
I guess 62 is old enough for this guy to have grown up in the “old school”, but not by that much. As I said, I think alchohol was probably a contributing factor.
@22
I think mid-50’s is the cut off.
@9 & 10
That reminds me of one of the most memorable ‘All In the Family’ shows I ever watched. Archie had forgotten to register so he decided that Edith’s ballot was Community Property. He spent the show telling Edith how they were going to vote with “their” ballot. When they go to the polls, he’s not allowed into the booth w/Edith. She comes out with a funny look on her face.
Dang, I would love to see that episode again! One of the best EVER!
Oh yeah, I’m already voted. Just have to mail it out tomorrow.
24 – I bet you can find it (the choice parts anyway) somewhere on youtube.
I was able to take a day last week with my mother and little brother to go over our ballots at the dining room table. We didn’t always agree with things (1183 got the most spirited debate – no pun intended), but this was something I missed when I was living in Nevada.
Politics has always been a family game for us, and having the three of us together arguing over things like SJR’s and City Council candidates….. Well, let’s put it this way – Port Angeles might become the first city in the Union to elect a Juggalette to political office (seriously). She’s a friend of my wife and I, though my mother considered her a ‘weird girl’ fom her time at the high school and wouldn’t vote for her if her life depended on it. My little brother voted for her simply because he hoped that if she won, she’d turn up for her first Council meeting in her ICP gear.
Now if I could just find my wife’s ballot and mail it in….
@26 YLB
Thanks, I will keep looking. Got kind of sidetracked watching other YT eps of Archie. What fun to find so many to rewatch!