Scuzz
5038
In a way I kind of like that attitude, except that it really doesn’t hold for the entire ballot. If you vote for nothing else you should at least vote for president and what ever you see in your or the nations best interests.
In California with the damn proposition system we are confronted with making decisions on things that should never come to the people, things that are worded so poorly that after the election they are declared null and void and plane mislabeled shit. For the last several elections I have just begun voting no on all of them.
And how the hell am I supposed to know who should be elected to some judge position?
MikeJ
5039
I’ve read that one of the problems in the US is that there are just too many positions up for election. It’s very hard to determine accountability with so many elected officials interacting and so many veto points.
Yeah I feel the same way on propositions
CraigM
5041
And nobody does the work.
We had one notable judge in Cook County who multiple bar associations rated as ‘not qualified’ or their equivalent. Someone who had been suspended for throwing items and physically assaulting someone in their courtroom.
They won re-election by 62 votes.
They’re not contested elections mostly, straight up/ down yes/ no votes. But someone manifestly unqualified to hold position, and there were three such people that year, but they always get re-elected because nobody has any clue who the hell they are? It doesn’t work.
I remember spending hours looking up bios of Arizona’s judges so I could figure out whether to vote to retain them in office or not, and then doing the same for corporation commissioners, then doing the same for county commissioners, then doing the same for county prosecutors, and so on. Then wading into the ballot initiatives and trying to determine what they would actually do, which was basically never what their title said they would do. I blame California for the ballot initiative nonsense, but I don’t know if I can blame California for the special insanity that is elected judges and prosecutors.
My wife wrote to both parties to ask if anyone had any information or guidance on the judges on the ballot. The answer from both was, “nope”.
I did the same last election and disappointingly there was very little information on line about most of the candidates. Most searches only turned up, “This person is a judge”. So even if you are a fully engaged voter (rare) you aren’t able to make a good decision.
Make me even angrier after listening to the latest Serial season.
Isn’t there a non profit focused on creating bios of all the candidates?
Ballotpedia is decent. But here’s a couple of bios for the judges on my ballot:
https://ballotpedia.org/Peter_Wilson
https://ballotpedia.org/David_A._Thompson
Not much to go on.
We share a ballot it appears, so this is very helpful. Thanks!
I’ve used the league of women voters site, but I’m not sure if they have coverage for every district.
http://www.lwvnyc.org/elections.html
They usually provide a bio and a short Q&A, but the candidate has to actually return it.
I found Ballotpedia yesterday. It has… some information… but it is far from helpful once you get past the major elections you’ll be voting on. I’ve tried to use my local paper, and that’s been better when it’s closer to election day, but judges especially are really hard to know anything about unless you actually know them personally.
Marquette Law School’s very well-respected polling outfit just put out a poll a few days ago that had Evers and Walker tied. So…maybe split the difference here.
If you’re a big enough dork to care about this stuff (guilty as charged, me), Marist explains how their poll differed in methodology from the MU Law poll.
Our NBC News/Marist poll of Wisconsin shows Democrat Tony Evers leading Republican Gov. Scott Walker by 10 points in a head-to-head contest, and by 8 points in an expanded ballot that includes the Libertarian and Green Party candidates.
A day earlier, however, a Marquette Law School poll had Walker ahead by 1 point. (The polls were on the same page showing Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., ahead by double digits.)
So what explains the difference between the two polls? We asked Marist pollster Barbara Carvalho. Here’s her answer:
-
The polls use different samples: Marquette uses a voter list; Marist uses random digit dialing.
-
The polls use different likely-voter models: Marquette’s model is based exclusively on voters certain to vote; Marist’s uses a probability model based on interest, chance of vote and past vote.
-
Voter ID: Marquette’s sample among likely voters was R+3; Marist’s was D+1.
One other observation from Carvalho:
“Finally, one number to look at in our poll is the 80% of Walker supporters who are strongly committed to him (an extraordinarily high number). This intensity would be magnified in a cutoff ‘certain to vote’ likely voter model which Marquette uses. Of course, it is something to watch and a reason not to count Walker out.”
Oooh! Nate Cohn BEGS TO DIFFER. Huge polling nerd throwdown!
Scuzz
5052
Gov. Brown put on a new gas tax (something like $.15 a gallon I think) as of last Jan 1. We already have some of the highest gas taxes in the country and the highest priced gas. The tax was essentially needed because in prior decades the taxes collected from gas have been used in ways not originally intended, and the roads show it.
So some sources (many GOP oriented) put together a proposition to get rid of the added gas tax. The democratic state officer who determines what to name propositions decided that instead of calling it the “End the New Gas Tax Proposition” it would be titled the proposition to “Eliminate Certain Road Repair and Transportation Funding”. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it. :)
Wow, that’s completely different than what they were saying on Morning Joe earlier today. Of course they were sorta pitching the whole “the race is tightening up” thing.
Yep, I’ve used that as well. They even print out voter guides and leave them around public places like the local library, for the Internet-challenged.
Alstein
5055
If Trump’s criminality can be found through his tax returns- that will hurt him in 2020.
Oh, no doubt.
I think right now the Democrats are facing a very tough tightrope walk.
For their base – which I think probably includes most of us on this forum, maybe not all though – there’s a strong desire for Democrats to hold Trump and Trump Republicans’ feet to the fire. We want the tax returns. We want new investigations on everything from the excesses of various cabinet members (Pruitt, et al) to members of previous House committee (Nunes, looking at you.) And hey, let’s get a full investigation worked up on Kavanaugh. You can for sure put me in that category.
BUT…I think the numbers we’ve seen coming back to Republican Senate candidates and incumbents in the last 5-10 days, coupled with the ads we’ve seen Democrats running in reddish districts in Kansas, Arizona, Texas, and Ohio suggests that there’s this center right-to-left voter that swing district Democrats need to attract. And those voters do indeed want to elect a Democrat to act as a check on Trumpism, but they’re thinking of it as a going-forward thing. Like, they want a Democrat elected who won’t imperil the ACA, and who won’t put up a terrible tax cut, etc. But they’re less excited – and perhaps even turned off – by the specter of constant committee testimonies and investigations. They’re less interested in litigating past Trump mis-deeds, but mostly interested in making sure he does less shitty stuff in the future.
