Election 2014

[Thad]

So I'm a registered Independent now (ever since the Justice Department dropped its investigation of Joe Arpaio) and get to choose which primary to vote in this year.

It appears that Sinema doesn't have a primary challenger, so unless there are any other important Democratic races in my district, I may grab a Republican ballot.

Walter seems reasonable, if totally vague; of course, a Republican who hopes to win in my district (the one with ASU in it) is going to have to be a lot less right-wing than somebody in the next district over.

Rogers sounds more like a Tea Party wingnut.

I COULD play the "vote for the crazier candidate to strengthen Sinema" game, but (1) this still COULD hypothetically backfire, (2) I'm not that damn crazy about Sinema in the first place, and (3) I just don't think I've got the stomach to actually vote for somebody like Rogers, even as a minmax exercise.

Guess I've got a bit of time to decide.

[Caithness]

I missed the deadline to register as a Democrat so I could vote in Maryland's primary.

Did you mean to put this in Facebook Timeline instead of Politics Quarantine?

[Thad]

Nope, you're right; we generally put the election threads on the Politics board. (We had a few on the old boards -- 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 --; it's been awhile but yeah that's where they go and where I meant to put this one.)

Thanks for the catch. Admins, if you'd be so kind?

EDIT: Thanks!

[Thad]

Mailed the form out today. It's a good thing I double-checked it as I was clipping it to my mailbox and noticed I'd gotten my new address wrong.

[Thad]

Man, trying to find Republican candidates I can stomach voting for is hard work.

I found myself hitting Ctrl-W on every gubernatorial candidate's campaign site in about the first 30 seconds, except Molina and Smith (and Thomas, I suppose, because I didn't open his campaign site because I already know how I feel about that piece of shit). Molina doesn't even appear to have enough signatures to be on the ballot, so I guess I'll probably end up voting Smith at this rate.

Haven't looked into Treasurer yet but I could see voting for Hallman; he did a decent enough job as Mayor of Tempe. (EDIT: Having looked at the other candidates, yeah, I'm thinking Hallman.)


Adding as I go:

Secretary of State -- Probably going with Pierce; no immediate red flags. Cardon is gibbering about voter ID nonsense. I can't get a bead on Reagan except that she sure likes making her last name as brobdingnagian as possible on campaign signs and repeats the phrase "fiscal conservative" over and over again on her website.

[Blossom]

Pierce, from Vote Smart, voted yea on:

Vote to pass a bill that prohibits the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission from investigating or acting on any complaint that involves an allegation of campaign finance violations regarding a statewide or legislative candidate who is not a participant of the Citizens Clean Elections Act Funding System.

Vote to concur with Senate amendments and pass a bill that prohibits the adoption of federal education standards.

Vote to pass a bill that establishes penalties for violations of an existing state firearms law. Highlights:
Requires a court to find invalid any act, ordinance, regulation, rule or tax implemented by a political subdivision of the state that is in violation of existing state firearms law (Sec. 1).
Requires a court to issue an injunction to cease any enforcement or continuation of such a violation (Sec. 1).
Classifies a “knowing and willful violation” of this provision as a civil penalty punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 (Sec. 1).
Authorizes a court to award an individual who is adversely affected by a violation of this bill up to $100,000 as compensation (Sec. 1).

Vote to pass a bill that authorizes individuals with state issued gun permits to carry in public buildings.

Vote to pass a bill that authorizes unannounced inspections of licensed abortion clinics.

Vote to concur with House amendments and pass a bill that authorizes an individual to use potential infringements of religious freedom as a claim or defense in a legal proceeding.

Michele Reagan voted yea on all the same, except the education standards ban, from which she abstained.

[Thad]

Thanks for the heads-up; that's all pretty terrible. I'll consider whether I should just leave that section blank or figure out which is the least-worst option.

Guess I knew that was what I was in for when I requested a Republican ballot in the first place.

[Thad]

My wife got her ballot information at our new address and mine went to our old address. So that's cool.

Found this out at 10PM last night, which was also the deadline for registering to vote. So that's also cool.

Navigated around the not-very-good voter reg site; got my address changed. Had to go to a completely different site to request a primary ballot; that site threw an error that I was already getting one.

So who the fuck knows. Either it'll come or I'll just have to go to the polls on election day.

Meanwhile, Lemons has a piece up on Christine Jones. It's a little on the smarmy side but makes the excellent point that she's former GoDaddy counsel and pushed SOPA, which, as you might expect, does not endear her to me.

Ducey, of course, is terrible too.

[Thad]

Thanks for the heads-up; that's all pretty terrible. I'll consider whether I should just leave that section blank or figure out which is the least-worst option.

Guess I knew that was what I was in for when I requested a Republican ballot in the first place.

Aaaaand Pierce supports anonymous campaign donations.

Reagan it is, by sheer process of elimination. I really hate voting for somebody who's got the endorsements of Jan Brewer AND Paul Babeu, but like I said, this is the kind of shit I signed up for.

[Thad]

Down to the local stuff now, like constable and JP.

Leaning Nelson on JP since "pro bono attorney" sounds like a pretty good background for a JP to have. Mark Thompson seems like a total cipher; I'm immediately put off by his use of "fair and balanced" in his campaign slogan and his swipe at Nelson for having, you know, actual legal experience. I'm tempted to look through my old high school yearbooks since they'll probably tell me more about the guy than his website does (I don't remember him but given his age he may have been a senior when I was a freshman).

[Thad]

Christ.

Corporation Commissioner is just a fucking cesspool.

You've got two guys whose entire campaign is anti-Obama partisanship and swearing to block his energy plans, a climate change denier, and a former Bush staffer who was endorsed by Arpaio and Salmon in a failed congressional bid 2 years ago.

So in case you were wondering how bad is so bad I won't even try to pick a lesser-evil candidate and just leave the section blank? It's that.

[Thad]

Welp, mixed bag.

The good news is that the two most odious incumbents on the ballot, Horne and Huppenthal, got spanked. Huppenthal, in particular, went down by 10 points to an unknown; as fucked as politics are around here, it's nice to know his name has become that toxic.

Also good: Gallego won the Democratic nomination in District 7. 7 is heavily Democratic so he's almost certainly going to win in the general.

(EDIT: Originally referred to the Gallego/Wilcox race as District 5; fixed. All I know is I'm in the one with the bug aliens.

Also: when I say "almost certainly" -- there's no Republican candidate in District 7; Gallego's opponents are an independent and a Libertarian.)

I don't dislike his opponent, Mary Rose Wilcox -- in fact she's done as much as anyone to stand up to Arpaio -- but Gallego had the Mayday endorsement and I like him better than her. Not my district, though.

Ducey got the nom for gov, which is damned unfortunate; he's the guy running on racism. And Rogers got the nom for rep in my district, which is also unfortunate. Either one of them stands a real chance in November, but the Dems have a shot too. I'll have to vote for Sinema again, which sucks. DuVal (the unopposed Democratic gubernatorial candidate) has already come out swinging trying to pin Ducey's politics as "the politics of hate"; I think that's a good strategy, but around here the politics of hate have been pretty goddamn successful.

Reagan got the nom for Secretary of State, and as I said I think she was the least odious of the contenders. As Bal noted, Goddard's had bad luck with his gubernatorial bids but I bet he can beat her for State.

It looks like a good election for reform/Throw the Bums Out. So that's a good thing. Could have gone better, but could have gone a lot worse.




Oh and GED Jan is on the TV now incomprehensibly quoting Lincoln and I am shouting at the TV.
And now Ducey is coming onstage to "Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night" and I am laughing hysterically.

He doesn't know how to speak into a microphone and can barely get applause when he mentions ice cream. And he's still probably going to win.

And oh my fucking God he just namedropped Fife Symington as a positive. Right before Arpaio.

Doug Ducey: named by Stan Lee, drawn by Howard Chaykin.



And a lady on the TV just said "Diane Douglas edged out incumbent John Huppenthal with 57% of the vote."

THAT'S why we need a new superintendent of public instruction: we're producing high school graduates who think 57% of the vote is "edging out".



Of course, it's still possible that Douglas may turn out to be just another one of Huppenthal's Internet sock puppets.

Or possibly his sister Valentine.

[Thad]

Lessig has succeeded in pissing off the right people: Scott Brown's campaign manager has sent him a C&D (and CC'ed his boss at Harvard) for describing Brown as a "Washington lobbyist".

I take it Mr. Reed’s outrage is triggered by the Senate’s regulations of what constitutes being a “lobbyist” for purposes of the Senate rules. I hadn’t received the memo that explained that the English language is now regulated by the rules of the United States Senate.

[...]

So yes, according to the Senate, Scott Brown isn’t a “lobbyist.” But I submit to anyone else in the world, a former Senator joining a “law and lobbying firm” to help with Wall St’s “business and governmental affairs” is to make him a lobbyist. Because to anyone else in the world, when you sell your influence to affect “business and governmental affairs,” you are a lobbyist.

[Büge]

Republican ad compares Barack Obama to an abusive boyfriend.

[Bal]

So the local Congressional election race (Ron Barber and Martha McSally, who's about 90% wacko) has become so fucking toxic I don't really want to vote for either of them. On local network stations there are at least two political ads during every single commercial break, and most of them have to do with that specific race. It's pretty vicious on both sides, and is engendering in me ambivalence toward the entire process more than anything else.

[Grath]

So the local Congressional election race (Ron Barber and Martha McSally, who's about 90% wacko) has become so fucking toxic I don't really want to vote for either of them. On local network stations there are at least two political ads during every single commercial break, and most of them have to do with that specific race. It's pretty vicious on both sides, and is engendering in me ambivalence toward the entire process more than anything else.

See, what would go a long way to fixing politics in my opinion (other than actually more than two parties having a chance so that votes don't have to be "I'm voting for this guy because it would be a really bad thing if the other guy won, and if I voted for the person I actually agreed with the worse asshole might win") would be a 'none of the above' option. If 'none of the above' wins, all the current candidates are kicked out of the current election and you have to do it over with new people that aren't massive cocks.

I've been keeping up with my favored TV shows via my roommate's Hulu Plus and our local congress race is probably not as bad, but it's definitely getting towards 'I'm not voting for either of you fucks'.

[Mongrel]

All our Obama threads were on the old board, so I'm just going to stick this here (THANKS OBAMA).

Somebody made an actual scientific attempt to quantify the amount of the popular vote that racism may have cost Obama

tl;dr he has it at 4.2% in 2008 and 4.0% in 2012, with approximately 1% gained in solidarity voting from the black community (the impact of the black vote is lessened simply because they only represent 13% of the US population), and he estimates a loss of 9.1% among voters who would have supported a white democratic president in 2008.

Now, there are problems with the study and its methodology, but it's interesting all the same because as far as I know this is the only serious attempt anyone has made to actually peg some hard numbers on this.

[Thad]

Find your fucking polling place with yourfuckingpollingplace.com.

[Mongrel]

Republicans Poised to Retain Control of the Senate

[Thad]

Mostly Republican wins in Arizona, which isn't much of a surprise. Ducey has won the governor's race.

Sinema keeps her seat, which I'm not exactly excited about but at least she's not Rogers.

Looks like Secretary of State is still too close to call.

The brobdingnagiest surprise is School Superintendent, where the two candidates are currently neck-and-neck, despite the Republican candidate having no qualifications whatsoever beyond "was not spouting right-wing craziness through multiple sock puppets on various Internet comments sections" (which was enough to get her the nomination, against a guy who did not meet that qualification).

Well, maybe not SURPRISE. I know Arizona public schools well enough to know that party-line voters don't actually give a fuck about qualifications, issues, or schools. But I guess even I didn't REALLY expect it to be this close.