Elections, they aren't just for presidents

While we wait for the results of the California vote on a state gay marriage ban, I am heartened by other election day news:

US House and Senate
Senate Democrats edged closer to a supermajority by ousting Republicans in North Carolina and New Hampshire and adding three seats held by retiring GOP incumbents to a fragile 51-49 majority in the Senate. Four other races involving Republican incumbents were too close to call early Wednesday.

In the House, Democrats captured GOP-held seats in the Northeast, South and West, adding at least 15 seats to the 30 they took from Republicans in 2006. With fewer than a dozen races still undecided, they were on a path to pick up as many as 20 seats. Going into Tuesday's election, Democrats controlled the House 235-199 with one vacancy.

...Those wins bring the Democratic Senate majority to 56, but that number is anything but final. Four races remained without clear winners early Wednesday in Oregon, Alaska, Georgia and Minnesota.
(Democratic majorities stronger, tougher, AP, November 5, 2008)

State Governorships
At the end of an Election Day in which 11 governorships were decided, the Democrats won seven....Tuesday's races were a prelude to 2010, when a majority of states will elect governors who will help preside over the redrawing of legislative and congressional districts.
(Democrats win 7 of 11 contested governorships, AP, November 5, 2008)

Civil Rights/Medical Access
For the abortion rights movement, it was a day of relief and celebration. A first-of-its-kind measure in Colorado, which was defeated soundly, would have defined life as beginning at conception. Its opponents said the proposal could lead to the outlawing of some types of birth control as well as abortion. The South Dakota measure would have banned abortions except in cases of rape, incest and serious health threat to the mother. A tougher version, without the rape and incest exceptions, lost in 2006. Anti-abortion activists thought the modifications would win approval, but the margin of defeat was similar, about 55 percent to 45 percent of the vote.

Elsewhere, the marijuana reform movement won two prized victories, with Massachusetts voters decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the drug and Michigan joining 12 other states in allowing use of pot for medical purposes. Henceforth, people caught in Massachusetts with an ounce or less of pot will no longer face criminal penalties. Instead, they'll forfeit the marijuana and pay a $100 civil fine.

The Michigan measure will allow severely ill patients to register with the state and legally buy, grow and use small amounts of marijuana to relieve pain, nausea, appetite loss and other symptoms.
(State ballots feature hot-button social issues, AP, November 5, 2008)

Voter Turnout
In terms of turnout, America voted in record numbers. It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country's precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots, said Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Using his methods, that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate.

"That would be the highest turnout rate that we've seen since 1908," which was 65.7 percent, McDonald said early Wednesday.
(Obama makes history; turns to sobering challenges...AP, November 5, 2008)

"blogercize"

I was up extra early today. Not quite giddy with anticipation, more that 5:00 AM knowledge that while I could go back to sleep, I shouldn't because I have too much to do this morning. My morning routine is somewhat cramped (sometimes literally) so squeezing in a general election requires expanding the time a bit to include things like going to the polls and finding what I need to prove I am who I say I am and that I live where the town registrar of voters says I live.

That last one's going to be a bit tricky. Somewhere in this apartment there is a mail/debris pile which includes the motor vehicles change of address sticker for my license. My driver's license is two addresses out of date now. Sometimes it's not an issue when presenting myself at a polling place (I've moved a lot over the last 10 years), sometimes the discrepancy between where I'm listed as living on the voter records and where my license says I live can throw the poll volunteers and workers into a state of minor panic. But my address change sticker from the Department of Motor Vehicles is nowhere to be found and I don't have the time to turn the place upside down looking for it. Oh well, panic it is.

So I turned to having my coffee and reading the pamphlet I received from my town's registrar of voters called "Town of ______ explanatory text for election day referendum questions and amendments to the ____ town charter". The pamphlet is written with many assumptions, not the least of which seems to be that anyone who cares enough to read about the charter items already knows enough about them to not need to read about them. A bit of a paradox, isn't it? On the back of the pamphlet, it refers voters to the town of ______'s website for "additional information on the charter revisions" however again, we have some presupposition failures. Here, it is that anyone who knows enough about the town government to find this not highlighted information on the town's website probably doesn't need the information.

While browsing through the town site, I discovered that in the lovely town of ______, one can take a tapercize [sic] class. It took my sleepy brain way too long to resolve that this was meant to be a blending of "tap" (as in dance) and "exercise". I kept reading the first part as "tape" and trying to imagine what one would do with tape to get a work out.

I think I know how I'm voting on this from what I can glean off the pamphlet...and if I err, it will be on the side of giving the town government less power (relative to the public) rather than more.

Polling place info

Someone nicely sent the following link to a list I'm on http://vote411.org/pollfinder.php
I was sweating whether I'd be able to try to vote before work tomorrow, so I found the feature which lists the hours for the polling places to be very handy. And so I pass it along.

Yay politics!

One of my local papers just ran a story about a couple of folks here in CT who decided not to wait for national democratic party censure of Senator "Traitor Joe" Lieberman.

Back when Lieberman lost the state democratic primary in his last run for US Senate, he refused to give up on his senate seat even though he had clearly given up on the people who had previously elected him. "Traitor Joe" made his own party so he could get a line on the ballot that November. The party was called the "Connecticut for Lieberman" party (or CFL). Lieberman, as stated in the Hartford Courant article, "...abandoned the name and the embryonic party as soon as he won".

Since then, John Mertens, a Trinity College engineering professor and John Orman, a Fairfield University political science professor have put the abandoned party to use. Here's a statement of the revived CFL party's new purpose from their website:

The Connecticut for Lieberman Party (CFL) rejects the fraud perpetrated on the members of this party and the citizens of Connecticut by Joe Lieberman when he used the creation of this party to get on the general election ballot in 2006. The CFL is an independent, anti-war, anti-corruption, pro-fiscal responsibility, pro-democracy party, that stands for individual liberties and real problem-solving in government. The CFL wants everyone to know that in the United States of America, voters are free to join any party they wish, and participate in the democratic process according to the laws of Connecticut and the United States.

I have one word to describe this move and that is BRILLIANT!

Say "aarrrrrhhhhggg!"

First class of the semester. It's my last first class. Wow. Do I feel sad? I thought about it and I've gotta say, I do not. I especially do not since within hours of my nearly hour long lecture on why the students need to start with primary source articles from peer reviewed journals for their research projects, I got an email asking me to re-explain why. The email ended with the question "So can't I use magazines or something?"

Can I get a "O. M. G."?

It took me way too long to write back to this person. It would have been less time but I was trying really hard not to sound sarcastic. This was not easy.

With my last first full week of classes and my last first lecture comes the first cold, or at least sore throat. Whether this is a function of the rooms being over-ventilated by a blast of icy cold air coming from somewhere in the ceiling in front of me but always somehow pointing directly at my chest, or whether I picked up a bug from being back on a student filled campus I don't know. Fortunately, I have little to do tomorrow but get blood drawn and make sure I'm registered to vote on "Super (duper) Tuesday". And that's an "ahhhhh" kind of thing.

When in doubt...

This morning, my brother called. It wasn't that early, but I hadn't gotten to bed until a little after 3:00 AM so when he called a little after ten, I was still hitting the snooze button on the alarm. First he called my house phone.
"hey...It's me. I just wanted to remind you to vote tomorrow because your senator voted against gay marriage..." etc. etc.

Then he called my cell phone.

Waking up late today meant I almost missed the deadline to make changes to my registration should they have been necessary. See, although A___ and I both went down to town hall on the same day, both filled out registration cards right there in the office and dropped them off with the town clerk, both dealt with the somewhat ignorant and possibly stupid town workers there presumably to "assist" with matters like this, only A___ got a confirmation in the mail that his registration had been processed.

He got it last week. I checked my mail several times but nothing. I figured perhaps my letter carrier had done something creative with it. She's like that. I have decided she places the mail into the various compartments of our cluster box based on the principles of Feng Shui. I waited out the week hoping that my card would arrive or a neighbor would come to negotiate a mail exchange. Nothing.

So today is the last day to register as a democrat (in person) with the local registrar of voters. I think it was today at noon in fact. After speaking with little brother, I called the Secretary of State's office. Why them? Because that is what the morons at town hall said I should do if I hadn't gotten a confirmation card. I called and I spoke to someone who said "You should probably call your town's registrar". PROBABLY? I said "You know, they told me that I should call you guys." The woman replied by telling me she was new and this was her first election.

Ok. Now, I've got some sympathy for her at this point. But why (oh why) have this newbie answering the phone the day before the primary? It's not like the CT Secretary of State's office didn't know this was going to be a bigger than normal primary. Maybe they are so busy they had to let a Judy answer the phone at the elections office.

The woman got me the number for my registrar. I called. It was confusing. Finally, the old gal on the other end (who despite the confusion sounded much more competent than the town clerk who "helped" with my registration) said "I have you registered but something's not right. Let me call you back."

Turns out whoever processed it gave me the wrong address. Aw, and here I was blaming the mailman....she does deserve it though not for this issue it seems. Why would I leap to the conclusion that it was the carrier's fault? Because she does suck (A___ frequently gets a neighbor's bank statements), but also because I just sort of naturally assumed that something as important as processing voter registrations would not be left in the hands of idiots.

Turns out A___ also got a confirmation card for another person, not a neighbor. She shared a last name with A___ though. So that's two local registration fuck ups right here in my tiny little apartment complex in my tiny little town. This is troubling, no? Not conspiracy theory troubling, but again, don't you think voter registrations should be processed with a bit more care? I do.

After I vote tomorrow (assuming the repair the town registrar made to my registration actually goes through) I'm planning on asking who processes this stuff. I'm sort of curious now.

Oh and mostly of the point of this was to say if you live here in the US and plan to vote (ever), if you find you have any doubts about whether you are registered or registered PROPERLY, call and ask. I'm hoping to find out today what I should do if I go to vote tomorrow and find that the problem has not been fixed (because now I am finding I just haven't got a lot of faith in the town government). If I discover anything remotely informative, I'll post it.