As longtime readers of this blog already know, I take voting very seriously. Though it mystifies some of my lefty friends, I believe that the franchise is a critical right, and should be expressed meaningfully and thoughtfully by all those who we haven't disenfranchised fucked over.
And since I'm pretty open about it, as I did in 2010, I'm again posting photograph of both sides of my voted ballot for the Alaska 2012 general election:
Some thoughts:
voting thoughtfully is a time consuming process. It once again took me several hours of research to decide how I was going to vote.
I was surprised to find that I actually was okay with voting for the democrats in the US House, State Senate, and State House races, and didn't feel like I was just voting against the republicrats.
I particularly dig the candidate for US House, Sharon Cissna, who is aggressively anti-TSA for outstanding reasons. (And Michelle Scannell is her former chief of staff.)
As for bonds, I'm generally tax-and-spend, but unstated transportation bonds where I couldn't find any clear indication of what it would be spent on? Since it's a decent prediction that that "something" would be primarily to build and improve infrastructure for single passenger automobile transportation, I passed.
A constitutional convention? Ummm, sure? Why the heck not? (This is required by state law to be automatically included on the ballot every ten years.) Here are some thoughts on what a constitutional convention could do (though I'm not at all sure how I feel about a unicameral legislature, which the author advocates for.)
Justice Winfree I was genuinely kind of torn on, and it was a somewhat close call. (I mostly evaluate appellate judges based on their written opinions, especially their dissents, where you get to judge how they really feel about stuff.)
Judge Bolger sucks.
The real timesuck was researching every single superior court and district court judge, using their applications to the bench, in some cases their reappointment packets, and in some cases, extraneous web searches when this didn't yield enough information.
Turns out it's actually really important to vote on judicial retention in Alaska: judges are regularly retained by as little as 55-60% of voters.
Okay: back to work for me!
And since I'm pretty open about it, as I did in 2010, I'm again posting photograph of both sides of my voted ballot for the Alaska 2012 general election:
Some thoughts:
voting thoughtfully is a time consuming process. It once again took me several hours of research to decide how I was going to vote.
I was surprised to find that I actually was okay with voting for the democrats in the US House, State Senate, and State House races, and didn't feel like I was just voting against the republicrats.
I particularly dig the candidate for US House, Sharon Cissna, who is aggressively anti-TSA for outstanding reasons. (And Michelle Scannell is her former chief of staff.)
As for bonds, I'm generally tax-and-spend, but unstated transportation bonds where I couldn't find any clear indication of what it would be spent on? Since it's a decent prediction that that "something" would be primarily to build and improve infrastructure for single passenger automobile transportation, I passed.
A constitutional convention? Ummm, sure? Why the heck not? (This is required by state law to be automatically included on the ballot every ten years.) Here are some thoughts on what a constitutional convention could do (though I'm not at all sure how I feel about a unicameral legislature, which the author advocates for.)
Justice Winfree I was genuinely kind of torn on, and it was a somewhat close call. (I mostly evaluate appellate judges based on their written opinions, especially their dissents, where you get to judge how they really feel about stuff.)
Judge Bolger sucks.
The real timesuck was researching every single superior court and district court judge, using their applications to the bench, in some cases their reappointment packets, and in some cases, extraneous web searches when this didn't yield enough information.
Turns out it's actually really important to vote on judicial retention in Alaska: judges are regularly retained by as little as 55-60% of voters.
Okay: back to work for me!
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