Ballot info for local yokels

[prog]

Welcome back to LiveJournal! Enjoy your stay.

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This makes me very pleased: If you're voting in Massachusetts next week, you can use this website to plug in your address and see what your ballot will look like, including referenda. Heretofore I have always been surprised by a couple of these questions, and peeved. I have wanted to see exactly this service for many election cycles.

http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php

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I will throw in the rule of thumb that I think I picked up from, erm, either cortezopossum or wrog (both of whom are electionistas in their respective communities), that if a referendum doesn't make any sense to you even after you think about and (if you get the chance) research it, a good rule of thumb is to vote NO.

This seems pretty obvious, since the alternative is basically playing a game of "what does this button do?" with your vote, but I hadn't seen it spelled out like that in the past, and I can dig it.

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My hope and anger are both rising together as Tuesday draws closer. They are both definitely exceeding levels seen in 2004. I am continually crafting and refining my Schrodinger's Cat of an LJ post for that evening, at once a cathartic victory howl and grave-pissing, and a vomiting of hate-fueled rage calling for the obliteration of the enemy. I will not actually post it because in either eigenstate it's rather horrible, really.

Anyway, I am very excited.

Comments

[jadelennox]

I think a better rule of thumb, if you don't understand a question, is not to vote.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Isn't that effectively the same as voting no?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that's the idea. The assumption here is that NO always means "Whatever this is, keep it the way it is."

But OTOH it's not the same as not voting on it, because a NO vote cancels out a YES, were a NULL doesn't. Hm.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. Every once in a while we get some goof-ball referenda questions with double and triple negatives so nobody is ever really sure what they're voting for -- and as election officials we technically aren't allowed to help the voter understand the question.

[jadelennox]

No. It's majority of voters on that question, not majority of people who turn out. So voting no effects the numbers in a way that non-voting doesn't.

[prog.livejournal.com]

In the past - as recently as the most recent primaries, actually - when an unexpected choice of candidates was thrust at me in the voting booth, I'd literally flip a coin. My only other options seemed to be turning in the ballot as spoiled and going home, or leaving it unmarked. But I didn't wanna do the former and didn't know what would happen if I did the latter.

I am a menace. This is why this website makes me so happy.

[jadelennox]

Leaving it unmarked seems to me to be the right solution there!

[xymotik.livejournal.com]

Geez, I've been spoiled by living in California. There's a lot about the proposition system that's horribly screwed up, but the state and counties get an A+ for communication.

Every election, CA's govt. mails out a book to each voter with election info (I'd say it's a brochure, but this November's version is 192 pages long). It has the legislative analyst's ostensibly non-partisan explanation and analysis of each measure, arguments submitted for and against each one, rebuttals to the arguments for and against, and the full text of each measure. There's also candidate statements for all statewide officials. The whole thing's online in HTML format (or download PDFs of the whole 192 pages in any of 7 different languages, or order the large print or audio versions) at http://www.voterguide.ss.ca.gov/

Then, the county mails to each voter a full sample ballot, customized to include all the candidates and measures for that voter's precinct, and in the same order as they'll see at the polls.

The county guide also includes statements from local candidates, and the same explanations, analysis, arguments for and against, and rebuttals to the arguments for each local measure. Santa Clara County's voter guide is 40 pages long this time.

I'm going to miss this type of govt. info when I move somewhere else. I'm not surprised that Maine doesn't do anything like this, but it's good to see that MA now has at least a sample ballot available.

We have touchscreen voting machines (blech), but at least they now have paper printouts you can review before you cast your vote. The printouts are on a roll and stay with the machine. If I remember correctly, CA de-certified Diebold last year.

Not gonna miss the ads, though. I've gotten well over 50 pieces of mail so far from the supporters of various measures and from the candidates, even from some local school board and county DA candidates. Might be close to 100 now--I've been averaging 3-8 pieces a day for weeks.

PLUS, there's the phone calls. One candidate for mayor of San Jose even enlisted Bill Clinton to record a phone message. I finally gave up and unplugged my phone yesterday. Thankfully, I don't watch local TV or listen to radio unless I'm in my car. Don't know how things are in Mass. (haven't heard anything from the other Jason), but it's probably not this extreme.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Most of the mail I've been getting (and LJ posts I've been seeing, if you wanna count that) deal with the referenda and not the governor's seat, even though the latter is very hotly contested and is likely to go to a Democrat (Deval Patrick) for the first time in 15 years. But it's not a tremendous amount of mail, and I don't watch TV ads or have a land line so I dunno about the other stuff.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

This is really incredible. I've never heard of a place that provides so much information to the voters ahead of time. I would think the biggest worry around here would be ensuring that the information in the guide was truly non-partisan.

I can also imagine that people might think the sample ballot is the REAL ballot, mail it in, and think they've voted.

At one point Diebold and a couple other voting machine companies had a public demo of their voting systems. I attended one that had touch-screen with paper printout as you described. Wisconsin, however, adopted to keep its optically scanned 'fill in the arrow' ballots.

We do have some new device called the 'Automark' which can fill in the marks on paper ballots. Its to allow people with vision, reading comprehension, or motor coordination problems to be able to mark their ballot unassisted.

[xymotik.livejournal.com]

All this information is really, really vital, because many of the propositions sound OK, but have little tiny clauses that either completely overreach or have nothing to do with the main idea.

An example: the "eminent domain" proposition, 90, has a good chance of passing. Its supporters go on and on about how it'll stop all sorts of eminent domain abuses from happening again. But it's opposed by everyone from Gov. Arnold to the Sierra Club to taxpayers' associations. Why? Buried 2/3 of the way through, one paragraph says that if govt. regs. reduce the value of someone's property, the owners can sue and demand compensation, even if they haven't sold it--nothing to do with eminent domain, but something that could make it almost impossible to enact any new land use laws. The argument against the measure highlights this problem and describes it in a depth that's impossible in TV ads and unlikely in a mailer.

The sample ballot says all over it that you should mark it ahead of time and take it with you to the polls. It's a good idea to do so, because there are so many candidates. I counted 15 offices and 15 measures that I have to vote on this Tuesday.

Maine had that same type of paper ballot with the fill-in-the-arrow design, and those really seem to make the most sense, provide the best security, and leave the best paper trail. I think one of the objections was that the state would have to print so many of different languages that it would make the system unwieldy.

Parts of California, such as Berkeley, previously used punchcards. Those were truly horrible. I was paranoid enough that even in '98, I'd use the acupuncture technique with the metal pin, though I never checked for hanging chads. In 2001 or 2002, the last time the state used punchcards, I really tried hard to make sure I punched out each square. But upon inspection afterward, sure enough, there was a hanging chad. Gah.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

It turns out that out of 5 referenda questions only 1 of them will be directly affected by this vote. The other four are essentially 'opinion polls' and won't automatically be enacted on even if the overwhelming vote is 'yes'.