Category: Politics

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First, I’m very happy that Barack Obama won the Presidential election. This was the first time since 1996 that I’ve actually liked a candidate for the office. While I did vote for Al Gore and John Kerry, their main qualifications in my mind were that they weren’t George W. Bush, whose policies and leadership style bothered me as soon as he stepped into the ring in the 2000 primaries. It was very nice to have someone I could vote for this year, and not just someone to vote against — and even nicer to see him win.

Second, John McCain gave an astonishingly gracious concession speech. Where was this guy during the campaign? Or during the last two years? This was more like the McCain I voted for in the 2000 primary.

Believe it or not, I think it’s a good thing that the Democrats didn’t pick up that filibuster-proof 60th Senate seat. One of the worst problems with the current administration is the way that a single party just rammed their policies through over all opposition during the time that both houses of Congress and the Presidency were controlled by the same party — and it cost them in the 2006 mid-term elections and in this election. With luck, Obama’s victory speech [edit: linked to the wrong article*.] will set the tone for a somewhat more cooperative government. At the very least, it was a nice change from the sort of “We won, now f— off” attitude that I remember from Bush, Cheney, and Republican supporters in 2004. (Personally I think 53% to 46% in the popular vote is still relatively close, but 4 years ago we were told that 51% to 49% was a “mandate” to do whatever the hell they wanted with the office.)

I’m disappointed to see that California voted to ban same-sex marriage. Gee, too bad about the 18,000 marriages you just invalidated in the name of “protecting” marriage. On the plus side, the margin for Proposition 8 was a lot smaller (52% to 48%) than the last time the state voted on the issue (Proposition 22 in 2001, which won 61% to 38%), and younger voters polled as overwhelmingly rejecting it. This implies that CA society is, over time, coming to the conclusion that maybe it isn’t such a threat after all.

Also worth noting: Prop 4, the parental-notification requirement for abortion, is trailing 52% to 48%, the same spread as Prop 8. Since I’m sure proponents will try again in a few years, these numbers should forestall any grousing about how the people have already made their will clear when someone floats the idea of amending the state constitution to remove a discriminatory clause a few years from now.

*When I first posted this, I accidentally linked to the article on the transition team instead of the speech transcript. The URLs were very similar: 11/04/obama.transcript vs. 11/05/obama.transition.

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Katie and I got up early so we could hit the polls first thing in the morning and not have to worry about whether we’d be stuck in an insanely long line at the end of the day, like we were in 2004 and 2006. The first thing we noticed was the sound of rain falling outside. Since we were expecting a huge turnout, I’d planned on walking, fearing we might have to park far enough away that we might as well have walked. Fortunately by the time we left, it had died down to little more than a drizzle.

We got to the polling place, an elementary school, about 7:05, just after it opened, found the right line (they had two precincts voting at the same location), and there were only about 15-20 people ahead of us. We got into a conversation with other people around us about the merits of early voting (one guy joked that he’d already voted for the 2012 election), exit polls, and the electoral college.

The poll workers were a surprise. Usually in this area it tends to be older people who volunteer to run the polls, but it seemed like 2/3 of them were in their late teens/early twenties. Katie figured it had to do with the economic slowdown: we know who’s out of work.

They’ve mostly worked out the kinks in the electronic voting system, though they’re now offering a choice of electronic or paper ballot when you sign in. You go through several stations, signing the roll of voters, confirming your address, and finally getting either a paper ballot or an access key for the electronic ballot.

I still don’t like the user interface on these voting machines — it’s a paddle wheel interface, where you rotate a dial to move the selection on the LCD screen forward or back, with buttons to check things off — but it does at least include a printed record. There’s a roll of paper in the machine with a window, and after you’ve confirmed the summary of your selections (with a big red button that says “Cast Ballot”), it prints them out, asks you to confirm the printout, then scrolls it out of view so the next person can’t see what you chose.

Anyway, the whole process took only 35 minutes from finding the line to picking up the “I Voted” sticker. Kids were just starting to line up for class. We went home, dropped off the umbrella (which we never actually needed), picked up our stuff and drove off to work only 15 minutes behind normal schedule.

(Cross-posted from LiveJournal, originally linked in the list below.)

  • It’s like raaaaaain/on Election Day.
  • #votereport #good Only 30 minute wait, no problems with machine around 7am in Orange County, CA. No idea what it’s like now, though.
  • Voting freebies: Might hit Ben & Jerry’s, but don’t see much point in a plain coffee at Starbucks. Maybe if they offered a mocha.
  • Ah, this would explain the 4-hour delay on my “I Voted!” tweet.
  • Wow… 38% of registered voters in Los Angeles County had cast ballots by noon.
  • Deep pink clouds at sunset. Camera turns them orange.

Update: It’s been a while, so I don’t remember for sure if this is the right photo, but the date’s correct and it fits the description.

Sunset clouds

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Gay and lesbian couples in California have been getting married for months now. In Massachusetts, for several years. In that time, thousands of straight couples have continued to get married, and neither state has been mass-annulling straight marriages. So “traditional marriage” clearly isn’t endangered by same-sex marriage, and banning the latter isn’t going to “restore” the former.

If California’s Proposition 8 does not pass, no marriages will be ended. If it does pass, all those same-sex marriages will be wiped out. If you’re really serious about “protecting marriage,” the clear choice is to vote against the proposition.

Some other things to consider:

This is not about “activist judges.” A bunch of judges didn’t say, “Hey, let’s make it legal for same-sex couples to get married!” They heard a case, looked at the law, and determined that the only thing preventing gay marriage was a law that conflicted with a higher law: the state constitution. That’s what judges are supposed to do. At least Prop. 8 is going through proper channels by amending the constitution instead of just trying to pass another unconstitutional law. Of course, I think it’s a bad idea to inject discrimination into the state constitution.

(While we’re at it, the whole concept of “activist judges” is a smokescreen. It basically means “judges who strike down laws that I would rather stayed in place.” I imagine that most people railing against this decision would be perfectly happy if a group of judges overturned Roe vs. Wade.)

As for children: Let’s not forget that there are plenty of straight couples who can’t have children either, whether for age or medical reasons. Should they not be allowed to marry? How about straight couples who choose not to have children? Should they not be allowed to marry?

And teaching marriage in schools? Shouldn’t a child know something about marriage by the time they start school? Neither of us remembers being “taught” about marriage when we were children, it was something learned through observing and asking parents. And we both went to public school. In different districts. Katie spoke to a fifth-grade teacher recently who remarked that the only time she even talked about marriage in class was when students asked about it, and then district policy prevented her from answering most of their questions. I can only assume that the objection is that children might find out that same-sex marriage exists.

Oh, and that “classroom trip” mentioned in the latest pro-8 ad? It was their teacher’s wedding, it was a creative arts charter school, it was organized by the students’ parents (note the headline that they surprised the teacher), and it was optional. The school approved the trip because, whatever happened, it was a notable event from a civil rights perspective.

To anyone who thinks that civil unions or domestic partnerships should be enough: would you be satisfied with the state saying you could only have something that’s almost, but not quite a marriage?

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If I understand this correctly, it’s apparently okay to compare an entire class of women to pit bulls wearing lipstick, but using a worn-out cliché to compare a candidate’s policies to a pig wearing lipstick is sexist.

So is being called a dog better than being called a pig? Or is it just more offensive to dismiss policies than to make jokes about people?

This is going to be a long two months.