The Election Is Over

[kevin_standlee]

...for me, at least, as I dropped my ballot in the mail yesterday. I didn't even have to pay postage, for I'm in a designated postal-only precinct (apparently if there are a sufficiently small number of voters in some precincts in Santa Clara County, they'll declare the entire precinct mail-ballot-only and therefore you don't have to pay postage on the ballot). I would have voted sooner, but I was out of the country and my ballot arrived just before I left.

I guess it's mostly the top-line race that gets everyone's attention, although the result of California's vote for President is basically a forgone conclusion. (I've had people urge me to re-register to vote at Fernley in order to vote in a "swing" state, but I don't think it would be ethical until I'm spending more than half my time there; at the moment it's less than 25% overall.)

Personally, I don't like the winner-take-all, first-past-the-post method that California (and 47 other states) use for allocating their state's electoral votes. As anyone who has read my writing for long knows, I prefer instant runoff voting (the "Hugo Awards" method, often inaccurately called the Australian Ballot). But furthermore, I'm troubled by the fact that winner-take-all effectively disenfranchises even the second-largest political party (in California, the Republicans, although if current trends continue they're going to drop to third behind Decline to State). This seems unfair to me.

The two states that allow potential splitting of their electoral votes use the Congressional District method: The candidate with the plurality of votes in each congressional district gets 1 electoral vote. The candidate that statewide gets a plurality of votes gets the extra two electoral votes. I could even see a variation that splits those "bonus votes," for instance if no candidate polls a majority, all candidates polling at least 40% get one "bonus" electoral vote. (You could never have more than two candidates both polling 40%, of course, so at most the two votes would be split evenly.)

California has more electoral votes than any other state, but most years they drop as one large clod in one party's lap. But California is not uniformly Democratic or Republican. Assuming that the electoral vote followed the composition of the current Congress, California's 55 electoral votes would split 37-18 in favor of the Democratic Party. (How that's apt to change with the new districts drawn up by the nonpartisan redistricting commission, I don't know.) No matter how it affects my own personal preferences, I just think something that more fairly distributes the electoral vote based on the popular vote would be an improvement to the current system.

Presidential election aside, the main reason I waited until my return from Europe to prepare my ballot was so I could spend time thinking over the various ballot propositions. I voted for Proposition 30, although personally I wish it raised all income tax rates, even if only a token amount at the low end, not just the $250K and up rates. I don't like paying taxes (who does), but I recognize TANSTAAFL. I also see in Nevada, where there is no personal income tax and where both property and sales taxes are substantially lower than in California, that there are also significantly fewer public services. For instance, one of the reasons there's no practical way to get from Fernley to Reno except by private car — not even a Greyhound bus stop — is that such services are not economical on a stand-alone basis and there's no state money to pay the necessary subsidy for buses outside of Carson City, Reno, and Las Vegas. You get what you pay for, and California has a very high level of government-funded services, and they cost money. I suppose there are many people who are convinced that they personally don't benefit from any government services, so they don't see why they should pay taxes for them. But I went to a state-supported college (CSU Chico), and I'm certain I've paid far more in taxes to California than they spent subsidizing my education, and vastly more than I would have paid had I not gotten that degree. Therefore, I see no problem in continuing to re-invest in education in the long run, since I believe the long-term benefit to the state is high.

I voted no on the competing Proposition 38, even though it's a bit more progressive in its taxation, because among other things, if 38 passes and gets more votes than 30, the "trigger cuts" embedded in this year's budget still go into effect, which could have a catastrophic effect on state services and education.

And don't get me started on the Howard Jarvis people. Part of me wishes that we could run the experiment where they get what they claim to want, which presumably means no taxes, no government, and no services. I wonder how long it would be before they started complaining about there being no roads, no fire department, no police department, and no schools? They wouldn't complain about the lack of public transportation like the Capitol train on which I'm riding, because in their world, Real People Drive Cars and transit is only for sub-humans, I suspect.

That's enough talk of politics. You can't change my mind in any meaningful ways for this election, because I've voted already. Now to wait and see what the results are.

Comments

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

Washington State is 100% vote by mail, but we still have to pay postage. I don't know who Howard Jarvis is, but he sounds like the California version of our Tim Eyman. Yuck.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Howard Jarvis was behind California's Proposition 13, which has done a whole lot to distort California's taxation system. The Association named after him advocates against all taxation, as far as I can see. I think that people that oppose all taxes of any sort have blinders on. They think the Tooth Fairy will fund government services for them. Or they believe that there are no government services that they personally need, so of course they shouldn't pay for anything. Or they're convinced that some government things are okay (the ones they personally use), but that everything else (what they personally don't use) are "waste" and should be eliminated.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Jarvis was the original. He was at it before Eyman was born.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

In Estonia, we vote by internet.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I disfavor the splitting of electoral votes by congressional district in California for two reasons: 1) it would only encourage even more extreme gerrymandering, as it'd give another, and even more, compelling incentive to do it; 2) I wish to say to Texas, "You first."

(ed. to add) The 2008 Nebraska split was the first time that provision had ever been put into operation. Some Republicans there were upset, but considering the lay of the land in Nebraska partisan politics, no other scenario of a split vote was at all likely, so what else did they think was going to happen when they enacted it in the first place?

I find the (no longer very effective) Jarvis Associations rather useful to have around; all I need see is their name on a ballot argument to know to vote the other way. What I'd like to see their reaction to if they eliminated things like commuter trains is the further-increased traffic jams (cf the NYC subway, this week). Leaving aside the implied belief that the freeways we already have somehow built themselves.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

When I was teaching English at the State Auditors Office in Helsinki, the director gave a speech in winch he said, he hated taxes as much as any person, BUT, you need to remember that taxes buy civilization.

Estonians and Finns believe in paying their taxes and it shows in the high and efficient levels of public service.

[delosharriman]

The statement "with taxes I buy civilization" is attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes (the Supreme Court justice, not his father the poet).

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Just shows how much good eduction the taxes Finns pay is buying.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

For much of the rest of the world, a large proportion of the US voters seem to be quite literally insane (their world-view is vastly out of touch with the evidence of our senses, let alone any human-derived conceptions of social justice or even sensible cooperative systems [world's most expensive health-care system delivering worse-than-average outcomes for a majority of those even covered by the system let alone those who fall through..]). How anyone can even concieve of voting for R. Money just escapes me. Obama is quite a long way right of centre for most democratic countries (yes, Japan excluded, though even here I think he's right of centre, just not that far right compared with the UK for example).

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd ever considered your state registration as a question. I think you could make a good case for Nevada, being a homeowner there - but as you point out, most of your actual time is spent in California. Certainly you're best off voting in the state you feel proper.