Massachusetts elections

[dougo]

Jill Stein is running for Massachusetts Secretary of State against incumbent Bill Galvin. She was the Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Governor in 2002. There is no Republican running for this office, so it's a one-on-one race between Democrat and Green. There will be a brief (5 minute!) debate on CBS4 evening news tonight at 6pm. Set your Tivo! I am voting for her because she supports instant runoff voting, clean elections, redistricting reform, and other related issues that I consider fundamental to the democratic process. I'm basically a single-issue voter, and I'm glad that she is putting the issue of electoral reform first and foremost in her campaign.

I'm also voting for James O'Keefe for Treasurer and Rand Wilson for Auditor. These are also one-on-one elections against Democrat incumbents, so there's no distracton of questions about splitting the vote. I have no idea how much attention these races have been getting—probably very little—but I hope these candidates can at least make some sort of non-trivial impact on the vote.

Wilson also supports Question 2, which allows multiple parties to nominate the same candidate for an elected position. I have mixed feelings about this one—it's a half-measure, and somewhat confusing—but I think it will do more good than harm, or at worst be a wash.

By the way, you can see a copy of your ballot online at wheredoivotema.com. Just enter your street address.

Oh yeah, and for Governor: I haven't really been following this race at all, but is there any reason to vote against Deval Patrick? My one Republican friend muttstain (at least I think that's him?) says Patrick will raise everyone's taxes and release rapists from jail. I'm skeptical.

Edit: I almost forgot, I also ran across a FairVote article about choice voting in Cambridge.

Comments

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

I love Jill Stein. I worked with her in Lexington in 2000.

[ghudson.livejournal.com]

The Green/Rainbow party is very anti-Israel, to the point of apparently supporting Palestinian terrorism (depends on what they mean by "self-defense" in point 5). Not sure how that affects your opinion of them; it pretty much kills any latent desire I might have had to vote for any of their candidates. http://www.green-rainbow.org/Statements/palestine.html

I wouldn't be surprised if state income taxes return to 5.95% under a Patrick administration. Nor do I think that would be a waste, having followed Somerville politics enough to know how badly local budgets have been suffering from cuts in state aid.

"He'll release rapists from jail" comes from his history with Ben LaGuer. In my opinion, this is really a political hatchet job; in order to believe that Patrick did anything terribly unreasonable, you pretty much have to think that it's never appropriate to revisit a criminal conviction, in spite of massive evidence that faulty convictions happen all the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deval_Patrick has more information.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

it pretty much kills any latent desire I might have had to vote for any of their candidates.

Yeah, that's really far from being a deal-breaker for me. I have to squint pretty hard to even find anything to disagree with there. And I kind of doubt that the Massachusetts Secretary of State (let alone the Auditor) has any influence at all over the policies of the Israeli government.

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

Jill Stein was asked about Israel when she was running for governor. Her answer was pretty much not to get involved, because there is no influence even as governor of Massachusetts.

if i were looking for something anti-israel...

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

http://www.green-rainbow.org/Newsletters/election06/articles/sudan.html/view

this is what would give me problems

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is pretty random. I'll be sure not to vote for that guy.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

i'd be concerned that it's on the official website.

not my party, but if it were, i'd speak up.

[jodiamonds.livejournal.com]

Because I don't follow news/politics well enough (but still theoretically care despite my lack of effort), this is usefully informative for me (especially the pointed links, but the rest of the commentary as well).

Huzzah!

[prusik.livejournal.com]

Your Republican friend doesn't actually think Deval would release rapists from jail, does he? Negative ads really can be quite effective. All Deval did was insist that on DNA testing of the evidence. In this case, as in most cases, it confirmed that they got the right guy. And that was that. That Kerry Healey brought it up at all smacks of desperation on her part.

I was very happy that her negative ad backfired with the general populace. It's about time.

[pfranzosa.livejournal.com]

The only reason to not vote for Deval in my book would be to give the vote to Grace Ross or Christy Mihos in order to get more support growing for Independant or "third party" candidates. I actually like Deval a lot (my wife has been a volunteer on his campaign since early in 2005) and I won't debate over the US policies in Isreal in your blog but I personally am leaning towards the Green-Rainbow party on this one...so thanks for the plug for Jill Stein :)

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I didn't even realize there was a Green-Rainbow candidate for Governor until I saw a clip from a 4-way debate on the news. Have you looked into Ross's platform at all?

[pfranzosa.livejournal.com]

I've read her positions on her website http://www.graceandmartina.org/ I like anyone who lists Education first, supports Universal Healthcare, is for fair taxation and is against coporate welfare.

Oh and thanks for the link to the video..I like the self referential moment at the end where Jill points out that that debate itself, and it's lack of publicity, show how closed the communication from the State House can be.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Also, I'm surprised Jonathan Arnold isn't clamoring for a Die Macher game this weekend. :)

[laurenhat.livejournal.com]

I don't know how close the Governor's race will be, but Patrick seems worth supporting. I recall Kerry Healey having some ads that seemed definitely unfairly negative and possibly borderline racist to me -- they implied that Patrick supports murderers and rapists and had ambiguous pictures and wording that seemed like they were meant to imply that he is a scary (black) criminal himself. In reality, he has defended some murderers as a lawyer, and his brother-in-law was once up on rape charges about 20 years ago or something; Patrick has spoken about this and clarified his positions in a reasonable way. I found Healey's ads highly distasteful, whether or not they were intentionally playing some kind of racial fear card -- it was nasty and negative. I guess that's nothing new in politics, but what I've read about the two of them seems to imply that she doesn't have much to run on besides that kind of fear-mongering, which is worrisome.

I thought Patrick's plan actually involved lowering property taxes in a bunch of areas, and there was some discussion about how that would work, but I'm afraid I didn't follow it closely. Hmm. I wish I had links for some of this stuff, but I read it all a while back. I haven't paid as close attention to the gubernatorial race as I should. I'm a near yellow-dog Democrat in most of the big races, not because I love the party by any means, but because some of my key issues -- LGBT rights, access to contraception & abortion & realistic sex info, etc. are virtually always opposed by Republicans.


Thanks for the info on Jill Stein; I was already favoring her, but it's good to see the debate.