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

[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.