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

[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.