Beehaw Election Day 2023
a little megathread for this seems useful. what's on your ballot folks? are you going out to vote today or have you already voted? if you haven't or are interested in what significant elections are taking place today, Bolts Magazine has its yearly cheat sheet.
pretty much every good, significant election result nationally happened today. Democrats have a majority in both the VA House and Senate; their gubernatorial candidate won in KY; abortion rights and legal weed passed in Ohio; they expanded their majorities in NJ; and they kept it competitive in MS. the PA state supreme court is now 5-2 Democratic after they won the seat up this year, and it seems that Dems have won many of the downballot races that manage elections.
Great summary! Thank you
Moms for Liberty was trying to take over our school board, and thanks to a lot of canvassing, phone banking, and fundraising, they failed!
Thank goodness!! I'm proud of and thankful for everyone who made it happen!
Voted in Ohio today. Excited to see the results!
CNN is projecting that the Ohio state constitutional amendment protecting reproductive rights has passed! \o/
Currently 56 to 44% with 57% of the vote in!
Oh and looks like y'all getting rec weed, too. Welcome to the club 😎
Was a great night in Ohio, in my view.
congratulations to Democrats for holding the governor's seat in Kentucky. this was called pretty early all things considered.
in my neck of the woods: half of the school board is up--unsurprisingly it's divided between the cranks who want to "take politics out of schools" (by which they mean queer people) and liberals trying to get the board to not do that. the liberals have historically prevailed since this is the region's most liberal school board but you can never tell who's actually going to win day of. we also have a bunch of controversial referendums this year but i'm pretty sure all of them are going to pass.
nationally, i'm tracking about 60 socialists who are up for election or re-election--i'd expect most of them will win their races but this could be an early harbinger of trouble for the left if some of the closer races don't go socialists' way. in particular i'm very curious if Israel-Palestine will influence any of them.
You sound like you live near me. Except that one of our SB candidates actually got fired as the school district Superintendent for violently yelling at one of his subordinates over trans policy, and now he has an axe to grind and want to be on the school board to exact his revenge. We've got a second candidate who is supported by Moms For Liberty and has zero take on the actual policies except for some fear that trans kids are planning some mass molestation of cis kids if they're allowed to use the bathroom of their gender selection (ignoring that most trans kids I know would rather never step foot in a public school restroom for any reason if they could). If they both get on it will be a certified shit show.
I early voted over the weekend in Kansas City. No statewide elections or issues, only city and county issues. And no major issues, at that.
One was for a new sales tax from the county to fund various things. I voted No. The property taxes are insane at the moment and the sales tax is already high. And the way that some are characterizing this new tax is that it's for a "slush fund." No thanks.
Then the city had two questions. The first was to continue a sales tax that funds public transportation for another 10yrs. I voted Yes. Even if I never use public transportation (bad, I know), I want more of it, not less.
The last question was to get remove like 5 acres of Parks & Rec land from the system. I voted No. I always vote No on removal of park lands. Yes we have plenty and yes this wasn't exactly like a public park area (just some forested land), I would rather we keep what we got.
Voted no on the tax for the "slush fund" as well. Hope it fails. Someone linked to a bunch of reporting about how we're already ignoring lots of federal funds for infrastructure that this new tax was supposed to fund.
Was that that r/KC post? I probably would've voted Yes on it had I not seen that.
So far, with 10% of the vote in, Question 1 isn't passing, 62% vs 38%. Results I'm watching.
As an aside...Idk if you know, but there's a practically dead KC Lemmy community -- https://beehaw.org/c/kansascity@midwest.social -- that I'm trying to slowly revive. I don't even "own" the community, but it'd be neat to have a KC community out here. Feel free to join. Or if you know of another that's more active, do share!
7 of the nine Seattle city council seats are up for election, which should make for an interesting election. Hoping the union supported candidates fair better
Update. Things are not looking good here :(
edit: It's worth noting that I did not vote for what's below because, after recently moving, my residency is still in another county in my state. I still voted, but not for the vote I'm about to talk about.
There's a vote in my town for a new jail. It's very hotly contentious. The current jail is pretty much universally recognized as crumbling and out of date and overfilled with inmates so I don't think many people argue about that kind of thing. There was an expose posted in the local newspaper a year ago with photos of the thing. Most rooms had upwards of 6 - 12 people in them, and the former "games room" of the jail was now a living space for 30 inmates. There's pictures of black mold and crusty toilets and shit like that. The elevator also doesn't work, period. Proponents of the jail are pro new infrastructure of course. People anti jail are split up into like 3 camps that seem to spread throughout party lines. Some are anti jail tax (there are even signs saying the 10th of a percent sales tax increase will lead to "financial ruin."), some are anti this specific jail saying it's the wrong location etc., I think the rest are anti literally all jails in particular. What I find interesting is a lot of the anti jail tax people seem to be progressive teens which is really odd to me. They canvas support a lot in the local university. I always thought the anti tax folks were the libertarians. I know taxes suck but I think the pragmatic way of looking at it is that it's really the only good way we have of getting things done in the society we currently live in, especially when it comes to infrastructure.
What I will say is that the "say no to the jail" people are very in your face about it. Lots of botting on the local subreddit, lots of downvote spamming there too. Very toxic from my experience, although I think the toxic ones are more the anti tax people than anybody else. I have yet to see very many pro jail people who are very active about it. Just lots of passive support for that. It'll be interesting to see what the results will be but I think that a lot of people will be mad in the end.
I only just moved here so I don't think my opinion has a lot of weight, but data shows that the city boomed in the past few decades in terms of population. IIRC it doubled in the last 20 years alone despite almost 100 of history. So I've been personally looking at it as a "now or never" type of deal.
People have definitely mentioned that we should be incarcerating less, and I think I agree with that. However, knowing how long politics take, I do worry for the folks who will be stuck in there until we can pass measures to free up space in the current jail. The mold problems and straight up broken elevator though? I think that requires a bit more work.****
Fuck, that is a no win situation. Those people do not deserve the ridiculously bad living conditions, but building new jails is also shit.
I discovered today that I live in an unincorporated community, so I'm apparently not governed by the city in which my address resides but rather just by the county. So I have nothing to vote for today.
Best of luck to everyone else for a quick and painless experience!
There is an entire district in Seattle that is unincorporated. It is such a crap situation for the people there since they are very much part of the city but get no say in city elections. It is also one of the more diverse districts in the city, so representation is lacking. Part of the district got incorporated to the closest suburb about 10 years ago, so at least those of us in that region get to have some say. I am not sure how only part of it got incorporated, though.
So I did some reading on the history of incorporation of the district. Apparently Seattle decided to not incorporate it because it would cost too much to add social services. Instead they encouraged the nearest suburb to try to incorporate them. The suburb has a history of just not expanding social services. In 2012 the suburb was able to get some of the district to vote to incorporate, but they have been unsuccessful in convincing the rest of the district. Turns out it is a very complicated situation.
oh god, i hate stupid municipal technicalities like this lol. american municipal borders are so bad at almost every level of government
Just as an idea: Would be good to have some USA reference in the title.
There are 3 city council positions up in my city. 2 of the 6 candidates want to sound like they would like to help houseless folks when they really just want to give the cops more money. At least they are not running for the same position, so it makes those votes simpler.
I think we live in the same city, one that recently awarded 40k a nonprofit who in turn is giving it to a shady org to sweep the camps. This is the first local election where I feel super strongly about the candidates, mostly because of the cartoonish hijinks going on.
Ugh, I looked into it more, and it just gets worse. The director of CARES is also the director of Discover. He got a killer deal from the city on some property from the city, kicked the houseless folks out, and built a tiny dog park. I love animals and always thought CARES was a good organization. Turns out it is run by a exploitative jerk that puts pets recreation before people. Sorry, that is probably enough to pinpoint the city, but I'm pretty upset by that.
Wow, it sure sounds like it. Small world indeed. I did not know about that particular contract, and it looks like it just happened. What a load of absolute hateful shite. That combined with the recent push to kick houseless folks out of parks/public property and I am just angry at most of the cities leadership. Watch out on the county election too. Our current anti-homeless, pro-cop mayor is running for a county council spot.
We had city commission candidates in my area who expressed similar sentiments ("He says ... the city is not doing enough to deal with the homeless population and crime. He wants to improve the budget for both police and street maintenance").
Seems it's easy to think any attention is good attention if you believe the subject of your attention is more sidewalk detritus than person.
That statement could have been take from either one of those council members. Like they have almost verbatim statements. The big tell is they want to "add more first responders" but just mean more cops.
Going to vote out our welfare-thieving, shitbird governor. I don't necessarily like the dem option, but he's better than what we've got.
I'm excited to vote for the lady running against our flappy-headed, overgrown fratboy of a state house rep.
It'll be a miracle if either of these races shake out the way I hope they do, but the odds are better than usual!
I voted in WA State. Not that my vote is really going to sway things on a federal level. I didn't have one federal-level vote on my ballot this year. That said I saw a ton of young minorities going up against a bunch of white old people for local positions. While I still voted for who I thought would do a great job, that person was usually the younger minority folks over the white old folks.
One thing I did vote for is https://www.tacoma4all.org/initiative01 which a bunch of the against arguments boiled down to "the landlords will sell and tear down the buildings and we'll all be homeless if we enact a law that says landlords need to be responsible people!" It was really shocking to see such a weak argument in the voter's pamphlet. Check it out here: https://i.imgur.com/HH6HNRk.png
I'm in TX with a whole bunch of constituents amendments on the ballot. Never too optimistic about making a difference in such a conservative state, and particularly annoyed the only thing that could have a positive effect on our failing electric grid is a tax incentive for natural gas 🤮.
The only prop I'm still on the fence about is the university fund. I'm skeptical of state funding for universities, because my understanding is quite a bit of that goes to admin instead of lowering tuition. But most organizations seem to support the proposition, and the only ones who oppose it say they do so because the universities are too "woke". I don't want to vote in alignment with some alt right organizations :/
I voted, there was a prop to lower housing tax increases for the elderly and disabled and one to increase teachers' pension
We had a board of supervisors runoff and it was a brutal defeat for the republican candidate. I'm in San Diego, which many would think is a blue hotspot. However, by Southern California standards, not so much. It was quite purple for a long time due to a huge military presence. However, in the last decade or so it has begun to go super blue, and I am so happy to see the trend continue and get stronger. Really hoping to see this again next year. Keep voting everyone! In every single election. It matters now more than ever!
Strange, I usually get all my materials and ballots in the mail early as an overseas voter, but didn't get anything this time around, and I've been very busy so wasn't aware of elections. Guess I'll have to see if I need to opt in again or something 🤔
Same here! I'm not overseas, but am signed up for absentee ballots due to disability, and I didn't get anything either. I double checked on my state's voting portal and I'm still properly signed up and everything. I guess there was just nothing for me to vote on. Which feels very weird.
I hope everything is all correct with your information and you get a ballot properly next time! Thanks for opting in in the first place and for checking to make sure it's still set up right - thanks for voting!
Did my mail-in ballot a few weeks ago. Just a handful of unexciting city and school council seats. Sadly none of the more interesting races are in my district - there was only one contested seat for me to actually vote on. :(
Beehaw has elections?
