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.

Moms for Liberty was trying to take over our school board, and thanks to a lot of canvassing, phone banking, and fundraising, they failed!

Voted in Ohio today. Excited to see the results!

congratulations to Democrats for holding the governor’s seat in Kentucky. this was called pretty early all things considered.

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 The current jail is pretty much universally recognized as crumbling and out of date and overfilled with inmates so I don’t think many people argue about that kind of thing.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.****

Just as an idea: Would be good to have some USA reference in the title.

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 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.

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 🤔

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!

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.

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 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!

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

I voted, there was a prop to lower housing tax increases for the elderly and disabled and one to increase teachers’ pension