Can we get back to politics?

[starlady]

Well, I voted yesterday. My ballot arrived on Wednesday, I filled it out and sealed it just as the debate was starting, and yesterday I biked to the nearest drop box and popped it in. I wasn't the only person there, either--I stood nearby for maybe five minutes futzing with my bike and checking my route to my next stop and three other people showed up in that interval. It's a relief to finally have that done, though not perhaps as much of one as I might have hoped.

I haven't voted in person since 2016--the California propositions and local offices are far too complicated to deal with in the voting booth (not that we have voting booths per se), I used to have to write myself a cheat sheet that took up a whole notebook page to remember to vote what. After that election I signed up for permanent mail ballots so that I could fill the multiple pages of ballots out at my leisure. I do also think it's good to take some of the burden off of poll workers on actual Election Day.

Anyway, back to writing Vote Forward letters and Postcards to Voters. I've done 300 + 20 of the former (the +20 are the ones I signed up to do for SwingLeft; the coordinator emailed us that he's rented a UHaul to take all the letters to the distribution center in Oakland next Saturday), and…65 of the latter? Sixty more letters to go, and I'll keep writing postcards until they tell us pencils down. Then there'll be runoffs and such to write for, one way or another. In the last four years I really have learned that democracy is something you do.

Comments

[torachan]

Yeah, the thing I like best about voting from home is being able to look stuff up as I'm doing it. It's always the judges that kill me. So many judges. So little info about them.

[starlady]

So little info about the judges! This time we didn't have any up here, but a few of the propositions are tricky. And I live in an unincorporated rich person town where the leadership board elections are very contentious but opaque so I had to spend a while figuring out who is pro-cop and who isn't. Also the parks board (why am I voting for the parks board) has a pretty tense contest on it too, so that was even more reading.

[torachan]

I think there were literally like fifteen judge positions down here this time, though some of them seem to have been settled in the primaries as there were fewer for this one. I'm just glad I had thought to take a picture of my ballot after filling it out for the primary so I didn't have to look them all up again.

There were a lot of city positions this time, too, which are all no-name people who are hard to look up, and aside from one guy, the city council was all down to picking the best of a bad lot as they were all anti-homeless to some degree or other.

[via_ostiense]

Now I’m deeply curious about what’s going on with the parks board. What’s happening with that race?

Also, the uhaul full of VoteFwd letters sounds amazing! I’m really looking forward to the Big Send, although I doubt it’ll be so visually impressive where I am (I’m just dropping off my little pile of letters at the local post office).

[starlady]

I don't even know what the deal is with the parks board. The incumbent was appointed to the position and her challenger is endorsed by the Sierra Club. There are lawn signs for both of them throughout my neighborhood.

[snickfic]

In the last four years I really have learned that democracy is something you do.

Yep, same. However this election goes, I really hope that will a long-term impact on how a lot of us engage with our society: doing democracy, being part of what makes it happen, not just living in it.