Now that we've moved on past the actual day of election, here's my postmortem.
Presidential election days are usually, like, insanely busy; my precinct routinely has ~80% participation in major elections. Recent expansion of absentee ballot access has driven that down a bit for in-person voting on election day, but nothing like this past election. We leaned hard into early-voting (in-person, drive-up, by-mail) and no-excuse absentee, and holy cow did it work. We were at something like 70% participation before we even opened the doors on election day, which is awesome.
That meant that, even though we hit pretty good total participation numbers for the election, the actual day-of work was about a quarter of what it usually is - which means it was kinda slow, all day. We had a single line of about 30 people right when we opened, and never had more than a dozen or so waiting for the rest of the day. The ballot was a little long this year, thanks to the two constitutional questions, but not nearly as bad as it was ... uh ... 4 years ago? ... when we had a 8.5"x14" ballot with both sides and people spent, no kidding, half-an-hour or more trying to fill it out.
Our new voter ID laws were firmly in-place, and we had lots of hand-outs and posters showing the expanded list of viable IDs. Highlight of my day was when a family came in to the precinct (dad, mom, and adorable little guy): Dad got checked in okay with his drivers license, but Mom realized she'd brought the wrong purse with her. We went through the list, and she had literally none of the allowable IDs with her. Under prior circumstances, she'd have needed to go home, get an ID, and come back - and, really, with a little guy in-tow, there'd be no guarantee she came back to vote. So, she got to provide her name and address and then sign the newly-allowed Affidavit of Identity (R) (TM) (C), which let us check her in so she could vote then and there. And while she was doing all the paperwork, we got to chat with the little guy (~1 year old?) from a safe distance. So a big +1 for the new rules there.
We had an election page show up, and she was super helpful and willing to work all day. She expressed interest in being an Election Officer in the future, which is even more awesome.
We had an absentee / mail-in drop box that saw some use, so some people were able to just walk up, drop off their ballot, and leave in ~30s. This should absolutely be a thing going forward.
Only real issue of the day was a "helpful" set of instructions that voters received a couple of months ago, which included a "sample" voter registration card on it. Except it looked like the sample included the voters' names but not their actual precinct, maybe? I never got a good look at it, since it was always on the other side of the glass. So we had a lot people come through thinking their voting location had been changed to our precinct because of that mailing. Not cool. We printed out several dozen copies of the actual precinct list, broke out the highlighters, and sent people to their proper precinct when they came in to the wrong place. My main worry was someone showing up at the end of the day to the wrong precinct and not having enough time to get to the proper one, but that didn't end up happening. Whew.
Because of how slow things had been all day, we were able to wrap things up and get all of our toys put away super quickly after the polls closed. I ended up escorting the ballots over to the central warehouse and still got home before I normally would.
Other than that, a nice, straight-forward election.
“We are going to move forward with the legalization of marijuana in Virginia. I support this, and I’m committed to doing it the right way,” Northam said in a news briefing Monday. He said “the time is right” and pointed out that Virginia would be the first state in the South to legalize marijuana.
At this point I'm surprised that there isn't a violent separatist movement in Virginia that wants to jettison NOVA.
i definitely hear people say we should get rid of NoVA because "they sure don't represent us"
Doesn't help that people like Palin hold a rally in Salem and say SWVA are "real Virginians".
There was a near revolt revolving around turning more moving violations into reckless driving a few years back, because all the money on fines in SWVA would pay for the roads in NOVA and it was basically just going to function as giving traffic lawyers more work.
Virginia traffic laws are ridiculous though. 5 years ago I rear ended a car on a city street, big fail, no injuries but my Suburu really plonked his small car. The cop gave me a reckless driving ticket because of the damage and said in court he would tell them to reduce to improper driving because that's how it works for some reason. The cop fucking leaves before my turn at the end of court, they ask me if I want to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, obviously I don't. I pay a lawyer, he talks to them and they say lol why did that happen, I show up again and get the improper driving, who did this garbage serve besides the lawyer? It was a huge waste of everyone's time even without the donation to a law office.
Virginia traffic laws are ridiculous though. 5 years ago I rear ended a car on a city street, big fail, no injuries but my Suburu really plonked his small car. The cop gave me a reckless driving ticket because of the damage and said in court he would tell them to reduce to improper driving because that's how it works for some reason. The cop fucking leaves before my turn at the end of court, they ask me if I want to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, obviously I don't. I pay a lawyer, he talks to them and they say lol why did that happen, I show up again and get the improper driving, who did this garbage serve besides the lawyer? It was a huge waste of everyone's time even without the donation to a law office.
Yeah, but that's pretty much all misdemeanor charges. They are lawyer taxes with a thin veneer of "Do you know the "Proper" thing to do now?" class test added on.
At this point I'm surprised that there isn't a violent separatist movement in Virginia that wants to jettison NOVA.
i definitely hear people say we should get rid of NoVA because "they sure don't represent us"
Funny thing is, then next it'll be the Hampton Roads area because we're growing pretty fast compared to the parts of VA that want to get rid of NoVA and we aren't conservative. Then it'll be the Richmond area and then they'll have to cut the area around Roanoke. Granted they might have to cut a few other parts before Roanoke because chances are pretty good the Virginia crescent as it's called (NoVA & it's exurbs, Richmond& it's exurbs and the Hampton Roads area & it's exurbs) sure as fuck isn't going to stop growing anytime soon.
Pretty much, they'd have to keep cutting until they got rid of all the parts of Virginia that could support a sizable chunk of population density. it's going to be interesting to see how things accelerate as the consequences of climate change get worse because the parts of Hampton Roads area that can't be saved will just see their population move further inland, already seeing some of that now. Hell, one conservative part of the state is probably getting more liberal because climate change is really biting them in the ass. IIRC the upper peninsula is pretty conservative and the residents up there are starting to end up being some of the nation's first climate refugees. Kind of think we've hit a point where we're going to lose the peninsula as a place that can be inhabited safely.
Police cars revolving lightEXCLUSIVE: GOP Delegate Kirk Cox announces run for governor. #VApolitics
"Cancel culture" is what he leads with but I like the ironic talk of sitting on the beach "saying I told you so" given he won't admit the existence of climate change He's the former GOP Speaker of HoD.
From the streets of Norfolk to the state capitol in Richmond, the call for change was heard, and the Breonna Taylor Law is here.
“We are taking a step forward to make sure other families don’t suffer the same loss,” said Gov. Ralph Northam.
In March, Taylor, a health care worker in Louisville, Kentucky, was fatally shot by police in her home while a “no-knock” warrant was being served.
"We can't have this continue to happen to African American women and men,” said State Senator Mamie Locke.
Taylor's two aunts from Louisville, Del. Lashrecse Aird and Sen. Locke joined Gov. Northam to sign the legislation they sponsored.
In Virginia, judges and magistrates can no longer issue a no-knock warrant. According to Northam's office, the Commonwealth is the third state to ban this practice and the first state to do so since Taylor's death.
It's never too early to start campaigning, Terry McAuliffe wants to be governor again. Now why we would want him instead of Jennifer McClellan or Jennifer Carroll Foy, who knows. Justin Fairfax is also running because apparently rape accusations don't keep Democrats down if they deny it either, ugh
It's never too early to start campaigning, Terry McAuliffe wants to be governor again. Now why we would want him instead of Jennifer McClellan or Jennifer Carroll Foy, who knows. Justin Fairfax is also running because apparently rape accusations don't keep Democrats down if they deny it either, ugh
Lee Carter is considering a run, who is pretty rad and would have my vote. Jennifer Carroll Foy was a public defender and seems pretty interesting, too, though I wish she'd go harder on justice reform.
It's never too early to start campaigning, Terry McAuliffe wants to be governor again. Now why we would want him instead of Jennifer McClellan or Jennifer Carroll Foy, who knows. Justin Fairfax is also running because apparently rape accusations don't keep Democrats down if they deny it either, ugh
Lee Carter is considering a run, who is pretty rad and would have my vote. Jennifer Carroll Foy was a public defender and seems pretty interesting, too, though I wish she'd go harder on justice reform.
As a Radical Anarchist I like Lee, but he's way too annoying on Twitter to win the governor primary lol. I'm pretty sure this is a brief profile raising stunt.
An 80% increase in covid hospitalizations in the past four weeks is highly concerning! I would personally prefer a tougher lockdown but this seems about the limit of what people will accept. Even still I would have preferred it to be implemented earlier.
My worry with the democratic primary race for governor, got I hate how this state has elections every year, is that McAuliffe based on where his opponents in this crowded field fall on the political spectrum. We'll see who else announces, but all of his opponents have be further to the left than him, which means they might cut into each other's bases, while he gets most of the centrist voters to himself. Really wish we had ranked voting IMO.
On the upside it's looking like things will be a shit show for the GOP. They are doing yet another convention, so that's going to alienate some potential voters for them and they'll pick some lunatic again. Don't know if it'll be Cox or Chase, but one of two. If it's not Chase, she'll probably challenge the sore losers things and run as an independent.
name two because holy christ am i tired of elections right now
The ability to more rapidly course correct on a mistake, giving folk experience running campaigns, more debates, more chances to drive voter engagement, a more engaged electorate...
name two because holy christ am i tired of elections right now
The ability to more rapidly course correct on a mistake, giving folk experience running campaigns, more debates, more chances to drive voter engagement, a more engaged electorate...
Odd year elections have lower turnout than even year elections. Especially Presidential elections.
Also, what do you mean course correct a mistake? Term length is the same, it just starts on a different year than Federal offices. Screwing up the last gubernatorial election doesn't get fixed until the next one regardless of the Federal elections in between.
Voter fatigue is a thing, more elections means even more fundraising, legislation and change usually requires more than one year, and campaigning takes time and encourage bad governance based on immediately buying votes.
Like, we used to be able to predict that a government wanted an early elections based on the budget, before we passed an useless fixed elections date law in Canada.
If anything, having elections every two years is already too many.
name two because holy christ am i tired of elections right now
The ability to more rapidly course correct on a mistake, giving folk experience running campaigns, more debates, more chances to drive voter engagement, a more engaged electorate...
we don't hold our own elections more frequently, just on odd years, so the result is we are constantly in campaign mode
historically this has not resulted in higher turnout and engagement
name two because holy christ am i tired of elections right now
The ability to more rapidly course correct on a mistake, giving folk experience running campaigns, more debates, more chances to drive voter engagement, a more engaged electorate...
we don't hold our own elections more frequently, just on odd years, so the result is we are constantly in campaign mode
historically this has not resulted in higher turnout and engagement
Odd year elections are how you end up with Chris Christie.
You don't want that.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Maybe it's just me, but for the off years I actually put in some effort to decide who to vote for. For this year's, I already knew what to put at the top of the ticket, so I was pretty lazy about the down ballot stuff.
-voter fatigue is a thing.
-there is no course correction, you fuck one year, you're stuck with those fuckers until their term ends or they win a higher office.
-Turnout is lower in the off year elections.
-You get more special elections because people that want to move to the federal level don't have a good choice. They either retire and spend a year out of office, which actually puts them in a bad spot or they run for a federal office before finishing their state office term. If they win, you get a special election, that is likely to have shit turn out.
-I'd also argue it results in us getting less quality candidates over all because you figure you get some that would be great, but they end up hamstringing their chances. They decide not to start with state office because they don't want to be a dick that forces a special election, but they kind of need that state office term to build up their base enough to win the federal election.
-Nonstop campaigning sucks ass to deal with and I don't see a change to money's outsized influence on our elections anytime soon. Our setup seems like it would amplify that problem further. I mean, if elections are only even years, that does allow for some syncing between various campaigns to cut down costs. We are more or less seeing some nationalization of elections because of social media anyways.
name two because holy christ am i tired of elections right now
No random election in fucking April or March, and I found the habit of knowing there's an election to be easier than a bi-yearly cycle.
You mean aside from the Virginia Primary Election, which was randomly held on March 3rd?
And the random Special Elections when someone swaps from State office to Federal since they aren't aligned?
Primaries aren't State elections, they are held by the parties, and it's hard to have political parties without them. You have those even if you have elections every 2 years.
I was thinking more like how some states do their judicial elections kinda whenever, although VA doesn't do judicial elections, which is a plus.
Posts
Here's an overview. Short version: she tried to press charges on a sitting state Senator over the opposition of the local DA, using a bigoted cop with a grudge to carry out the order.
It did not go well for her.
https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/mycity/portsmouth/portsmouth-police-chief-releases-statement-on-charges-against-sen-louise-lucas-public-officials/291-c2ac6a41-8da1-4771-a888-fe3976f426e9
If I remember correctly:
A bunch black protestors, including some State Senators, were arrested in relation to a confederate monument protest.
Conveniently, the State Senators were arrested while they were headed to the Legislature to vote. Which was quite a while after the protests.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
Presidential election days are usually, like, insanely busy; my precinct routinely has ~80% participation in major elections. Recent expansion of absentee ballot access has driven that down a bit for in-person voting on election day, but nothing like this past election. We leaned hard into early-voting (in-person, drive-up, by-mail) and no-excuse absentee, and holy cow did it work. We were at something like 70% participation before we even opened the doors on election day, which is awesome.
That meant that, even though we hit pretty good total participation numbers for the election, the actual day-of work was about a quarter of what it usually is - which means it was kinda slow, all day. We had a single line of about 30 people right when we opened, and never had more than a dozen or so waiting for the rest of the day. The ballot was a little long this year, thanks to the two constitutional questions, but not nearly as bad as it was ... uh ... 4 years ago? ... when we had a 8.5"x14" ballot with both sides and people spent, no kidding, half-an-hour or more trying to fill it out.
Our new voter ID laws were firmly in-place, and we had lots of hand-outs and posters showing the expanded list of viable IDs. Highlight of my day was when a family came in to the precinct (dad, mom, and adorable little guy): Dad got checked in okay with his drivers license, but Mom realized she'd brought the wrong purse with her. We went through the list, and she had literally none of the allowable IDs with her. Under prior circumstances, she'd have needed to go home, get an ID, and come back - and, really, with a little guy in-tow, there'd be no guarantee she came back to vote. So, she got to provide her name and address and then sign the newly-allowed Affidavit of Identity (R) (TM) (C), which let us check her in so she could vote then and there. And while she was doing all the paperwork, we got to chat with the little guy (~1 year old?) from a safe distance. So a big +1 for the new rules there.
We had an election page show up, and she was super helpful and willing to work all day. She expressed interest in being an Election Officer in the future, which is even more awesome.
We had an absentee / mail-in drop box that saw some use, so some people were able to just walk up, drop off their ballot, and leave in ~30s. This should absolutely be a thing going forward.
Only real issue of the day was a "helpful" set of instructions that voters received a couple of months ago, which included a "sample" voter registration card on it. Except it looked like the sample included the voters' names but not their actual precinct, maybe? I never got a good look at it, since it was always on the other side of the glass. So we had a lot people come through thinking their voting location had been changed to our precinct because of that mailing. Not cool. We printed out several dozen copies of the actual precinct list, broke out the highlighters, and sent people to their proper precinct when they came in to the wrong place. My main worry was someone showing up at the end of the day to the wrong precinct and not having enough time to get to the proper one, but that didn't end up happening. Whew.
Because of how slow things had been all day, we were able to wrap things up and get all of our toys put away super quickly after the polls closed. I ended up escorting the ballots over to the central warehouse and still got home before I normally would.
Other than that, a nice, straight-forward election.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
*plays Peter Tosh*
Come Overwatch with meeeee
i definitely hear people say we should get rid of NoVA because "they sure don't represent us"
Technically, NOVA carved part of DC back out in 1847.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Doesn't help that people like Palin hold a rally in Salem and say SWVA are "real Virginians".
There was a near revolt revolving around turning more moving violations into reckless driving a few years back, because all the money on fines in SWVA would pay for the roads in NOVA and it was basically just going to function as giving traffic lawyers more work.
Yeah, but that's pretty much all misdemeanor charges. They are lawyer taxes with a thin veneer of "Do you know the "Proper" thing to do now?" class test added on.
Funny thing is, then next it'll be the Hampton Roads area because we're growing pretty fast compared to the parts of VA that want to get rid of NoVA and we aren't conservative. Then it'll be the Richmond area and then they'll have to cut the area around Roanoke. Granted they might have to cut a few other parts before Roanoke because chances are pretty good the Virginia crescent as it's called (NoVA & it's exurbs, Richmond& it's exurbs and the Hampton Roads area & it's exurbs) sure as fuck isn't going to stop growing anytime soon.
Pretty much, they'd have to keep cutting until they got rid of all the parts of Virginia that could support a sizable chunk of population density. it's going to be interesting to see how things accelerate as the consequences of climate change get worse because the parts of Hampton Roads area that can't be saved will just see their population move further inland, already seeing some of that now. Hell, one conservative part of the state is probably getting more liberal because climate change is really biting them in the ass. IIRC the upper peninsula is pretty conservative and the residents up there are starting to end up being some of the nation's first climate refugees. Kind of think we've hit a point where we're going to lose the peninsula as a place that can be inhabited safely.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
She's my first choice
He filed yesterday.
Having a Governor who was pepper sprayed and beaten by cops for protesting police brutality would be fucking wild.
e: I highly doubt he wins the primary, by the by.
Big Things
On the upside it's looking like things will be a shit show for the GOP. They are doing yet another convention, so that's going to alienate some potential voters for them and they'll pick some lunatic again. Don't know if it'll be Cox or Chase, but one of two. If it's not Chase, she'll probably challenge the sore losers things and run as an independent.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
name two because holy christ am i tired of elections right now
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Odd year elections have lower turnout than even year elections. Especially Presidential elections.
https://www.elections.virginia.gov/resultsreports/registrationturnout-statistics/
Also, what do you mean course correct a mistake? Term length is the same, it just starts on a different year than Federal offices. Screwing up the last gubernatorial election doesn't get fixed until the next one regardless of the Federal elections in between.
Like, we used to be able to predict that a government wanted an early elections based on the budget, before we passed an useless fixed elections date law in Canada.
If anything, having elections every two years is already too many.
we don't hold our own elections more frequently, just on odd years, so the result is we are constantly in campaign mode
historically this has not resulted in higher turnout and engagement
Odd year elections are how you end up with Chris Christie.
You don't want that.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
-voter fatigue is a thing.
-there is no course correction, you fuck one year, you're stuck with those fuckers until their term ends or they win a higher office.
-Turnout is lower in the off year elections.
-You get more special elections because people that want to move to the federal level don't have a good choice. They either retire and spend a year out of office, which actually puts them in a bad spot or they run for a federal office before finishing their state office term. If they win, you get a special election, that is likely to have shit turn out.
-I'd also argue it results in us getting less quality candidates over all because you figure you get some that would be great, but they end up hamstringing their chances. They decide not to start with state office because they don't want to be a dick that forces a special election, but they kind of need that state office term to build up their base enough to win the federal election.
-Nonstop campaigning sucks ass to deal with and I don't see a change to money's outsized influence on our elections anytime soon. Our setup seems like it would amplify that problem further. I mean, if elections are only even years, that does allow for some syncing between various campaigns to cut down costs. We are more or less seeing some nationalization of elections because of social media anyways.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
No random election in fucking April or March, and I found the habit of knowing there's an election to be easier than a bi-yearly cycle.
hmm well i don't like it
You mean aside from the Virginia Primary Election, which was randomly held on March 3rd?
And the random Special Elections when someone swaps from State office to Federal since they aren't aligned?
Primaries aren't State elections, they are held by the parties, and it's hard to have political parties without them. You have those even if you have elections every 2 years.
I was thinking more like how some states do their judicial elections kinda whenever, although VA doesn't do judicial elections, which is a plus.