This boomer always votes in every election, even for the mythical “dog catcher”…civic duty don’tcha know. Today was easy since there were only two items on my ballot.
1. An additional 3% sales tax on recreational, not medical, marijuana.
I have nothing against marijuana; indeed, I used it myself when I was much younger; but I often vote for taxes just to counter the votes of folks who automatically vote “no” on any question that has “tax” in it. Yeah, sales taxes are regressive; but folks who have actual prescriptions won’t have to pay it.
2. Lindbergh School Board — five candidates for three positions.
School board elections are important, and not entirely because we want to keep fundies off of them. I voted for an actual teacher who has endorsements from organizations with “equity” in their names, a guy who uses various versions of “inclusive” among his issues, and a guy who likes teachers and thinks that they should get a raise. I declined to vote for a “human resources” manager (don’t get me started) and a guy with “parental rights” as one of his issues (possibly a dog whistle about cancelling non-cis-het folks and removing from the history curriculum any mention of race).
‘Parental rights’ is definitely a signifier.
Yeah, a signifier of someone who only wants a particular kind of parents to have any rights…over other people’s kids.
I forgot to mention that a couple of the polling officials were young men. They looked to me like they had just made it to 18 years of age, but this old fart probably underestimates that. In any event, having youngsters at the polling place gave me a glimmer of hope for the future.
Followup: I was mostly on the winning side for a change. Unfortunately, the guy who wants teachers to get a raise came in dead last, which makes me sad.
The candidate who got the largest plurality was the one I, probably mistakenly, identified as a “human resources manager”. On reading her website more carefully, I find that she’s the proprietor of a small business and describes herself as “a Career Coach … in the Human Resources field”. I’m not sure that that’s an improvement.