Siggy has a post about the importance of down-ballot voting, and giving examples from his ballot. I wanted to follow his lead and give some examples of my own; but that turned out to be pretty long; so I decided to use up the space on my own blog instead.
School Boards
This is important. We seriously need to keep the anti-fact folks off of them; so I always check out the candidates’ websites at least. In the last school board election I had a vote in, there were five candidates for three positions. I voted for one who had endorsements from several organizations with some version of “equity” in their names, one who had some version of “inclusive” in several of his issues, and one who likes teachers and thinks they should get a raise. I declined to vote for a “human resources advisor” and a guy who had “parental rights” as an issue.
About a week from now:
There are 38 candidates in eleven races, U.S. President/Vice President, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative District 2, Governor, Lt. Governor, Sec’y of State, State Treasurer, Atty. General, State Senate District 1, State Representative Distrint 92, St. Louis County Council District 6. I see more Democratic than Republican yard signs in my neighborhood, so I might actually be voting on the winning side in the last three of those; in the others, almost certainly not. Three of the races are, maybe, interesting.
U.S. Senator
Five candates. In addition to the Libertarian and the Green, there’s a guy named Jared Young who’s running in something called the “Better” party. His website is all about voting for an independent instead of a Democrat or a Republican. Although I suppose I agree in principle, such a vote is way too dangerous this year.
The real choice is between the odious Josh Hawley and Lucas Kunce, a career Marine officer (now in the reserves), who seems to be a mostly mainstream Democrat with some progressive-leaning ideas. He’s well-funded and has lots of TV ads that seem pretty effective to me. Hawley is also well-funded and has lots of TV ads that, unsurprisingly, lie about Kunce. I can only hope that Young pulls more votes from Hawley than from Kunce. It would be cool if deep-red Missouri could flip a Senate seat. 😎 (I wouldn’t bet on it, though.)
U.S. Representative
The odius Ann Wagner is opposed by Ray Hartmann, the publisher of a left-leaning weekly newspaper, The Riverfront Times, and a minor local TV personality on our PBS affiliate. He seems to have very little money; and his one TV ad strikes me as angry and inneffective. I was hoping that this would be more fun than it turned out to be.
As a result of the last gerrymandering, Missouri’s Second Congressional District changed from leans Republican to safe Republican; and so the chance of flipping a House seat are slim to none.
Governor
The Democrat, Crystal Quade, grew up poor in Missouri’s bible belt, worked several waitress jobs to work her way through college, and eventually became the minority leader in the state House. She seems to be very well-funded. Let’s hope.
Six state constitutional amendments or propositions
Amendment 2 legalizes sports gambling, and amendment 5 sets up a new gambling district along the Osage River. I’m ambivalent about gambling: I’d like to keep sleazy people out of the state; but it’s probably too late for that; and legalizing it will probably mean more tax revenue. (The TV ads for it are all about more money for schools, which is a lie. There’s no requirement that additional revenue must go to schools.) I’ll probably vote for both of them.
Amendment 3 overturns Missouri’s abortion ban. I’m for that.
Amendment 6 funds various law enforcement jobs from higher court costs. I’m against that.
Amendment 7 makes ranked-choice voting illegal. Definitely gets my “no” vote.
Proposition A raises the minimum wage to $13.75/hour for 2025, and $15.00/hour for 2026. Yea.
Other questions
There are three St. Louis County propositions. I couldn’t find anything about them on the Internet beyond the text of the propositions themselves, so I still have no idea what all the legalese means. I intend to abstain on these.
There are also 24 questions of the form, “Shall judge [name] of [court] be retained in office?” I have no clue and will abstain on all of them.
I generally vote in favor of judges, because on principle I don’t think they should really be subject to popular vote in the first place. But one time I got burned, and I later found out that one of the judges I voted for was in a scandal. So, maybe from now on I at least do a quick search of each judge first.
Amendment 2/5: this might be an instance where legalisation and regulation is the lesser evil. (See Prohibition.)
Siggy @ # 1: I generally vote in favor of judges…
Sfaict, they are almost all retained. Here in Florida, if a judge does get tossed, Gov. Ron DeSantis would appoint the replacement – so I won’t vote against any of ’em this year. Same probably applies in every other “red” state.