Tag: Elections

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WWIT about the US 2024 Election

WWIT (What Was I Thinking) about the Trump vs Biden rematch for President of the United States?

  • A lot can change in six months
  • Neither of these men has the skill set to be President
  • We need younger people in charge
  • If the election were held tomorrow I wouldn’t vote for either of these men
  • I wouldn’t vote for Trump because he is a hateful unpredictable person
  • I wouldn’t vote for Biden because he sold out Israel at the UN, only halfheartedly had Ukraine’s back and is willing to subvert the constitution ie student debt
  • A lot can change in six months.

People tend to be herd animals and they adapt their opinions to match those around them.
Currently I predict that Biden will win but it will be close.

The photo is of another great Arizona sunset. This post was created using my iPad. I usually use my MacBook but if I can make my iPad work for my blog it will make my summer travels much easier. Let me know.

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Election Day Should be a Day

There are a couple of reasons I think that early voting is a bad idea. If during the Civil War when Lincoln was running for re-election there had been early voting people would have voted before the victory at Atlanta and McClellan might have won the Presidency. So my first objection is that we should all be voting at the same time so we all have access to the same information.

My second objection is that everyone voting together is one of the tiny and fragile acts that makes us feel united as a people. Election day should be a day. Doing it together is an important part of that experience.

Now of course there have to be exceptions for the infirm, the aged and those who are traveling but on the whole election day should be a day. Not five weeks like in some states.

For instance what if a hostile nation attack one of our allies with nuclear weapons just a few days before an election. The thirty or forty million people who had already voted would not be able to put that data into their choice.

I am in favor of electronic voting as it becomes feasible and safe. I generally oppose initiatives but these are both subjects for another post.

The photo is the Space X launch from Vandenburg AFB last Thursday.

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Election Day Final

A Hohokam petroglyph site near Badger Springs AZ

Politics is applied ethics

No matter how the election turns out today the Hohokam will still be gone and eventually so will we. From the archeological record we haven’t been able to deduce what caused the Hohokam to stop thriving and to eventually abandon the massive irrigation system and the large villages they had built along the Salt and Gila Rivers. With a lot more information, including a written record, we aren’t absolutely sure what caused the Roman Empire to falter and fall about 300CE.

I’ve started working as a volunteer docent at the Pueblo Grande Museum and while I’m learning my stuff I will write blog posts about lots of my discoveries. In this age of Google and Wikipedia it is possible to know almost any fact. But in the archeological record that the Hohokam left there is much that we don’t know. I like to think of it as the anti-google. In the next post we’ll explore why the Hohokam made stone donuts.

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Election Day Four

Piestewa Peak

The election is tomorrow. I voted my heuristic  with a caveat. The Kavanaugh hearings incensed me so much that I wasn’t able to vote for any Democrats this cycle. There was a Libertarian running for mayor of Phoenix so I voted for him. I didn’t put a lot of thought into the whole thing because in reality it doesn’t effect my life very much.

I predict that the “Blue Wave” will not materialize. That the Republican base was energized by the travesty of the Kavanaugh hearings and will get out to vote. While some small portion of the center will stay home or vote against the Democrats for the same reason. The Republicans will easily hold the Senate and will barely hold the House. Gridlock will continue.

Caveat: I’m usually wrong about elections.

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Election Day Three

It is Saturday and the election is on Tuesday but somewhere between 20% and 30% of the people have already voted. Is this good for democracy? On the one hand if voting is easier and more convenient people might be more likely to participate.

On the other hand one of the ways that we feel good about democracy is by the very communal feeling we get by standing in line at the polling place with our neighbors. People could pray at home but churches exist for a reason. Somethings are better done communally and voting might be one of them.

I don’t even have a polling place. In my ward we all vote via mail. I expect it won’t be long until we all vote via our cell phones. Change is……

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Election Day Two

Voter Suppression and Voter Fraud.

Are they real?

This is a joke! Don’t take it seriously.

People on the left are convinced that the right is trying to suppress the votes of the poor and less educated. People on the right are convinced that the left is organizing voter fraud on a massive scale by encouraging multiple voting and non-citizen voting. I’m pretty sure both sides are wrong and this is just electioneering to motivate the various parties bases.

It has never been easier to vote in America. It is easier than getting a drivers license, a smart phone or a debit card.  It shows an extreme lack of faith in your core voters if you think that they can’t get organized to get registered and then to vote.

On the other hand there is very little evidence that there is much voter fraud. It is just too difficult to organize for so few votes.

What we can predict is that if the elections are close the left will blame their loss on voter suppression and if the right loses a close one they will blame their loss on voter fraud. It is the way of our people.

 

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Flashback about Politics

I’m often wrong and I was very wrong in August 2008 when I wrote:

“We are well into the election season and I along with others was lamenting the length and cost of the process in the US. In Europe, it seems, campaigns are only a month or two long. A short election cycle sounds like a good idea but as I thought about it I realized it has a flaw. In a two month campaign we could elect a slick talking but dangerous person like John Edwards. In a one or two year campaign it is a lot harder for people with bad ideas or just smoke and mirrors to get through all of the hurdles. So the permanent campaign may be a price we have to pay to select the people most likely to be able to run the country.”

I wrote this in 2008 and I was wrong. Recent events (the election of Donald Trump) have shown that our longer election cycle does not produce better results than the shorter European cycle.