I'm officially about three "Ask a ScienceBlogger" questions behind, but I didn't want to pass this one up completely:
What's the most important local political race to you this year (as a citizen, as a scientist)?
It's tough to say, because the answer is either "all of them" or "none of them." I thought about writing a voter guide a la Scalzi, but the truth is, my voting this year is entirely determined by a simple algorithm:
I will not vote for the Republican candidate for any office, so long as the current leadership of the national party holds power.
It's as simple as that. I don't care what the personal views or qualities of the individual candidates are, I will not support the corruption, cronyism, and insane ideology of the modern Republican party in any way. It doesn't matter how qualified or moderate you are as a candidate: if you caucus with maniacs, you don't get my vote. Period.
So, to be perfectly honest, I've paid so little attention to this election that I'm not entirely sure who's on the ballot in our district, let alone what they think of science. I know we're getting sleazy RNC-funded attack ads for John Sweeney, but I don't think his district includes Schenectady. When I vote tomorrow, I'm going straight down the Democratic column, with the one exception being the demonstrably crooked candidate, and I'll either throw my vote to some third party or abstain in that race.
And that's all there is to that. I don't need to expend any mental energy on the election, beyond idly wondering how the Democrats will screw things up. It leaves me plenty of time for more important things, such as football and fretting about my tenure case.
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That should be the way to think about this particular election. Get the country back to normal before looking at the nuances of inidividual candidates.
There are a couple of local judicial races, though, in which I will abstain. In one, a judge I do not like is running unopposed. In the other, the nominally Democratic candidate is a total loon (and is not even officially supported by the Dem party).
I will not vote for the Republican candidate for any office, so long as the current leadership of the national party holds power.
Yep. That's exactly my approach. Well, at least for national elections. For local elections, one could perhaps look at individuals as individuals, because those people don't have the ability to put any kind of check on the national executive branch anyway.
I'd make it even stronger than that, though. For national elections, I will vote for the most credible challenger to a Republican candidate. In 2000, I didn't vote for either Bush or Gore. If it were a presidential election this year, I'd vote for whoever the Democrat was. Likewise for Senate races. Third party vote-on-principle votes are nice, but this year it's just too extreme for me to consider that a viable option.
I ranted at length here : http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~rknop/blog/?p=115
The most important vote is California Proposition 90. It ends Enviro-whiner eminent domain government confiscation (stealing private lands and awarding them to cronies for "protection").
Government would be placed in the untenable position of paying prohibitive sums for the diminished value that resulted from government control. Do it. Shove government's corrupt head so far up its nether bung it can look out its own mouth.
There are no Democraps or Republicants. There is only the Party. Do you want Nazi socialism or Marxist-Leninist socialism? Either way it's jackbooted State compassion, a financially raped middle class, and assassination of the future.
I have the problem that Senator Lugar has no Democratic opponent, and the independent candidates are all scary. I'm thinking of a write-in, but I'm not sure who I would pick. Maybe Joe Kernan.
On the national level, I voted Democrat (I vote absentee). On the local level, I voted mostly Democrat except for one where the Democrat is so bad that I voted for the Republican candidate.
I actually took the time to look up all the state supreme court judges who are up for election/reelection. I voted no on 2 of them but I know that people will just vote yes because there is no information published about the candidates in the voter information guide. I feel it is important to know who you are voting to put on the bench.