Voting Day!

Sorry, I have about four half-written blog posts about cool NPR stories that I haven't gotten around to finishing, but it's election day! NPR is full of stories about electioneering, voter fraud, and general voter excitement, which is what I experienced.

Today was my last ever vote at a real polling place because King County is going absentee-only after this election. Given that 90% of King County votes absentee already, I was really surprised to see the crowds at the polling station this morning, and excited crowds at that! Unlike some places on the East Coast, I only had to wait about a minute before checking in and getting my ballot, but there were more people there than I'd ever seen in an election, including the last presidential election.

It's really too bad that we're going to get rid of this opportunity for educating our kids and just getting together to do our duty as citizens, especially since in order to tally absentee ballots we apparently have to go through a lot of rigmarole (see this description from The Stranger). There are also lots of stories of people who have signatures on their ballot envelopes that don't match their signatures on record, or who accidentally signed their ballots and invalidated them (you can't sign the actual ballot, just the envelope). Does this really seem like a good system?

Either way, happy voting everyone! And if you haven't yet (and you live in WA), go vote Yes on I-1000.

Voting the Issues

This seemed to be a good day for folks interested in health care as a political issue. First, this morning on Day to Day, they compared Senator Obama and McCain's health care plans. Trudy Lieberman explained that under McCain's plan families would get a $5000 tax credit to buy health care, but

(a) this wouldn't grow as health care costs went up,
(b) average cost for health care for a family of 4 is $12,000, and
(c) if you get health care from your employer, you'll have to start paying taxes on it.

For the latter, I'm not sure what happens if you work for a self-insured company like Microsoft - would I pay taxes on a set amount per year that Microsoft pays to "insure" me or would I pay taxes on any money spent on my personal health care? If it's the latter, it seems like people who are really sick could potentially end up losing income because they have to go on disability at the same time they might have to pay astronomical tax bills. Obama's plan is supposed to allow anyone currently insured by Medicare or their employer to keep their current coverage while people who don't have either will have the opportunity to buy "government" insurance. The latter is a little unclear, but at least it doesn't sound catastrophic like McCain's plan. I can't see how his plan helps a single person, but it certainly could hurt quite a few.

Then, on Marketplace Jeremy Hobson interviewed some laid off Wall Street workers about what regulations they thought were needed and would influence their vote in the next election. One of them was laid off in February and while he had enough money to cover expenses, the fact that he lost his health care as part of losing his job meant his health care bills shot through the roof right when his income tanked. (Correction: as my good friend B, who worked in the benefits industry in a former life, points out, he didn't really lose his health care, but he had to start paying for COBRA out of pocket.) I hadn't really thought about the fact that having health care tied to your job really means you get hit right when you're down, but it just shows that even Obama's plan doesn't go far enough in really providing health care as a right to all Americans as it is in every other developed country.

Ultimately this election I'm doing a lot of voting against people. I'm voting against Dino Rossi rather than for Chris Gregoire for Governor because he's a creepy lackey for business organizations. I'm voting against Toby Nixon rather than for Roger Goodman for State Senator because Toby sent a flame mail complaining about something I'd done at work years ago that had no basis in reality (go ahead and call me petty, but I'm not voting for him!). And I'm voting against McCain (and most decidedly against Palin - don't even get me started there!) rather than for Obama. McCain's crazy health care plan is just one more item on the list of reasons I think it would be a disaster if he won.

15 days and counting.

Wednesday Silliness

NPR seemed to be getting it’s sillies on last Wednesday, and it made for a great day of radio.

First of all, A pointed me to a fabulous story on Morning Edition about Russian leaders. This could have been a very serious or even depressing story, but instead Robert Krulwich chose to focus on the fact that Russian leaders have alternated through history as bald, then hairy, then bald, then hairy etc. And not only did he cover this very silly issue with aplomb, but he then created a song!! I couldn’t possibly do it justice by writing about it, so I suggest you check out the whole story and song here.

Then, on All Things Considered Robert Siegel decided to do some investigative reporting on the phrase “putting lipstick on a pig” after the most recent Obama/McCain contrived controversy. For those who haven’t been paying attention, especially to manufactured insults, the “controversy” went something like this:

1. Obama said McCain was just like Bush and that his policies would not be real change, but just “putting lipstick on a pig”.
2. The McCain campaign accused Obama of sexism because Palin had made a joke about lipstick last week saying that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull was lipstick.
3. Obama said that was foolish.

Because McCain’s accusation was so ridiculous I was frustrated to hear that Mr. Siegel was going to give it any credence at all by reporting on it, but he went beyond the normal “here’s what happened” to doing a classic investigation.

First, he did some research into how long the phrase has been around and played some classic examples – such as McCain himself calling Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan (and note she’s a woman too!) “putting lipstick on a pig”. Not content with that, Mr. Siegel called up Joel Salatin, best known by foodies around the world for his role in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma as a sustainable-growth farmer. Salatin was out in his field with 50 pigs and some “ruby red” lipstick and proceeded to attempt to actually put lipstick on the pig. He complained that the pigs didn’t have much lip and it was more like putting lipstick on a hairbrush, and also that the pigs seemed to prefer to eat the lipstick rather than wearing it, but after a short struggle he was able to report back that the pig indeed did not look any better with the lipstick on. Excellent reporting, and very, very silly.

The Really, Really Big M's

On All Things Considered last night, Adam Davidson talked about what would have happened if Fannie May and Freddie Mac had failed, and I was shocked to hear that the amount of debt that they’re in for is $5 trillion dollars, which puts them at a larger debt than any other country (aside from the credit-riding US of course). What that means is that if Japan or the UK went bankrupt, it would have a smaller financial impact on the world than the potential bankruptcy of Fannie and Freddie. This is pretty scary news and really gives a perspective on both how important and how crazy these two companies are. As someone who’s averse to any kind of debt, it seems to me to underscore a lot of what’s wrong with our American culture.
One thing to note is that I was surprised at how much debt Fanny and Freddie were carrying, but at least I know that they were private institutions. That’s more than I can say for Sarah Palin, who seems to think that they’re taxpayer funded but doesn’t see her complete ignorance of important issues (among many other things to be covered in an upcoming blog rant) as a problem.

Primaries

Yesterday was Primary day, and I was unprepared. As I said in my prior post, I've been a bit distracted, and although I am the PCO* for a neighboring district and spent a couple hours leaving Primary-day endorsement pamphlets (i.e. cheat sheets) on the doorsteps of Democrats in my precinct, I hadn't had a chance to read through and mark up my voter's pamphlet the way I usually do. Plus, at around 7pm I was at C's house as per my normal Tuesday night tradition and realized I had totally forgotten to go to the polls! Luckily, C was understanding so we hopped into my car, drove home to get my voter registration card, voter pamphlet, and one of my left-over cheat sheets, and walked to my polling station.

We arrived in good time - there didn't seem to be many people there and the older women who always (wo)man the sign-in tables seemed excited to see us. I think I was a little more excited than most people who come through there, because they asked me if it was my first time voting, and then were very excited that C was there as an international observer. The poll worker reminded me that if I didn’t want C to look over my shoulder, I had a right to tell her to go away, which was not necessary but kind of cute. We decided to try the electronic voting machine again just for kicks, and headed over to the one machine available. (During this time, perhaps 5-10 people came in and voted, all using paper ballots.) Some things I noticed beyond what I shared during last November’s election:

• This was the first (and I really hope, last) year of the top-two primary. In this new system, Washington voters who for some reason have missed the fact that the purpose of the primary is to let party loyalists choose their candidates for their own party can now vote for anyone they want, with the top two vote-getters ending up on the general election ballot. Although in most cases this means a Democrat and a Republican will end up there (which cuts out the smaller parties completely) there are some areas and races where, after the election yesterday, two Democrats or two Republicans will end up on the ballot. This seems pretty dumb to me because if you have, for instance, three really capable Republicans and two really capable Democrats on the ballot, and assuming you have approximately a 50/50 split of voters for each party, you could end up with each Democrat receiving 25% of the vote and each Republican receiving 16.5%, and then end up with two Democrats on the ballot because the Republican vote got split amongst more qualified people. I don’t get why this is an improvement.
• As part of this top-two primary, each candidate has to say which party they associate with, but there’s no way for you to tell which of the “Democratic” candidates is the one that the party is really backing. However, the Republicans have figured out a sneaky system. I’d heard that Dino Rossi, the main Republican gubernatorial candidate, was planning to say “supports the GOP” instead of “supports the Republican Party” to avoid negative connotations about the Republicans in this election year . It turns out that all the “official” Republican candidates were doing the same thing, while the unofficial ones didn’t seem to get the memo. For the Democrats, though, you had to rely on your cheat sheet, if you had one.
• Last November I said that my printed-out ballot was hidden behind a plastic cover so I couldn’t review it. It turns out you can lift the cover to watch it print out. I have no idea why they wouldn’t have just used a clear cover so you could see it at all times.
• C and I tried to select a write-in candidate for one office, and it turns out you need to type in the candidate name and also their party affiliation. I found this very odd – I guess you could just type in your party affiliation and hope, but what happens if you got it wrong?
• I was amused at how uncomfortable C was about looking over my shoulder while I voted, despite the fact that I’d invited her to do so. I don’t know if it was because the whole “secret ballot” thing was drilled into her as a child or if it’s a Canadian thing (always a good place to put the blame) but either way, you should know that if C comes to the polls with you, and you haven’t done your research on a particular candidate so you hand her the voter pamphlet and tell her to read it and tell you who to vote for, you will be privy to a pretty funny look of shock and horror.
• Finally, some voting machine humor from XKCD for your entertainment:

*Precinct Committee Officer (or something like that)

The Gumdrop's Progress OR Why I've Been Too Distracted To Post

Come January J and I will be welcoming a new NPR listener to the planet, known currently as "The Gumdrop". Over the past months I've been updating my messenger picture with Office Online clipart to track the gumdrop's size and thought I'd share the collection so far with you. I find it pretty astounding myself.

Here's to many more years of growing and learning and excitement to come!

Cell-etiquette

Today on Morning Edition there were two stories back-to-back about California’s new cellphone driving policy. I was pretty confused about what the actual policy was, but it seems to boil down to this: as of today, drivers can’t hold their phones while talking. That’s it. If you want to text, dial, play solitaire, read your email, or use the vibrate mode in a way other than it’s intended, that’s fine. But if you’re talking, you need to be hands-free. So I have a few issues with this, as usual:

1. The goal of this law is to reduce accidents, and I can understand that cell-phone talking causes distractions. But it seems like there’s no specific data that backs up the fact that talking on your Bluetooth headset is any better for distractions than holding your phone. I’ll agree it’s more comfortable, and I’ve enjoyed using mine the last year or so, but less distracting? And certainly, it seems like if anything dialing and writing on your phone take a lot more concentration and are therefore even more distracting, so why not ban them too?
2. My real goal with this law (and it’s all about me, of course) would be to enforce J’s cellphone etiquette. I read on Slate.com that the currently accepted rule is that you should only be talking, texting, or playing with your phone in the same circumstances under which you’d be solving a crossword puzzle. When I brought this up to my group of symphony friends they suggested you could do a crossword puzzle in a collaborative way, so we decided we should really go with Sudoku. So if you play Sudoku while driving (and it is still legal, remember) then talking while driving should be fine too. But I certainly don’t play Sudoku while out to dinner with friends, and I wish J wouldn’t either. Also our same friends decided that while C’s husband’s “other girlfriend is his boat”, J’s “other girlfriend” is a “regularly changing set of small electronic devices” so I think it’s a good sign that he needs to keep his cellphone in his pocket where it belongs…but that’s a whole other matter.
3. California has had gubernatorial press conferences, ads, and public statements galore regarding this new rule, to make sure people understood what was coming. But Washington apparently implemented the same law today as well, and I haven’t heard a peep about it anywhere. Are we not worthy of a couple quick commercial announcements, or have I been living under a rock and just not noticed?

So for those in California, and those in Washington state, I bid you good driving, with your cellphone firmly ensconced pretty much anywhere but next to your ear. Enjoy.