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I have to vote tomorrow.

A month ago, I would have told you this was my decision tree for the presidential primary:

1. If Bernie is definitely going to win, vote Bernie, because he'll need as much "mandate" as he can get at that point.
2. If Hillary is definitely going to win, vote Bernie, because I want to keep pushing the establishment as far left as it will go.
3. If there's no clear winner yet, I might have to actually decide who I would rather win, but hahaha, like we'll ever get to late April without a clear front-runner in this race.

UM. WELL THEN. Yay democracy?

Usually in cases where I can't decide on the merits I vote for whoever is not a white straight Christian dude on the basis that they have enough unconscious bias against them that I'm just balancing things out, but. That will not work in this race. Yay democracy?

I think fivethirtyeight has convinced me that actually Bernie's chances of getting a majority of elected delegates nationally is minuscule at this point, so I will probably assume scenario 2 and vote for him, but man, this race.

Downticket I am voting for a senator, a congressman, four circuit court judges, and delegates to the presidential convention. (Most of our state and local races are in off-years, and there are no ballot issues in the primaries.)

Nobody has yet explained to me to my satisfaction what a vote in the delegate races actually means, given that a) the delegates we are voting for are already pledged, but b) the number of pledged delegates sent to the convention for each candidate are determined solely by the presidential preference vote, not the delegate race.

Presumably, if the popular vote went to Hillary but all the delegate races went to pledged Bernie delegates, the ballot papers would catch fire and the state central committee would sink into the Bay.

I may try that this year again.

In the Senate race, there is a long list of candidates, but only two of them have been getting taken seriously. I read over the whole list in the League of Women Voters guide just in case, but they are the only two who know how to punctuate and use a spellcheck, so I think it really is down to just them. They are both current congresspeople from districts close to DC. Both of them have some impressive achievements in Congress and have positions I like OK, and I've heard good things about how they both operate. The white dude with the establishment connections is a fine choice and will probably have an easier time in the general election, but I like the black lady too and the senate needs more black ladies (by which I mean, at least one.)

In the House race, it's our incumbent, who I like okay, and have met several times without ever either needing a shower afterwards or wanting to throw a punch, although I am still a bit dubious about voting for second-generation political dynasties, vs. an eminently punchable white dude who can't write a coherent position statement, so incumbent it is.

The Circuit Court race is theoretically non-partisan sort of. It is four incumbent judges who were appointed by the governor's office vs. three challengers. I have nothing really *against* any of the incumbents, although I have never really been involved with the circuit court, so, if anyone has anything against any of them, now is your chance. They have been going around talking about how they are supported by our current governor, though, and I really really really want somebody to punch him in the face, repeatedly. Also there has been some chicanery about two of the the challengers, who just happen to be the only people in the race who are not white, getting excluded from some of the local Republican candidate events for 'procedural reasons'.

I am probably going to end up voting for everyone whose "equality" position was "we need to do something about racial bias in the courts" rather than "of course you can trust judges to be impartial". Which coincidentally will be the two black challengers and the two white lady incumbents who were appointed by our previous, very-slightly-less-punchable governor.

Isn't democracy fun. I shall reward myself for voting with sweet potato fries from the outdoor food stand next door. And possibly a sausage, if they have sausages there. ^_^

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If you're picking specific delegates, maybe it has to do with what they would choose to do if it went to a free-for-all after the first ballot (or whatever the dem convention rules are on when delegates get unbound, I haven't cared enough to look this cycle). We had a presidential preference election and then a thing for picking delegates, and I didn't go to the delegates one because while I appreciate local democracy, um, I guess not that much. ;)

That would make sense, but I'm pretty sure the name next to them on the ballot is the candidate they're pledged to on the first vote at the convention. (It would be super misleading otherwise, since people usually just vote for the delegates listed for their candidate.) (They could still be bound after the first vote - I don't actually know, since it hasn't mattered in ages and won't this year either - but that doesn't change the problem of what do if the delegate election doesn't match the preference.)

My dad actually ran for convention delegate once but it was back in the smoke-filled-room days when we were directly electing delegates with no binding preference vote, so that doesn't help.

That would make sense, but I'm pretty sure the name next to them on the ballot is the candidate they're pledged to on the first vote at the convention.

Okay, now I'm also really confused, I didn't realize it was formatted like that!

Oh, well, I may not have been super-clear about the formatting?

The first ballot item is basically:
Vote for President:
_Jean Bahorel
_Jean Enjolras
_Jean Grantaire
...and then we have the congressional races and so on

and then the last ballot item is
Vote for X number of Delegates to the Convention
_Jean Bossuet (Grantaire)
_Jean Combeferre (Enjolras)
_Jean Courfeyrac (Enjolras)
_Jean Feuilly (Bahorel)
_Jean Joly (Grantaire)
_Gavroche Jondrette (Bahorel)
_Musichetta Jeanne (Enjolras)
_Marius Pontmercy (Uncommitted)
_Jean Prouvaire (Bahorel)

...etc. Usually each candidate has exactly X delegates listed and there are a few listed as uncommitted. The implication is that you vote for your candidate's delegates and then they go to the convention, and so far that has always been how it works, but I have yet to find what happens if it stopped working.

(It didn't work for Trump in some of the republican primaries because apparently Trump voters would rather vote for Cruz delegates than Trump delegates with Arabic-looking names. So it's at least theoretically possible...)

LOL. Marius would be uncommitted. He'd probably write in Napoleon if he could.

His plan is to wait for a contested convention and then put Napoleon forward as a compromise candidate. ^_^

"Napoleon is the best. What more could we want of a candidate?"

"TO BE FREE."

It didn't work for Trump in some of the republican primaries because apparently Trump voters would rather vote for Cruz delegates than Trump delegates with Arabic-looking names.

Oh my god humans. HUMANS. /o\

I mean, it's predictable if the platform you're running on could be summarized as "we hate Muslims" and I suspect it may even have been a strategy on the part of the people in the state committees who assigned delegates to candidates. but.

yeah.

Edited (I was being unfair) 2016-04-20 01:22 (UTC)

Thanks for writing this :-)

I get to vote next month on my local council & police commissioner, and the month after on whether the UK stays in the EU. I am rather more worried about the second one.

Sweet potato fries sound like an excellent reward.

I am sorry you have to deal with Brexit! And both sides of that seem, as far as I can tell from this side of the pond, to have a lot of eminently face-punch-deserving proponents. :/

I ended up getting apple fritters because I didn't think I could manage a giant tray of fries *and* a sausage, but they were also excellent!

As a Pennsylvania voter, I am having the same problem with the Democratic presidential primary, but with a side of, "I really want this to be over, so maybe I'll just vote for Hillary."

I made the mistake of reading the comments on the fivethirtyeight liveblog last night, which resulted in me voting for Hillary after all, because someone really needs to put the Bernie bros out of their misery asap. With prejudice. Nobody deserves more of that level of entitled whining than absolutely necessary, policy disagreements or not.

(This is really teaching me bad things about how I honestly choose candidates. But really, punchability seems like a fair tiebreaker when nothing else works. Including 'punchability of most vocal supporters'.)

I'm actually coming at it from the opposite side -- I haven't personally encountered any Bernie bros, but I'm absolutely surrounded by Hillary supporters whose behavior is every bit as off-putting as theirs is reported to be. And I just want them to shut up.

I know my personally voting for Hillary isn't going to make them shut up -- I haven't even dared to say that I planned to vote for Bernie -- but I am desperate enough to be completely illogical at this point. I'm so convinced she's going to get the nomination that I'd just like to hasten his campaign's demise so I can get some peace.

Of course, before the peace, there will be gloating, and that's going to be just as bad. So really what I want is to go hide in a cave away from politics until Inauguration Day

Ah. Around here (and in the internet places I frequent) it's mostly Bernie people who are very loud, and getting whinier and less reality-based and more crypto-misogynist as they get more desperate. I think most of the strident Hillary-ites in this area have already moved into quietly smug and/or worried about the general election.

But don't vote for Hillary just to shut them up! You can always vote for Bernie and then not tell them you did, that is why we go to so much trouble to have a secret ballot.

Isn't democracy fun. I shall reward myself for voting with sweet potato fries from the outdoor food stand next door. And possibly a sausage, if they have sausages there. ^_^

Wait, that is a thing in the US? I thought it was only Australia that had sausage sizzles and bake sales outside polling places so voters could reward themselves for voting with barbeque or cake.

Good luck with voting.

Oh, no, it isn't. Actually, probably due to our really awful history of creative voter suppression tactics, anything that might differentially attract or repel certain demographics is heavily discouraged at polling places, by which I mean anything unnecessary at all, so we probably couldn't have sausages even if we wanted to.

But

deird1 taught me about Australian democracy sausages last week (only in Australia would you have unironic democracy sausages), and the early voting location just happens to be right next door to a year-round pit beef place that has smoked sausages. And also really good sweet potato fries. And fried mushrooms. And corn and apple fritters. So in honor of Australia, I got a sausage (and apple fritters instead of sweet potato fries because apple fritters sounded really good.)

(I've never actually had their pit beef because I just fill up on deep-fried things from the sides menu.)

I am hung up on trying to figure out my local school board race... the candidates mostly have very vague, bland statements in the LWV guide, and I haven't found any other coverage of them at all.

Augh, that's tough. And they could all spell in the LWV guide, even? (Most of my low-publicity options got eliminated for lack of ability to write a coherent statement...)

No facebook pages, even? My best suggestion is to keep an eye out for in-person local election events (like candidate forums) but it's probably way too late for that even if you could get to them.

My laptop is too old to load FB pages even if they had them, unfortunately. But yes, their LWV statements are mostly bland and meaningless, but mostly grammatical.

Frustratingly, I never even found enough coverage of the election to find out if there were any candidate forums. Even the local free monthly newsletter isn't reporting on it.

Lacking other info, I may end up defaulting to "skim through the names and vote for whichever one doesn't sound like a white guy."

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