Reveal your vote!

[Reginald McGraw]

I will reveal my ballot publicly on Election Eve!

But maybe a little at a time here...

President, I'm going Elon Musk
I will vote Gary Johnson for the powerless VP position.
Okay, I can get behind Sobhani for Senate.
I'll take the Libertarian candidate for the House seat: Paul W. Drgos Jr. -- this man has very few vowels in his name.
I get to vote for no more than 2 judges for the circuit court...but there are only 2 judges running. I will vote for none of them.
****Instead I'll vote for Andy and Andrew Gifford!
Two judges for Appellate Circuit and Court of Special Appeals, I can vote yes or no for continuance in office. I always vote No for these. Get them out!

Board of Education is up next
Bob Ballinger and Jackie Scott

So now to the Constitutional Amendments:
1: You have to be a member of the Bar to be Orphan's Court Judge in Baltimore County
2: You have to be a member of the Bar to be Orphan's Court Judge in PG County

I will vote yes to 1 and no to 2. That way I can still be judge of the Orphan's Court in PG county later.

[nacho]

Reggie -- in re to the BoE post a few above (post-merge): You do far more research than I do! Just keeping up in the papers or is there some sort of resource site? Your vampire incumbents and you.com!

Ah yes! So "The Patch" is this system of hyper-local news sites that AOL started a few years back. So you get news for just your town, but larger regional stories can flow into multiple "patches". I have an RSS feed to the patch site for my town which leads me to be "in the know" about all the ridiculous things that the school board does, when someone plants hidden cameras in womens' homes, and sundry other news that is mostly irrelevant. They do a pretty good job of meeting their charter.

Holy shit. Look what Reggie showed me! Silver Spring man starts community garden!

So Patch led me to (a) The county's "wait time" app for voting and this guy:

http://silverspring.patch.com/articles/silver-spring-retiree-running-as-write-in-presidential-candidate

Also -- we're listed!

http://silverspring.patch.com/events/asp-publication-reading-for-a-secret-woman-and-billy-christmas

You coming, Reggie?

[Reginald McGraw]

No...I've been fighting a bug all week and Thurs is my only night with no obligations this week. Although I do relish the thought to walking out with pockets full of pork.

[nacho]

So none of my friends are going to come to the gonzo blowout book party of the year! This could well be the swansong, as well, if there's not another confusion title in 2013.

[Reginald McGraw]

I will reveal my ballot publicly on Election Eve!

But maybe a little at a time here...

President, I'm going Elon Musk
I will vote Gary Johnson for the powerless VP position.
Okay, I can get behind Sobhani for Senate.
I'll take the Libertarian candidate for the House seat: Paul W. Drgos Jr. -- this man has very few vowels in his name.
I get to vote for no more than 2 judges for the circuit court...but there are only 2 judges running. I will vote for none of them.
****Instead I'll vote for Andy and Andrew Gifford!
Two judges for Appellate Circuit and Court of Special Appeals, I can vote yes or no for continuance in office. I always vote No for these. Get them out!

Board of Education is up next
Bob Ballinger and Jackie Scott

So now to the Constitutional Amendments:
1: You have to be a member of the Bar to be Orphan's Court Judge in Baltimore County
2: You have to be a member of the Bar to be Orphan's Court Judge in PG County

I will vote yes to 1 and no to 2. That way I can still be judge of the Orphan's Court in PG county later.

More amendments

3: Elected officials are suspended when found guilty of a serious crime and fired when they stop appealing. Versus working during the entire appeals process.
4: Illegal aliens get in-state tuition in maryland after jumping through approximately 700 hoops that make them more American than me.

Yes to both seems fine. Although I have a slight hesitation about #3...is the suspension paid? Seems like some unfairness if it's unpaid and the conviction is overturned later. I'm just going to assume it's paid or the official get's back-pay if the conviction is reversed.

[nacho]

My early voting plans have been dashed by Sandy!

[Reginald McGraw]

I don't get why early voting is a thing.

I read that people were waiting like 3 hours in line to vote early. Why wouldn't you just leave and vote on election day...or a different early voting day?

[Reginald McGraw]

I will reveal my ballot publicly on Election Eve!

But maybe a little at a time here...

President, I'm going Elon Musk
I will vote Gary Johnson for the powerless VP position.
Okay, I can get behind Sobhani for Senate.
I'll take the Libertarian candidate for the House seat: Paul W. Drgos Jr. -- this man has very few vowels in his name.
I get to vote for no more than 2 judges for the circuit court...but there are only 2 judges running. I will vote for none of them.
****Instead I'll vote for Andy and Andrew Gifford!
Two judges for Appellate Circuit and Court of Special Appeals, I can vote yes or no for continuance in office. I always vote No for these. Get them out!

Board of Education is up next
Bob Ballinger and Jackie Scott

So now to the Constitutional Amendments:
1: You have to be a member of the Bar to be Orphan's Court Judge in Baltimore County
2: You have to be a member of the Bar to be Orphan's Court Judge in PG County

Amendments to the Maryland Constitution
I will vote yes to 1 and no to 2. That way I can still be judge of the Orphan's Court in PG county later
Ballot Questions
3: Elected officials are suspended when found guilty of a serious crime and fired when they stop appealing. Versus working during the entire appeals process. -- Yes
4: Illegal aliens get in-state tuition in maryland after jumping through approximately 700 hoops that make them more American than me. -- Yes

Although I have a slight hesitation about #3...is the suspension paid? Seems like some unfairness if it's unpaid and the conviction is overturned later. I'm just going to assume it's paid or the official get's back-pay if the conviction is reversed.

I found out about the above....it's unpaid suspension, but back-pay if the conviction is reversed.

More Ballot Questions
5: Congressional Districting -- I'm voting no for this one. I have mixed feelings about it and it is probably the least clear for me. So why no? It appears to have become a partisan issue and so I'm voting for the little guy. In MD that is the Republican side.
6: Gay Marriage -- I'm voting yes. I certainly don't want the government to be making choices about religious definitions. And vice versa.

[nacho]

I don't get why early voting is a thing.

I read that people were waiting like 3 hours in line to vote early. Why wouldn't you just leave and vote on election day...or a different early voting day?

I wanted to do it to get it over with...and because I thought there would be no lines! I wouldn't wait three hours...because, yes, then one might as well just wait till Election Day.

So everyone's had the same idea, I guess... And it was hyped as a Sandy victim over and over and over again in the news.

5: Congressional Districting -- I'm voting no for this one. I have mixed feelings about it and it is probably the least clear for me. So why no? It appears to have become a partisan issue and so I'm voting for the little guy. In MD that is the Republican side.

Isn't this a census thing? I vote yes on this because I figure it's using the latest demographics to shift it around -- reflecting our mini-migrations.

[Reginald McGraw]

Okay, yes...your early voting usage is sane.

As to the redistricting...yeah, all the districts have to have the same number of people in them, but there has been talk that the allocation is not really fair. One new district is 210 miles long...not necessarily wrong or bad, but when a potential Democratic gubernatorial candidate (comptroller, Peter Franchot) says:

“I am a Democrat, and I like to win elections as much of the next guy -- but not by fixing the outcome and not by compromising our state’s reputation by making a mockery of the electoral process."

I think that's significant.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-10-16/news/bal-franchot-urges-no-vote-on-redistricting-map-20121016_1_congressional-map-congressional-districts-comptroller-peter-franchot

[nacho]

Huh... well, that sort of influences my blind approval on that one.

[Reginald McGraw]

Yeah...like I said, I'm just not sure, but it feels funny.

[Reginald McGraw]

I will reveal my ballot publicly on Election Eve!

But maybe a little at a time here...

President, I'm going Elon Musk
I will vote Gary Johnson for the powerless VP position.
Okay, I can get behind Sobhani for Senate.
I'll take the Libertarian candidate for the House seat: Paul W. Drgos Jr. -- this man has very few vowels in his name.
I get to vote for no more than 2 judges for the circuit court...but there are only 2 judges running. I will vote for none of them.
****Instead I'll vote for Andy and Andrew Gifford!
Two judges for Appellate Circuit and Court of Special Appeals, I can vote yes or no for continuance in office. I always vote No for these. Get them out!

Board of Education is up next
Bob Ballinger and Jackie Scott

So now to the Constitutional Amendments:
1: You have to be a member of the Bar to be Orphan's Court Judge in Baltimore County
2: You have to be a member of the Bar to be Orphan's Court Judge in PG County

Amendments to the Maryland Constitution
I will vote yes to 1 and no to 2. That way I can still be judge of the Orphan's Court in PG county later
Ballot Questions
3: Elected officials are suspended when found guilty of a serious crime and fired when they stop appealing. Versus working during the entire appeals process. -- Yes
4: Illegal aliens get in-state tuition in maryland after jumping through approximately 700 hoops that make them more American than me. -- Yes

More Ballot Questions
5: Congressional Districting -- I'm voting no for this one. I have mixed feelings about it and it is probably the least clear for me. So why no? It appears to have become a partisan issue and so I'm voting for the little guy. In MD that is the Republican side.
6: Gay Marriage -- I'm voting yes. I certainly don't want the government to be making choices about religious definitions. And vice versa.

Last Statewide ballot question:
7: Add an additional [c-sin-] and allow table games like [***Censored names of games***] at all [c-sin-]s.  -- Yes to this. Despite the fact that [c-sin-]s remain one of the most depressing places to pass through (admittedly my sample size is small, but I've yet to visit one where the main participants seemed to be having fun rather than vacantly plugging money into a slot machine or tossing chips to a dealer). I also don't think that [c-sin-]s stay a legitimate business model once they are ubiquitous. My main reason for voting yes is that I haven't heard any good reason as to why the government so tightly controls gambling at all. It seems that as a primary beneficiary of the success of the [c-sin-]s, they have a conflict of interest to insure the success of the same. So yeah, let's have more of them to move toward the point where the [c-sin-]s actually compete with each other and start going out of business.

Wow...I had more to say about that than I thought.

The rest of my ballot is comprised of 5 amendments to my county's charter which I will share tomorrow.

[Reginald McGraw]

Interesting. I fought with the forums to post that for the past couple days. Apparently c-a-s-i-n-o is a no-no word!

[nacho]

Yeah... Big Brother:

http://www.greatsociety.org/forums/index.php/topic,4888.msg150954.html#msg150954