2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[Frelga]

Dang, that's a cute picture.

[RoseMorninStar]

They look so happy.

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaking of 2022 senate candidate J.D. Vance:

(1) In 2016, Vance announced that he was moving back to Ohio to launch a non-profit organization to fight drug addiction. Earlier this week, Business Insider published an article about the organization's work. It seems to have done almost nothing. The magazine had an independent expert in non-profit taxes review the filings by the organization, Our Ohio Renewal, and found that it spent more on its executive director than on its nominal services; he refered to the filings as "a charade." Also the organization has shut down its website.

(2) Yesterday Vance tweeted this about Jeffrey Epstein: "Remember when we learned that our wealthiest and most powerful people were connected to a guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring? And then that guy died mysteriously in a jail? And now we just don't talk about it."

Does that mean Vance is turning on Donald Trump?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The latest bound to fail effort to pass a voting rights bill.

Democrats cut deal with Manchin to get party behind long-shot voting overhaul bill

I am quite sure that Manchin is well affair that there is no chance that 10 Republicans are going to support this (or any, most likely). Once that occurs, will he change his tune on a carve-out to the filibuster? I wouldn't bet my house on it. In fact, I wouldn't bet the birdhouse in the yard on it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The California recall election was called in favor of keeping Newsom in office within minutes of the polls closing. A big waste of over $300 million.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yeah, they need to raise the threshold for those things -- signatures from just 12% of the number of people who voted for governor in the last election were needed to put this on the ballot.

And maybe California should require that U.S. Senators who leave office before their term expires must be replaced by someone from the same party? The leading Republican candidate said hat if he won and Dianne Feinstein were to step down, he'd replace her with a Republican.

[N.E. Brigand]

And it looks like none of the above was the leading candidate to replace Newsom?

[Frelga]

I guess Abbott and DeSantis were of some service. We could point and say, look, do you want us to end up like Texas and Florida?

[N.E. Brigand]

We had a mayoral election tonight in Cleveland that had one nationally-known candidate: Dennis Kuchinich, the "boy mayor" of Cleveland in the 1970s, now 74, who was a U.S. Congressman from 1997 to 2013 and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008. I voted for him a number of times for Congress, but never for the presidency and not today for mayor. (The top two candidates today, Justin Bibb and Kevin Kelly, both Democrats, will face off in November.)

[Frelga]

Huh. Another Kevin? Somehow there were three Kevins on the California governor wannabe list.

A glitch in the matrix?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And it looks like none of the above was the leading candidate to replace Newsom?

The results that I am seeing show Elder way, way ahead with 46.6% of the vote (compared to Paffrath with 9.8% in second). Of course there are much fewer votes on question 2 than question 1, but only the votes that are actually cast count.

[Frelga]

There was no None of the Above option.

Newsom's controversial strategy was to tell his supporters to leave the second question blank. Perhaps that's what NE meant? That's different from None of the Above that, if it gained the most votes, would require a new slate.

The California ballot must have been designed by the same people who ran the Crimea "referendum." One page had a bunch of instructions and a small space for a yes or no vote on recall. The other had a long list of candidates for the replacement governor.

It would be ridiculously easy to miss the question on the first page entirely, if one didn't pay attention.

Had 50%+1 voted yes on the 1st question, whoever got the most vote on the 2nd question would have become the new Governor.

[N.E. Brigand]

Sorry, yes, when I wrote that last night, it appeared that a plurality of voters had not answered question number two.

Checking one site, it appears that 9.18 million ballots have been counted, and on the question of who should replace Gavin Newsom, Larry Elder has 2.37 million votes (25.8%), but 4.12 million people (44.9%) didn't pick any candidate. Thus while Elder would be the governor had "Yes" won on question number one, I think it's fair to say that he's losing by 18 points to none of the above. (It's somewhat analogous to Bush received fewer votes than Gore and Trump having received fewer votes than Clinton.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sorry, but that is incorrect reasoning. The people who voted "no" and didn't pick a replacement candidate weren't voting for "none of the above" they were doubly voting for Newsom.

[N.E. Brigand]

Ah, so it would better to say that Elder is actually losing to Newsom on question number two by 18 points.

Or to put it another way: I wasn't including Newsom in "the above."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is, however, very telling that of the people that voted no, such a high percentage voted for Elder (far exceeding the number that polls were showing). It is another indication of where the GOP is right now.

[N.E. Brigand]

Ohio's redistricting commission is nominally bipartisan but actually controlled by Republicans. They've issued their new maps. The maps maintain Republican super-majority control. Why? Because, the Republicans say, they won 13 of the past 16 statewide elections, and that's 81%.

But they won those races with an average total of 54%.

[N.E. Brigand]

U.S. Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio's 16th disrict was one of the ten Republicans to vote for Donald Trump's impeachment earlier this year. Today he announced that he won't be running for reelection in 2022. As currently configured, his rather irregularly shaped district extends to within a few miles of my house.

[River]

Ohio's redistricting commission is nominally bipartisan but actually controlled by Republicans. They've issued their new maps. The maps maintain Republican super-majority control. Why? Because, the Republicans say, they won 13 of the past 16 statewide elections, and that's 81%.

This sounds like a feedback loop.