Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Three things: heat, the Boston city council election and the ballot drop box, and the farmers market

The building heat is broken, and it was cold last night. I sent in a maintenance request after breakfast this morning, and a couple of hours later a maintenance person knocked and told us that there was a problem with the boiler, and they had sent for someone to fix it.

A few hours after that, someone knocked to tell us that the problem wouldn't be fixed at least until tomorrow morning, and offered to lend us space heaters. At my suggestion, adrian_turtle accepted two (they offered three, "one for each bedroom"). We had by then gotten out the two space heaters we own, and hadn't used (or needed) since we moved in. We have mostly been sitting in the study, when not doing things in the kitchen (cooking, making tea, washing the dishes from lunch) or exercising: cattitude did some VR gaming with Patricia, and I've done three sets of PT exercises.

I took the trolley to Copley Square today, in order to drop off my absentee ballot for the city council election. When I got there I discovered that the drop box was closed for Halloween. The sign was ambiguous, so I went into the library and asked the information person whether she knew whether the drop box would be available later, but they hadn't told her. So I called 311, and learned that the boxes will be usable again from tomorrow around noon through Election Day, so I will go back sometime in the next few days (or ask Cattitude or Adrian to do so).

While I was in Copley Square I went to the farmers market -- the chance to do that is why I decided to drop off my ballot today. I got a loaf of bread and a slice of a "chocolate loaf" from Hi-Rise Bakery, plus three Macoun apples from one vendor and an unexpected small box of raspberries from another. Those three apples were the only unbruised and unblemished apples in a half-full box; it has not been a good year for local apples, and the Macouns have been small, but tasty.

ETA: This election is for city council, four at-large seats and one for each district. Both the candidates for the district seat seem reasonable; I voted for the challenger (Jacob deBlecourt) rather than the incumbent. For the at-large seats (eight candidates for four seats) I eliminated the two anti-vax candidates quickly; one is also an insurrectionist. That left six people, which came down to three I like and one who seems OK. In the end I voted for Louijeune, Mejia, and Santana, the three I was sure of, and Murphy as my fourth vote, because I really wanted to vote against Vitale and Nelson (they're the anti-vaxers) and Nee-Walsh after she said that Black Lives Matter had set the cause of Civil Rights back by fifty years.

This is probably redundant, but seems worth mentioning: I just got email reminding me that the Massachusetts voter registration deadline is Oct. 29th, and encouraging me to check my voter registration. I know I'm registered, because I have a vote-by-mail ballot sitting on my desk, but am passing this along in case it's useful to anyone else here.

We have a primary election a week from Tuesday*; since I'll be traveling, I need to complete and return my absentee ballot in the next few days. I asked for the Democratic primary ballot because I had a strong preference in one race, Suffolk County district attorney. I'm not as happy with that candidate, Arroyo, as I was a few weeks ago, but I still prefer him to the guy Baker appointed temporarily after Rachael Rollins went to work for the Biden administration.

There are also some races where either it's difficult to find information, or the available information doesn't help me much. The Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor debated recently, and the only thing they disagreed on (happy hours) is one I don't have an opinion about. And then there's governor's council, and the articles I could find tended to be either "governor's council? what is that anyway?" or "there's a contested primary for this, how odd."

So, what I'm thinking right now:

Governor: Maura Healey (I'd also have been happy with Chang-Diaz, whose name is still on the ballot even though she withdrew a couple of months ago).

Lieutenant Governor: I may skip this one. Update: On gingicat's suggestion, I looked at the campaign websites (which I should have thought of sooner). Based on that, I'm inclining toward Gouveia, but she and Lesser both look good to me. Gouveia's website is more about what she wants to do, and Lesser's is mostly about things he has done or was involved in as a legislator (Driscoll's campaign website is mostly biographical, with little about issues.)

Attorney General: I think Andrea Campbell, because her endorsements include the current AG (Healey, who is running for governor) and Ayanna Pressley.

Secretary of State: Another that I may leave blank, in this case I think both the incumbent and his primary challenger are reasonable choices.

District Attorney: Ricardo Arroyo

Sheriff: The ACLU of Massachusetts has a useful "Know Your Sheriff" website, with candidates' answers to a range of questions. Based on that, I think I'm voting for Calixte, though again both candidates seem good.

Auditor: I think Chris Dempsey, who WBUR referred to as a transportation activist, and was involved in the successful effort to not have the 2024 Olympics in Boston.

Governor's council: Mara Dolan, largely because my state senator, Will Brownsberger, is endorsing her.

* I will be traveling, so my vote-by-mail ballot is in fact an absentee ballot, but Massachusetts now sends one to any voter who asks.

If you're an American citizen and haven't voted yet this year, please do.

If you aren't already registered to vote, you may still have time. I've been doing a lot of get-out-the-vote texting, and if you have questions, I probably either already know the answer or can find it quickly: please ask.

I'm supporting Biden/Harris, and the rest of the Democratic ticket in most places. (I know some states run their primaries differently, and if there's a candidate you're dubious about, follow your own judgment.)

For Massachusetts, YES on ballot question 2, ranked choice voting.

[This may be redundant, but after urging lots of strangers to remind their friends, it would feel remiss not to do the same.]

I asked cattitude to lend me a phone headset for today's calls; it turned out he'd bought two, one of which is now mine. Not having to hold the phone was easier on my hand, but the earbud headphones got uncomfortable after a while (as such things usually do). These came with four different-size covers; I started with the largest, at cattitude's suggestion, because those are what he uses, and am going to experiment with the others.

Today's phone banking was to a different location (Broward County, FL) and a different phone list manager/dialer, and the zoom training session dragged a bit. But I was able to talk to a couple of people in between the wrong numbers and voicemail. As with the Maine calls, I can log in and make calls on my own as well as when they're doing an organized phone bank. This script is more about signing people up to vote by mail, whereas the Maine calls are "vote for these candidates, and voting by mail is easy."

SwingLeft, who are organizing these phone banks, say we can call from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time; I'm not going to be calling people that early, especially on the weekend, but 10:30 or 11 seems plausible.

I'm trying to make at least a few calls almost every day; I'm not going to post unless there's something more interesting than "another day of phone banking, Maine again"

A lot of states are having presidential primaries tomorrow, including Massachusetts. I'm voting for Elizabeth Warren, and (obviously) encourage you to do the same if your state is having its primary tomorrow, and you're a registered Democrat or the state has "open" primaries, meaning you can ask for whichever ballot you prefer.

If anyone tries to stop you from voting tomorrow, call the Voter Rights Action hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.

Since the Minnesota primary is tomorrow, Naomi Kritzer has written it up, with suggestions of who to vote for (and who not to). Yes, the Naomi Kritzer who won a Hugo for "Cat Pictures, Please."

That said, whoever you support, please vote.

If you're a registered Republican, you probably have the chance to vote against the incumbent, though it's unlikely to make a difference.

The states that are having primaries tomorrow (Tuesday, 3 March 2020) are:

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Maine
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• North Carolina
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia

Also, American Samoa is having Democratic nominating caucuses (as a territory, its residents can't vote in the presidential election).

Massachusetts has a primary election next Tuesday; a number of races will effectively be decided that day, because they have more than one candidate in the Democratic primary, and no other-party candidates for that office.

I'm in Middlesex County and the 7th Congressional district, so the relevant races for me include Congress (Capuano or Pressley) and district attorney.

DA is the easy one, for me: I'm supporting Donna Patalano, who I heard about via the ACLU's What a Difference a DA Makes campaign.
Reasons to vote for Patalano:

• She promises to immediately end cash bail for nonviolent offenses (that would be enough, imho); she promises to change the approach to road safety, to remove the assumption that a cyclist or pedestrian is at fault when hit by a car, and the driver is not;
• She wants the state to repeal mandatory minimum sentences as a way to fight mass incarceration;
• She supports "presumptive discovery," meaning the prosecutor turns over all evidence to defense attorneys unless there are specific (narrow) reasons not to. She says she'll lobby for a bill requiring that throughout the state, and practice it in her office in the meantime.
• She says sensible things about conviction integrity, whereas I am unhappy with the incumbent (Ryan)for dragging her feet on setting aside known-tainted convictions after the drug lab scandal. (I made numerous calls to her office about that; they clearly weren't prepared for calls saying they should set aside all the convictions, rather than asking about the procedure for getting a specific conviction dropped.)

I'm undecided on the congressional race, because there doesn't seem to be much difference between the incumbent, Mike Capuano, and the challenger, Ayanna Pressley. Capuano's campaign flyer is about how strongly he will resist Trump; Pressley's talks about bold leadership and says she will promote Medicare for all, gun-violence reform, and "get[ting] money out of politics." Capuano seems pretty sound on the issues I care about, if less visible in the press than (say) Katherine Clark, who represented me when I lived in Arlington.

Similarly, with governor: I will be voting for the Democratic candidate in November, because both Gonzalez and Massie are a lot better than Gov. Baker, let alone the gay-bashing pastor who is running against Baker in the primary. However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of policy difference between Gonzalez and Massie; Gonzalez is the one with significant previous government experience, and Massie is an activist/lobbyist. If you know of any substantive reason to support one over the other, please tell me.

Similarly, I'm looking for opinions and information on the Secretary of State election (Galvin is the incumbent, Zakim is challenging him) and Lieutenant Governor (Palfrey, who identifies himself as a former assistant DA, vs. Tingle).

If the election was today, I'd be voting for Gonzalez, because I apparently am still annoyed at Massie for standing with a large number of supporters right where the Pride Parade route fed into City Hall Plaza, and it felt like he was trying to make Pride into a Massie rally. (Lots of politicians marched, also with supporters, but seeing them walk past me felt different than walking past that crowd right at the end of the parade.) I realize this is basically a style point; Gonzalez was there shaking hands as I waited to enter the State House for a rally in support of the $15 minimum wage a few weeks earlier.

(My incumbent state legislators, both of whom I am quite happy with, are unopposed, as is the Middlesex County Register of Deeds; Senator Warren will have a Republican opponent in the general election. The only office the Libertarian Party has a candidate for is Auditor; that will be a three-way race in November.)

I was going to say "I have voted," but I haven't dropped it in the mailbox yet. I miss walking into a school and using an actual voting machine, but that's sentiment; mail-in paper ballots seem like a reasonable way of holding an election.

My ballot has three city council seats, with two candidates for each; the neighborhood is absolutely full of lawn signs for one seat, has a significant number of the second, and nothing on the third. It also has three school board seats, one of them uncontested, and lawn signs for both candidates for one seat and neither candidate for the other. School board candidates tend to all have "I am in favor of good schools and petting kittens" platforms, and in one case I decided on the basis of "the one who isn't a mortgage underwriter." Someone else lost my vote in significant part because he has a website, but it comes up entirely blank in Firefox even after I tell NoScript to allow everything for that page. (Again, fairly generic candidate statements.)

I think these are officially non-partisan offices*, but candidates can and do say that they are endorsed by the King County Democrats. And one explicitly states that he is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for a port commissioner seat. (He has a wonderful platform, but it's generic in a different sense than the "we want good schools and fluffy kittens" ones: the Seattle Port Commission doesn't have much to do with abortion rights or preventing vigilantism.) As a newcomer, I first spent some time looking into what the port commission does; with limited data, it seems less dysfunctional than the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, but that's a low bar.

My congressional district has a Democratic primary next month (other parties may also have primaries; I haven't checked). This is what used to be the Harlem district, once represented by Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and since 1970 by Charlie Rangel.

I think Rangel has just convinced me to vote for Adriano Espaillat. Not because of anything he said for or against Espaillat: because today's Rangel flier throws God into the equation (as part of saying "hey, look, Korean War veteran").

( backstory etc., in case you care )

Tomorrow (Tuesday, 2 November) is Election Day in the United States.

If you're eligible, please vote. I know it seems hopeless sometimes. But when in doubt, vote against: I am not exactly delighted by the Democratic candidate for governor in this state, but the Republican is a Tea Party billionaire whose history of sending out bestiality porn is one of his better points. (A friend looked at the polls and is voting against them both, which also seems reasonable.)

I don't know whether the Murdoch paper headlining that the Democrats will be in trouble tomorrow is just spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt and trying to demoralize their enemy, but let's not let them make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also: there are a lot of offices and sometimes ballot questions in most places. You may not care about all of them, but that doesn't mean none of them matter. Go in, vote just for state senate, and leave, if that's how you feel about it.

If anyone is looking for suggestions in New York:

I'm voting what amounts to a straight Democratic ticket, though I may fill in the ovals under "Working Families Party" instead [1]: Cuomo for governor [2], both incumbent Democratic senators (as far as I can tell from here, their opponents' campaign strategy seems to have been "maybe the incumbent will drop dead and/or be caught with an underage prostitute"; they've certainly done nothing to make me think of them in terms other than "don't give the Republicans the Senate"), diNapoli for comptroller because he seems to have done a good job for the last four years, Eric Schneiderman for attorney general because I liked him as my state senator, and the Democrats for state senate and state assembly because if the Democrats manage a useful majority of the state senate [3] the state legislature might actually get something done up for a change, and that "something" might include same-sex marriage.

We have two city ballot questions, both of which were well described by an article I read a couple of days ago: you have to be both intelligent and deliberate to come up with things this confusing. The first is doing something with term limits, changing them but not for incumbent members of the City Council; Bloomberg seems to have again decided he's in favor of them, as long as they don't apply to him. I may abstain on that. The second has seven different changes, as an all-or-none deal; I'm voting in favor because one of the seven will reduce the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot for city offices.

If you're a conservative or a libertarian, please think before voting: small government may be one of your values, but some of the Republican candidates this year seem to be opposed to paving the roads, and others want a government just big enough to fit in our bedrooms. This is a special case of my "when in doubt, vote against," above. I'm a socialist: I almost never get a chance to vote for someone I actually agree with.

[1] This has to do with details of New York election law; a party that gets at least 50,000 votes for governor has an automatic ballot line for the next four years, and may hold primaries for specific offices, instead of having to circulate petitions for each candidate it wants to run.

[2] If Cuomo is far enough ahead in the polls, I might vote for the Black Panther instead. Just because. (I think he's using the label "Freedom Party," but the only party name that means anything here is the "Rent Is Too Damn High" party, which is a guy with one issue.) The ex-madame [4] is taking advice from the same Republican operative who is advising Carl Paladino, which is all I need to know.

[3] Useful majority as opposed to the mishigoss we had some months ago.

[4] The best moment of the campaign: she threatened to sue a New York Post columnist for referring to her as a "hooker," asserting that there was no evidence she had been a prostitute, only promoted prostitution. I don't know what if anything has come of that, but my thought was that he should offer to run a correction: "I apologize for referring to $candidate as a prostitute. She was actually a pimp." Or possibly just run it, without contacting her people first. It's a matter of legal record: she pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution. (I am omitting her name not to make a point, but because I don't remember it, though it's also true that I don't feel like giving her the publicity.)

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