Election

One popularly expressed sentiment about the election is that people want their friends to go vote. That 'it doesn't matter to me who you vote for, just make sure you vote.'

I appreciate that sentiment, but I can't share it. It does matter to me who you vote for, especially for PotUS. It matters a lot. Voting for Clinton is, as Jim Wright expresses in the linked article, doing the best we can with what we have. To switch to my own words, voting for Donald Trump is, instead, an attack on numerous forms of civil rights that are very dear to me and people I care about. There are many other problems I have with the idea of voting for Trump. But it's a large part of why it matters a lot to me who you vote for. I'm willing to be convinced, but It's difficult to imagine how I could sustain a friendly relationship with someone who votes for Donald Trump. Not because of politics: because of what it says about beliefs and values. It's not about parties here. It's about a person, and the beliefs behind that person and his supporters.

I realize that Clinton and Trump are not the only options. But, referencing Wright again, they are the only pragmatic ones. A vote for Stein, for instance, I can understand, though I strongly disagree with it. A vote for Trump is unconscionable.

You can take that for what it's worth to you.

Election Time!

There are dozens and dozens of judges up for retention in my voting area. There's no way to rationally be fully informed about all of them. I wish I could find a broader set of evaluations of judges by organizations that have goals other than simply evaluating their fitness. Evaluation based on their sentencing habits for drug offenses, for instance. But what I do have is a sample ballot from the Chicago Council of Lawyers with their recommendations for or against retention. I'll likely just go with that. You can access that sample ballot from their webpage.

They got it right in this past instance, mentioned in a Chicago Reader story! "The CCL evaluations have sometimes offended sitting judges, whom the CCL also evaluates for retention. (There will be a judicial retention election here in November.) In 1984, when the CCL found criminal court judge Thomas Maloney unqualified for retention, he called the council's members a bunch of "barely competent and incompetent misfits and malcontents." Maloney was retained by voters, but went to prison in 1994 for fixing murder cases."

One set of candidates of interest to me are running for the MWRD (Municipal Water Reclamation District) of Greater Chicago. WTTW profiled and talked to the MWRD candidates. Having gone through them, I'm going to vote for the Green Party candidates. They're not perfect. These Greens seem to be in favor of selling long-term leased property and returning it to tax rolls. I have a problem with that in that it supports the kind of systemic inequality that contributes to abysmal urban living conditions under capitalist systems. I'd rather see publicly-owned land be put to public uses. But other than that, the Green party candidates focus on some important environmental issues that I think would be good to address. More info about them here.