Erection day

[Ed Anger]

I guess I voted the Ed ballot.

Anyway, we got bombarded with ads from all directions imploring us to vote to keep programs in place for retarded people.  I decided to 'vote retard' on this measure (note that I wasn't necessarily voting Democrat) but I wonder if the amount of funding at stake is as much as was spent on all that advertising.

Smart lad. I am the lightbringer.

[Caliga]

Anyway, we got bombarded with ads from all directions imploring us to vote to keep programs in place for retarded people. 

Thanks. 

[Grey Fox]

I voted Sunday.

[jimmy olsen]

Republicans sweep Virginia.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/03/2009.elections/index.html

CNN) -- CNN projects that Republican Bob McDonnell will win the race for governor in Virginia, reversing a trend of the state electing Democrats.

McDonnell, a 55-year-old former state attorney general, will be the first Republican to win the state's highest office in 12 years. Republicans will win races for Virginia's lieutenant governor and attorney general as well, CNN estimated.

GOP leaders are also hoping to oust New Jersey's embattled Democratic governor in the other major statewide race of the night. The two gubernatorial contests have been deemed by some analysts as the first major referendum on President Obama's administration.

McDonnell's projected victory is "a blow to President Obama and the Democrat Party," Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said in a statement. "It sends a clear signal that voters have had enough of the president's liberal agenda."

The direction of a sharply divided GOP may be at stake. Party leaders, demoralized after landslide defeats in 2006 and 2008, are hoping to win hotly contested gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to help fuel a nationwide Republican resurgence.

At the same time, upstate New York voters will fill a Republican U.S. House seat in a race that has sparked a vicious fight between GOP conservatives and moderates. The struggle is viewed as a proxy for a national struggle between activists who say the GOP slipped by betraying conservative values and officials who warn that a rightward move would further alienate an increasingly independent-minded electorate.

The split could result in the election of a new Democratic congressman from a region that has backed Republican congressional candidates since 1872.

The nearby state of Maine -- not generally noted for hard-edged, ideological politics -- tackles a hot-button issue as voters decide whether to overturn a recently enacted law legalizing same-sex marriage. Washington state voters will choose whether to uphold a law granting same-sex domestic partners the same rights as heterosexual married couples.



Video: Key races in key states

Video: Virginia and New Jersey vote

Video: NJ governor's race: Fat joke? And in New York City, voters will decide whether to re-elect independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire mayor is believed to be on track to spend well over $100 million of his own money in his quest for a third term, shattering the record for personal spending in any American campaign.

The fight for control of New York's City Hall is one of 380 mayoral races across the country, including contests in Atlanta, Georgia; Boston, Massachusetts; Detroit, Michigan; Houston, Texas; and Seattle, Washington.

Two races for governor, however, appear to have attracted the most interest at the White House. Obama has personally campaigned for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in both states.

A plurality of voters in both states cited the economy as their top concern, according to early exit polls. Majorities in both states said Obama's job performance was not a factor in their vote.

In Virginia, McDonnell, the state's former attorney general, is running against Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds, a lawmaker from the rural western part of the state.

Incumbent Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine is constitutionally prohibited from seeking a second term.

The 55-year-old McDonnell is a staunch conservative, but has stressed bipartisan solutions to problems related to job growth and transportation. Deeds, 51, has sought to peel social moderates and political independents away from McDonnell, in part by highlighting McDonnell's graduate school thesis, in which the Republican was critical of homosexuals and women in the workplace.

A McDonnell victory would be in keeping with Virginia's tradition of backing candidates from the party that most recently lost the White House. Republican George Allen was elected in 1993, one year after Bill Clinton won the presidency. Democrat Mark Warner won in 2001, a year after George W. Bush's first presidential victory.

"Right now, it looks like Republicans and conservatives are angry and energized to vote in the midterms next year," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.

If Republicans win back the governor's office, they "could now show they are alive and well and they are competitive in Virginia, but it also sends a national message about the Republicans' ability to come back in the Obama era," said Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at Virginia's George Mason University.

In 2008, Obama became the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry an increasingly diverse Virginia in more than four decades. But some of the administration's economic and environmental policies have proved to be unpopular across broad swaths of the state.

At a debate in September, Deeds was asked by the moderator if he was a "Barack Obama Democrat."

"I would try to escape that by saying I'm a Creigh Deeds Democrat," said Deeds, who acknowledged that "a lot of what's going on in Washington has made it very tough."

Democrats also control the governor's seat in New Jersey, where incumbent Jon Corzine is fighting for a second term.

Corzine, 62, trailed his Republican challenger, former federal prosecutor Chris Christie, 47, in the polls during the summer. Christie is angling to become the first Republican to win the top office in the heavily Democratic state in 12 years.

Corzine, however, pulled even in the final surveys before Election Day with the help of a 2-to-1 spending advantage. Many observers believe independent candidate Chris Daggett, a socially moderate former Republican, may also be digging into Christie's support.

Obama, who carried New Jersey by almost 16 points in 2008, campaigned for Corzine three times, most recently this past Sunday. If Corzine manages to pull out a come-from-behind victory, it will almost certainly be smaller than than four years ago, when his margin was almost 11 points.

Among other things, Corzine has been saddled with the burden of seeking re-election amid the economic downturn. Almost one-third of New Jersey voters cited the economy as their top concern in early exit polls, with another 25 percent citing the state's high property taxes. One in five voters said their top concern was the state's ongoing struggle with corruption.

Last year, the president also managed to carry New York's sprawling 23rd Congressional District, a traditional GOP stronghold running along the Canadian border from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario. The area has sent Republican representatives to Congress since Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant occupied the White House. But this year, it's been the scene of a GOP civil war.

The district's U.S. House seat opened up a few months ago after nine-term Republican Rep. John McHugh stepped down to become secretary of the Army. Local Republican leaders picked state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava as their nominee to replace McHugh because they felt her moderate views would appeal to centrist Republicans, independents and even some Democrats.

The decision, however, sparked a revolt among conservatives angry with what they saw as Scozzafava's liberal views on same-sex marriage, abortion and fiscal matters such as the president's $787 billion economic stimulus plan. They backed Doug Hoffman, an accountant, who is running on the state's Conservative Party line.

Scozzafava suspended her campaign Saturday after her poll numbers plummeted following a flood of support and contributions to Hoffman from leading conservative politicians and organizations.

Republican leaders were fractured by the choice. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich backed Scozzafava. Gingrich's one-time deputy, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, backed Hoffman.

After dropping out, Scozzafava endorsed Democratic nominee Bill Owens. She campaigned for him Monday. The final polls showed a tight race between Owens and Hoffman.

A Hoffman victory would be considered likely to reinforce the belief among many GOP activists that the party was defeated in recent election cycles because it strayed from its core conservative beliefs during the Bush administration.

An Owens victory may bolster the belief among other Republican leaders that a continuing grass-roots effort to defeat moderate officeholders in party primaries is accelerating a GOP decline in the Northeast and elsewhere.

[derspiess]

  IT'S A GOP SWEEP of two guberntorial races.

Anyway, I'm just happy Obama was wasting his time when he screwed up my (and many others') travel plans Sunday.  Corzine's a douche to begin with, so that makes it doubly sweet.

[Fate]

Right wing radicals managed to cause the Republicans to lose NY-23, a House seat that hasn't been in Democratic hands for 100 years. 

[derspiess]

Right wing radicals managed to cause the Republicans to lose NY-23, a House seat that hasn't been in Democratic hands for 100 years. 

The GOP candidate might as well have been a Dem herself, so no loss.  It was a smooth move on Obama's part to create the vacancy, however.

[citizen k]

New gay rights law being approved by voters

Measure expands rights of same-sex domestic partners

By CHRIS GRYGIEL
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Voters Tuesday were approving Washington's new "everything but marriage" law that greatly expands the rights of gay couples.

In early election returns Referendum 71 was passing 52 percent to 47 percent.

Meanwhile voters in Maine were deciding the fate of that state's new gay marriage law. In early returns there the issue was too close to call.

In Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill in May granting same sex domestic partners all the rights of married couples. That same month conservative interests announced they would attempt to overturn the new law and enough signatures were collected enough to place R-71 on the November ballot.

The Faith and Freedom Network, which opposed the new gay rights law, said in a statement earlier Tuesday that the effort had been worth it.

"People of faith and social conservatives have been revived as a political force in Washington," the statement said. "R-71 has identified upwards of 200,000 people who are willing to take action to protect marriage, the family and children. It has also identified a legal team that has won victory after victory, a team that will now defend R-71 petition signers and their right to anonymous political speech before the United States Supreme Court."

As the statement indicates, the fight over R-71 won't be finished when all the ballots are counted. Legal disputes over the measure have reached the nation's highest court and scholars and government officials across the country are watching to see how they will be resolved and what impact they'll have on open government laws.

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the release of names of people who signed R-71 petitions. Justices will consider whether to hear the merits of the case and the issue may not be resolved until next year.

The state of Washington supports the release of initiative and referendum petitions under terms of the Public Records Act that state voters approved overwhelmingly in 1972. The Supreme Court action stopped a lower federal court ruling that the names should be made public.

The petitions contain the names and addresses of people who signed. Gay rights groups have said they want to put the names of people who signed the petitions online. The group Protect Marriage Washington, which collected nearly 138,000 signatures to qualify R-71 for the November ballot, says those people could be harassed, amounting to an infringement on their free speech rights. State officials fear that if the names of referendum and petition signers are kept secret laws like those that require campaign donors be made public could be threatened.

The original domestic partnership law, backed by Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, two years ago, provided inheritance rights in cases where there was no will, hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations. About 6,000 domestic partnership registrations have been filed since July 2007.

Some rights and responsibilities that would be extended to gay and lesbian families under the latest legislation are:

# Workers' compensation coverage.
# The right to use sick leave to care for a spouse.
# Victims' rights, including the right to receive notifications and benefits allowances. Business succession rights.
# Legal process rights, such as the ability to sign certain documents, the requirement to join in certain petitions, rights to cause of action, and ability to transfer licenses without charge.
# The right to wages and benefits when a spouse is injured, and to unpaid wages upon death of spouse.
# The right to unemployment and disability insurance benefits disability insurance issues
# Insurance rights, including rights under group policies, policy rights after death of spouse, conversion rights, and continuing coverage rights.

California, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia have laws that either recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships that afford same-sex couples similar rights to marriage. Thirty states have gay marriage bans in their constitutions.

[DontSayBanana]

Meh.  Corzine needed to be voted out of office; ever since that stupid car accident, he's crossed the line from slightly annoying to complete lunatic- I'm actually wondering if there wasn't some leftover brain damage from his head injury.

[citizen k]

Breckenridge, Colorado voters legalize marijuana, paraphernalia

Voters in the ski resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado legalized marijuana and marijuana paraphernalia by a nearly three-to-one margin on Tuesday.

It is the first municipality in the United States to allow paraphernalia, such as pipes, bongs and bubblers.

"[The measure] passed 73 percent to 27 percent," ABC 7 News in Denver reported.

"'This votes demonstrates that Breckenridge citizens overwhelmingly believe that adults should not be punished for making the safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol,' said Sean McAllister, a Breckenridge attorney who proposed the ordinance," ABC continued.

"Possession remains illegal under state law, but Breckenridge Police Chief Rick Holman said his department will 'still have the ability to exercise discretion,'" Colorado's Summit Daily News added.
Story continues below...

“It's never been something that we've spent a lot of time on, so I don't expect this to be a big change in how we really do business,” he said, according to the Daily News.

"It will not make it more available to minors, won't make it legal to smoke it on the street, won't get you out of trouble if you're stoned behind the wheel," the Daily News opined in an editorial supporting the measure. "What it says is that if you, as an adult, choose to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use, you won't be busted for it. It's still a much more stringent law than those that apply to alcohol â€" a substance you can own as much as you want of and consume in public."

The paper added: "Eventually, it seems these small possession busts will be a thing of the past state-wide, which makes us conclude some kind of 'nuisance pot smoke' ordinance needs to take their place â€" roughly analogous to public intoxication statutes."

In Breckenridge, which has about 3,300 registered voters, passage of the measure is not a surprise. While an effort to legalize marijuana state-wide failed during the 2006 elections, Breckenridge voters supported it by a margin of nearly 3-to-1. Additionally, the petition to levy a ballot measure that would legalize marijuana needed just under 500 signatures, but organizers collected over 1,400.

[citizen k]

NYC mayor Michael "Zelaya" Bloomberg wins third term. The NYPD didn't kidnap and deport him to Rhode Island in time. 

[Fate]

The people of Maine have successfully defeated the butt pirate agenda. 

How unfortunate for Washington.

This is an interesting map from DailyKos; it nicely chronicles the end of a North Eastern Republican stronghold...

[DGuller]

Meh.  Corzine needed to be voted out of office; ever since that stupid car accident, he's crossed the line from slightly annoying to complete lunatic- I'm actually wondering if there wasn't some leftover brain damage from his head injury.

I agree.  What's highly annoying is watching CNN, and having bozos say what a shocker it was, since New Jersey is such a solidly blue state.  It seems like the idea that state and national politics may have different balance of power between parties in a state seems to have completely escaped them.  New Jersey always was close between Democrats and Republicans when it came to governor races.

[katmai]

Breckenridge, Colorado voters legalize marijuana, paraphernalia

Voters in the ski resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado legalized marijuana and marijuana paraphernalia by a nearly three-to-one margin on Tuesday.

It is the first municipality in the United States to allow paraphernalia, such as pipes, bongs and bubblers.

"[The measure] passed 73 percent to 27 percent," ABC 7 News in Denver reported.

"'This votes demonstrates that Breckenridge citizens overwhelmingly believe that adults should not be punished for making the safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol,' said Sean McAllister, a Breckenridge attorney who proposed the ordinance," ABC continued.

"Possession remains illegal under state law, but Breckenridge Police Chief Rick Holman said his department will 'still have the ability to exercise discretion,'" Colorado's Summit Daily News added.
Story continues below...

“It's never been something that we've spent a lot of time on, so I don't expect this to be a big change in how we really do business,” he said, according to the Daily News.

"It will not make it more available to minors, won't make it legal to smoke it on the street, won't get you out of trouble if you're stoned behind the wheel," the Daily News opined in an editorial supporting the measure. "What it says is that if you, as an adult, choose to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use, you won't be busted for it. It's still a much more stringent law than those that apply to alcohol â€" a substance you can own as much as you want of and consume in public."

The paper added: "Eventually, it seems these small possession busts will be a thing of the past state-wide, which makes us conclude some kind of 'nuisance pot smoke' ordinance needs to take their place â€" roughly analogous to public intoxication statutes."

In Breckenridge, which has about 3,300 registered voters, passage of the measure is not a surprise. While an effort to legalize marijuana state-wide failed during the 2006 elections, Breckenridge voters supported it by a margin of nearly 3-to-1. Additionally, the petition to levy a ballot measure that would legalize marijuana needed just under 500 signatures, but organizers collected over 1,400.

My hometown

[citizen k]

The people of Maine have successfully defeated the butt pirate agenda. 

Still too early to call.