Erik Reuter wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 11:10:36AM -0600, Julia Thompson wrote:
> > If you are registered to vote in the US, be sure you vote on Tuesday
> > (unless you do early voting like I did). I don't care about *who* you
> > vote for; even if you're in my precinct (which I don't think anyone is,
> > unless there's a lurker living close by), or just in my state, and you
> > vote against every single candidate I voted for, you should take
> > advantage of your right to vote and have some sort of say in who
> > represents you in your government.
>
> True. Unless, of course, you live in one of the approximately 415
> Congressional districts where the race has already been decided by
> devious re-drawing of the districts. According to a recent Economist
> article, out of 435 races for US House of Rep., only about 20 are
> competitive. 4 of those are in Iowa (Iowa has 5 total seats in
> the House), and Iowa is the only state that has a non-partisan
> committee determine the districts (although Arizona recently passed
> a referendum to do that). In a "typical" democracy, about 20% of the
> Congressional/Parliament races are competitive, in the U.S. this year,
> that number is only 4%.
Heck, *my* district was almost certainly determined in a primary runoff
earlier this year.
But we have a bunch of other things on the ballot -- governor,
lieutenant governor (that's a *really* important one, as the lieutenant
governor sets the schedule for the legislature, and there's no incumbent
running so it's *really* up in the air), various state judges, various
commissioners, and a senate seat being vacated by Gramm. There was
enough important, not-cut-and-dried stuff on *my* ballot that I took the
time to do some research on the candidates and really *think* about it.
Each person in the US is governed at both the state and federal level.
While there wasn't much at the federal level that my vote was liable to
affect (I have no idea how close the Senate race is), there were an
awful lot of things at the state level at stake.
How many people have state stuff on their ballot? How many people are
voting in a tight Senate race this year?
Julia
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