I voted!

On October 8, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

I did get a sticker, but I got Indiana’s boring one, not any of these cool stickers.

I always try to vote early, but I don’t recall ever voting on the very first day I was legally able to before. This year, though? I wanted that shit over with, and I drove from work directly to Mishawaka’s county services building, arriving about 20 minutes before the doors closed. The line for early voting was out the door, and it took about an hour to get my vote cast.

For the most part, my votes will not surprise you.

These six fine ladies, along with two male ticket members:

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for President and Vice-President
Jennifer McCormick and Terry Goodlin for Governor and Lieutenant Governor
Valerie McCray for Senate
Lori Camp for US House
Destiny Wells for Indiana Attorney General
Maureen Bauer for State House

(They’re up there as a gallery, so it’s possible the order of the pictures doesn’t match the order of the names.)

I voted for the Democrat in all of the local races with one exception: I did not vote for Dave Niezgodski for State Senate, because Dave Niezgodski is a sex pest and I don’t vote for sex pests. I thought briefly about voting for his opponent, but without knowing anything about him, I decided to refrain; honestly, this will be a small enough turnout contest that I feel like simply withholding my vote is enough. I don’t need to actively vote for the other side.

I got to vote against the loathsome Derek “I have a penis” Dieter again, which always pleases me, because fuck that guy.

Purely voting strategically, I voted to retain all of the judges up for vote. I don’t really like voting for judges, to be honest; I rarely know who any of them are and they don’t campaign, and for some reason the Indiana bar’s survey isn’t out yet despite their website promising it’ll be ready by September 30th. I voted to retain because all of them were named by Mitch Daniels or Eric Holcomb, and if they were drummed out of office Mike Braun will likely be picking their replacements, and Mike Braun is a fucking lunatic. Whoever he picks will not be an improvement, so absent any information of use for any of them, retention it is.

The only thing left is the school board, and … our school board candidates are not exactly covering themselves in glory this go-round. My specific candidate for my district isn’t up this year, so I’m just voting at-large, and … ick.

I ended up voting for Jeannette McCullough and George Jones. I know both of them and I am not especially fond of one of them– in fact, I have suggested voting against one of them in the past– but the other choices are worse. In particular, if you’re local enough that this matters to you, I specifically do not endorse Gabrel Kempf and I really really really do not endorse Marcus Ellison. Please do not vote for Marcus Ellison. I have known him for a very long time and I do not want him on the school board.

Getting from work to the early voting center I used involved about ten miles of driving on a road that was sporting a surprising number of political signs. They’re really not all that common yet, although I’m sure that will change, probably by this weekend. And after a while something struck me about all those signs: first, that there were quite a lot of Harris-Walz signs, more than I really expected, and that most of the lawns with Harris-Walz signs also had other signs for local or state offices.

The interesting thing was the Republican signs. For the most part– and I may take this route again on my way home on Thursday to take a closer look and maybe do some counting– it seemed like lawns that had Trump signs only had Trump signs, and even more curiously, lawns with signs for any other Republican candidate often did not have Trump signs. There would either be a Trump sign by itself or a dozen local and state candidates and no Trump sign.

At the moment, I’m presenting this only as an interesting anecdote and I am not drawing any conclusions. I just want it noted for the record. Feel free to speculate on your own, if you like.

In which Indiana is awesome

On July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Yes, really, I said that. I have a rule, and I’ve had this rule for, I don’t know, three or four elections now. I do not vote for straight white men if there is an acceptable candidate who is not a straight white man on the ballot. That is, effectively, the tiebreaker.

Y’all, look at my ballot for this fall’s election:

Starting from top left, clockwise:

Kamala Harris, President of the United States

Jennifer McCormick, Governor

Valerie McCray, Senator

Maureen Bauer, State House Representative, District 6

Destiny Wells, Attorney General

Lori Camp, House of Representatives, IN-02

The Vice-President will almost certainly be a white guy and Lieutenant Governor is a white guy. I will vote for both of them, of course. My State Senate representative, Dave Niezgodski, is also a white man, but I will not be voting for him as he is a sex pest. Amazingly, the Republicans are not running anyone for the seat and his sole opponent is a Libertarian (and an engineer, which I find hilarious) so Niezgodski will likely win 70-30 without my help. And honestly the Indiana statehouse is so Republican-dominated at the moment I don’t even care if we lose the seat for a cycle. It genuinely won’t matter.

I’m basically casting six votes here, and all six are either for women or for tickets where a woman is at the top of the ticket. I have never been able to do that before, and it’s fucking awesome. I can’t wait to get into the ballot booth.

In which you’ve got to be kidding me

On August 22, 2022August 22, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

My Congresswoman, an odious creature by the name of Jackie Walorski, died unexpectedly in a car accident several weeks ago. The way things work in Indiana is that if someone in office dies there has to be a special election to fill the seat no matter how little time is left in the term, but depending on the timing, the special election can be the same day as the general election, and there are no primaries– the parties just name their candidates by whatever means they choose. So the Democrats nominated the guy who already had the nomination for the general election, and the Republicans just named both a candidate for the special election (the winner will serve for about two months) and for the general. It is reasonable to assume that the same person will end up winning both, of course, but you never know.

A quick detour. You may recall a movie from the mid-nineties about a Notre Dame football walk-on named Rudy Ruettinger. Parts of it were actually filmed in my high school, and there are a handful of my classmates here and there filling out background/extra roles. Sean Astin starred as Rudy. This is the logo for the film:

The Republicans chose their candidate sometime in the last day or two. His name is Rudy Yakym. I have briefly perused his website and he appears to be a nutcase; there’s a bit on there about ending persecution of Christians, so we’re in genuine shithouse rat territory here and I’m super excited for the Republicans to be getting worse again.

Scroll slowly, here. Take a second, take all this in, and picture this guy’s campaign logo. Go ahead. I’ll give you a minute to think about it. In fact, have a song:

Okay. You ready?

This is Rudy Yakym’s campaign logo:

Literally all my dude did was turn off the bold.

Fuckin’ embarrassing.

In which I make choices

On April 12, 2018April 12, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

Having looked for transcripts of the two Democratic primary debates and discovered to my faint disgust that they did not exist, I spent the morning digging through both Pat Hackett and Yatish Joshi’s websites. Accordingly, I’ve decided that while I’d be perfectly happy for either of them to win the nomination, I’ll be voting for Hackett in the primary. The main things that swung my decision? Gun control is listed first on Hackett’s “issues” page, and while I’m much more abolitionist than she is, I’m much more abolitionist than absolutely everyone and she has a pretty well-thought-out and achievable plan. In general, I feel like Pat’s priorities match mine more closely than Yatish’s do at this time. In addition, personally, if you ask me to pick between the businessman and the adjunct professor I’m going to choose the professor every single time.

The only other St. Joseph County race of note is the county sheriff’s office. Ordinarily I wouldn’t think too hard about a sheriff primary, but something about the tone of one of the candidates’ ads around town has really rubbed me wrong, and I’ve decided to vote for Bill Redman in the primary. In this case his issues page and his opponent’s are not all that far apart, but in general I think I’ll vote for the guy whose background is in D.A.R.E. rather than the one whose career path went from narcotics to homicide to SWAT and who brags about being sniper trained on his site. There is a third candidate, but I feel like if you’re running for office in 2018 and you can’t be bothered to put together a website at all then I’m justified in ending my consideration of your candidacy right then and there. I suspect just from the volume of yard signs and roadside advertisements and such that this particular race won’t be close (and not in my candidate’s favor) but there you have it. I may go ahead and go vote tomorrow; we’ll see.

I have read two really good books recently, and while this isn’t the post for book reviews, they’re probably coming. In the meantime, check out Dread Nation, by Justina Ireland, and Void Black Shadow, by Corey J. White.