Tag: indiana

Postcard, annotated

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics2 Comments

You can probably expect me to keep rattling on about this until these damn things are all done; I managed 35 of them today, and I’m done with almost half of them. My stamina seems to be growing, so I’ll shoot for 40 tomorrow and see what happens to my handwriting at the end.

Anyway, I’ve been fiddling with the message I’m supposed to write on these things as I’ve been going through and I think I’ve settled on the Luther Approved Version. I think I posted this already, but here’s the official text that I’m basing my cards on:

Hi [voter’s first name]! Thank you for being a voter! Your friends and family may need your reminder to vote. Please ask them to vote in the Tues. Nov 5 election! – [your first name].

And here’s my version:

Hi [voter’s first name]!1 Thank you for being a voter!2 Your friends and family3 may need your encouragement4 to vote. Please ask5 everyone6 to do their part7 in the election on November8 5!
-Luther

  1. I kind of wish I had some other way to refer to everyone; every so often I get a name that is almost certainly not what the voter calls themselves, and when I get things sent to me that don’t have my preferred name on them it’s always an immediate turnoff. ↩︎
  2. I don’t mind this formulation at all. I wrote a couple that said “thank you for voting,” but I like “voter” more because even if the person hasn’t voted yet, it’s a subtle push that a voter is what you are and therefore even if you haven’t voted yet you’re going to, because that’s what voters do, right? ↩︎
  3. Again, not a change, but “friends and family” and not “family and friends” because folks are more likely to befriend people who align with them politically and we all know about that one asshole uncle you’ve got. Feel free to not talk to him! I’ve considered tossing “like-minded” in there a couple of times but this is already long enough. ↩︎
  4. I don’t like “reminder,” because it feels hectoring and I’m pretty sure that people know there’s an election coming. If they genuinely don’t know yet I’m not sure getting them to vote helps me any. “Encouragement” feels a lot more active without being nagging and also has the word “courage” in it. That said, do you know how many letters the word “encouragement” has in it? A hundred and fifty-three. ↩︎
  5. Thought about moving “remind” here and didn’t. Ask. ↩︎
  6. “Everyone” and not “them.” Ask everyone. Everyone? Everyone. ↩︎
  7. I feel like the original message overuses the word “vote.” I get why, of course, because repetition is king, but damn it I’m a writer and it’s overused. Plus “do their part” makes it sound like a responsibility and something people are supposed to do, which has the advantage of being completely true. Go do your damn job, reluctant Democratic voters! ↩︎
  8. I dislike two abbreviations in a row and I don’t feel like the “Tuesday” really 100% needs to be there, especially since it’s on the front of the card. November 5 it is! ↩︎

Also, did you know how much a postcard stamp goes for nowadays? Fifty-six cents, which means two hundred of them runs a hundred and fifteen dollars after the handling fee. I had no choice other than “standard” delivery, which had bloody well better get the damned things to me by the 23rd or I’m gonna fight somebody. You’d think the post office, of all places, would tell you specifically how fast “standard delivery” gets me my damn stamps but they don’t.

In which my wrists hurt

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics5 Comments

I put addresses on the last two and a half pages of postcards today, and got 25 written with full messages– those are the ones that are in the rubber band. If I can keep up that pace I’ll have them all done by the 19th, well in advance of the mailing date on the 24th. And since tomorrow is Sunday and I don’t have any grading to do, I figure I can get at least two days’ worth done and get ahead.(*)

I dunno. I’ve gone door-to-door on Election Day, I’ve done voter registration, and now this, and of the three I think I like voter registration the most as a pro-democracy activity. The Election Day I spent canvassing for John Kerry did not result in a single extra voter being sent to the polls but did result in at least two people threatening my life and one threatening to sue me, and I just don’t have a ton of confidence in the messages they’re asking me to put on these cards.

Part of it, I suppose, is I fundamentally don’t understand the mind of the non-voter or the reluctant voter. I vote in every fucking election. I don’t have to be asked or talked into it. It’s part of my damn job. This particular year required probably the largest investment in time I’ve ever had to make in order to vote and I was probably in line for about an hour. I know that in some places the lines can be horrendously longer, and things can go wrong, and sure, there are good reasons why some people aren’t able to vote. Fine. But just … choosing not to? I don’t get it and I never will, and the notion that you might be a nominally Democratic enough voter to get on one of these mailing lists and still need a postcard reminder in order to vote just doesn’t make any sense to me. Like, I want to see the screening methods they used to generate these lists.

Blech. I’m gonna do it anyway, obviously, because I can either do something or I can go insane, and I don’t have the temperament for phone banking and I’m never doing door-to-door again, so voter postcards it is. I just wish I could convince myself that this was actually going to make some kind of difference.

(*) And it occurs to me that I have parent/teacher conferences on the 21st and 22nd after school, and I’m absolutely certain I’ll be in no shape to come home and write postcards, so I probably ought to get these done well in advance. Maybe I’ll do 30 a day instead of 25.

I voted!

On 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.

Related:

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 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.

Some minor observations upon receiving my new driver’s license

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Got the new license today. It’s … kinda garbage?

  • The licenses changed design rather radically in 2019. That was five years ago. You would think that at some point I would have seen someone with one of the new licenses, or heard that they had changed, or seen a picture? I had not.
  • They switched from two full-color pictures to two black-and-white pictures, both of which are significantly more washed out than the pictures in that stock image. For obvious reasons, I’m not putting a picture of any part of my drivers license on the internet, so you’re going to have to trust me here. That feels like an inexplicable step backwards and I’d love to know the reason behind it; I’m sure there is one.
  • It feels significantly thinner and flimsier than my previous card, which … come the fuck on, guys. It’s annoying enough that credit cards feel like business cards nowadays, but my official state ID? What the shit am I paying taxes for? Print this thing on something solid.
  • They did take a new picture, and made me re-sign the card, but it still says my hair is brown and, even more hilariously, lists my weight at 230. I wasn’t even asked if either of those things should change. I’m literally bald and my beard is white. I haven’t seen 230 in 20 years. I’m not even sure I lived in Indiana the last time I weighed 230. This is nuts.
  • Your birthday is on the card in three different places, including two on the front, which feels kind of excessive.
  • It also lists my height as 5’11”, which is odd, because I’m 5’10”, and nobody ever just downsizes themselves by an inch. It seems unlikely that I was ever telling people I was 5’11” and then switched to telling people I was 5’10” and forgot I ever changed it. Did they actually measure me at some point, maybe with my shoes on?
  • I note that my previous license also says 5’11”. I dunno, I don’t get it.

Anyway, I’m glad I don’t drink or smoke, because the fewer times I need to pull this thing out of my wallet, the better.

In which I endorse: 2024 Primary Edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

This primary kind of snuck up on me. I will grant that my particular style of media and news consumption renders me functionally immune to political ads, but other than a handful of prominent signs for local races near work I haven’t seen a Goddamned thing out there. That said, there’s a race or two worth talking about, and a couple of candidates I’m genuinely enthused about, so here we go:

Joseph R. Biden Jr. for President. This will surprise no one, of course, and Biden is running unopposed in Indiana, so it’s not like there’s even another candidate I can vote for. That said, at least in terms of his impact directly on my personal life, Biden has been the best president of my lifetime and it’s not close. I am both happy and proud to vote for him again.

Valerie McCray for US Senate. There is actually a primary race for Senate this year; both candidates passed my initial smell test, and passed my secondary test of “do you have a website that actually contains useful information about you, and makes me feel like I want you as my Senator?”. Dr. McCray’s is here and her opponent, Marc Carmichael, has his website here. While Carmichael doesn’t seem like an unacceptable choice, my rule is that when presented with two acceptable candidates I vote against the white guy. Right now I’ll be fine voting for him if he makes it through the primary, which, given that this is Indiana, I suspect he will.

Jennifer G. McCormick for Governor. Dr. McCormick was formerly Indiana’s Secretary of Education after Glenda Ritz flamed out, and I swear to God she was a Republican when she was appointed, and I spent more time than one might expect while following her on Twitter wondering how the hell a Republican appointee was getting away with saying the very liberal Democrat-ish things she kept saying. Well, if she was a Republican then, she’s a Democrat now, and I was really happy to hear that she’d decided to run for Governor. She’s running unopposed, which also surprises me, so it’s not like I had a second choice, but I can’t imagine who in this state I might have chosen over her. Sadly, she’ll likely get smoked by whatever rape-enabling troglodyte the Republican primary shits out. But we can hope!

I voted for Lori A. Camp for my House representative; I didn’t have another choice, and I’m going to stop short of calling it an endorsement. Honestly I hadn’t heard of her before going in and the sum total of my research was to make sure that I didn’t have to do any research. I glanced at her website; it’s fine, I suppose. I still want Pat Hackett.

Tim Swager for District 10 State Senator. This is inside-baseball as hell; why am I mentioning it here? Because the incumbent, David Niezgodski, is embroiled in a sexual harassment controversy, and everything I’ve seen about it makes me feel like he’s probably a slimy piece of shit. I am, I admit, a teensy bit leery of Swager as well, who has been spending a lot of money on sending mailers so that everyone knows that Niezgodski is a staffer-harassing asshole who maybe voted against abortion access once or twice– I’m not convinced of this– but said mailers are awfully thin on why Swager himself would be a better choice. His website is also rather thin but contains no obvious red flags, so, sure, you can be State Senator over the creepy married dude who broke into his staffer’s house.

I strongly suspect I’m going to go 0/5 here, if not in the primary than in the actual election, although Niezgodski might be weaker than I think; who knows. But I don’t miss elections. So here we are.

We’re all gonna die

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, lifeLeave a comment

It was 72 degrees today, and it is not yet March, and we’re all definitely going to die because of that, but because I live in Indiana, in the next twelve hours we are expecting high winds, tornadoes, rain, snow, a fifty-degree temperature drop, and hail.

we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes

Go home, Indiana, you’re drunk

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

You may recall– it has only been a couple of days, after all– that it was blazingly hot in my classroom all week, and that I actually wore shorts to work one day this week.

I woke up this morning and was greeted with this:

A lot of that has melted off already, but from what I’m seeing in the weather forecast we are due for 68 degrees on Tuesday and then at least a chance of additional snow on Wednesday. I don’t know who the hell was responsible for proofreading 2024 but someone deserves a Goddamn refund.