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captainsblogYou know what that means, right?
'It's okay if you're a Republican,' duh.
Well, here we go again with the Grand Old Party-Poopers doing one of the very things they're always accusing usDemocrats puppy-murderers of.
One of the Big Scary Bears of the Republican mantra is how Democratic presidents will appoint "activist judges" to contravene the public will. Yet every time I turn around, I seem to see Republicans at the federal courthouse door themselves, trying to undo the democratic process through their own machinations. Ever since Bush v. Gore (the one Al lost by one vote, not the one he won by at least several thousand), I've been realllll dubious whenever I hear this complaint.
Now, even more so.
----
We have a voting system in New York State that can only be described as "convoluted." Actually, Nadia Comaneci is paralyzed compared to how contortionist we are. We have no early voting; our ballot access rules give heavy advantage to the incumbents and the endorsed over the challengers of both; and worst of all, our contests aren't between people but between party lines. No fewer than five parties have a permanent right to our state's ballot at the moment, and dozens of others come and go in flashes of ephemera to provide candidates with that extra line of "face time" in the voting booth. This is all to encourage that special (as in special-ed) class of voter who decides based on, "Oh, I'll vote for so-and-so; he's on three party lines, so he must be good."
You'd think New York voters would be too smart for this, but then we regularly vote to elect convicted felons, usually after their convictions.
Into this fray, we toss a key Congressional race with national implications- my own.
----
The 26th District was basically designed by Republicans FOR Republicans after the 2000 census; after some silly people threatened to make it a "tossup" district between our own incumbent Republican and a Rochester-area incumbent Democrat, coolerheads cash prevailed, and in a redistricting change lovingly known in Albany as "Tom's Law," Congressman Reynolds got a lifetime safe seat in exchange for his Rochester counterpart getting the dreaded "earmuff district" that, at points, is no wider than the center line on State Route 18 along the Lake Ontario shoreline.
Despite this gift, Tom almost lost the race two years ago, due to his connections to the Mark Foley scandal. His ass was saved, most acknowledge, by our October 2006 snowstorm which got him up in helicopters, passing out disaster aid and Looking All Congressional. But he saw the writing on the wall and stepped down before this year's contest. Republicans picked a "businessman" to bear their standard (the model of Businessman George W. Bush being lost on them somehow).
Democrats, feisty bastards that we are, fought out a three-way primary race, in which the most neutral candidate (named Alice Kryzan) won after the two guys in the race spent most of the summer trying to kill each other. Unfortunately, there were no such contests in at least one of the minor parties, which had already given its ballot line to one of Alice's primary opponents. As soon as Alice won, I said, "Is Powers going to drop the line and endorse her, or is he gonna be Ralph Fucking Nader?"
It took over a month before the sore loser finally announced that he'd dropped out. You would think, wouldn't you, that election officials would encourage a ballot making the choice clear at this point, right? This is New York, so you would be wrong. The only way to get OFF a ballot in this crazy state is, apparently, to be nominated for judicial office somewhere else within its boundaries. Even death is not an excuse (thus explaining the 208 zombie legislators we send to Albany every two years). So Alice tried a new tack, and moved the Working Families candidate out of state.
The Republicans challenged this as a reason for removing her vanquished opponent's name from the ballot. They won at the first state court level (likely because they got to pick which of the 13 counties in the 26th District where they were most likely to get a sympathetic Republican-leaning judge), were overturned at the second, and the state's highest court refused to hear a further appeal. So when I went to bed last night, Alice had two ballot lines against the Republican challenger's similar number of lines.
As Inspector Clouseau once said, though, "not enny meoure."
Dissatisfied with the justice being dispensed under New York's own election laws, Alice's opponent got a federal district judge to stay the state court decision. Why? How? No idea. I have access to all federal court filings in this district, and not a one of them is listed about this dispute. Which means they literally cooked this up after the close of business yesterday, took it to a judge's house (a Reagan appointee, I might add), and got a temporary restraining order which neither I, nor you, nor apparently Alice's campaign officials can even SEE.
The practical effect of this is to prevent the correction of ballots, to increase confusion, and to give the Republicans an even safer chance of winning back their own "safe seat" which, had they not been total fuckups the past eight years, would still be theirs for the taking. And still may, since there are still plenty of Wyoming County Republicans who would sooner fuck a sheep than vote Democratic (the only problem being to remind them to finish fucking the sheep before the polls close).
'It's okay if you're a Republican,' duh.
Well, here we go again with the Grand Old Party-Poopers doing one of the very things they're always accusing us
One of the Big Scary Bears of the Republican mantra is how Democratic presidents will appoint "activist judges" to contravene the public will. Yet every time I turn around, I seem to see Republicans at the federal courthouse door themselves, trying to undo the democratic process through their own machinations. Ever since Bush v. Gore (the one Al lost by one vote, not the one he won by at least several thousand), I've been realllll dubious whenever I hear this complaint.
Now, even more so.
----
We have a voting system in New York State that can only be described as "convoluted." Actually, Nadia Comaneci is paralyzed compared to how contortionist we are. We have no early voting; our ballot access rules give heavy advantage to the incumbents and the endorsed over the challengers of both; and worst of all, our contests aren't between people but between party lines. No fewer than five parties have a permanent right to our state's ballot at the moment, and dozens of others come and go in flashes of ephemera to provide candidates with that extra line of "face time" in the voting booth. This is all to encourage that special (as in special-ed) class of voter who decides based on, "Oh, I'll vote for so-and-so; he's on three party lines, so he must be good."
You'd think New York voters would be too smart for this, but then we regularly vote to elect convicted felons, usually after their convictions.
Into this fray, we toss a key Congressional race with national implications- my own.
----
The 26th District was basically designed by Republicans FOR Republicans after the 2000 census; after some silly people threatened to make it a "tossup" district between our own incumbent Republican and a Rochester-area incumbent Democrat, cooler
Despite this gift, Tom almost lost the race two years ago, due to his connections to the Mark Foley scandal. His ass was saved, most acknowledge, by our October 2006 snowstorm which got him up in helicopters, passing out disaster aid and Looking All Congressional. But he saw the writing on the wall and stepped down before this year's contest. Republicans picked a "businessman" to bear their standard (the model of Businessman George W. Bush being lost on them somehow).
Democrats, feisty bastards that we are, fought out a three-way primary race, in which the most neutral candidate (named Alice Kryzan) won after the two guys in the race spent most of the summer trying to kill each other. Unfortunately, there were no such contests in at least one of the minor parties, which had already given its ballot line to one of Alice's primary opponents. As soon as Alice won, I said, "Is Powers going to drop the line and endorse her, or is he gonna be Ralph Fucking Nader?"
It took over a month before the sore loser finally announced that he'd dropped out. You would think, wouldn't you, that election officials would encourage a ballot making the choice clear at this point, right? This is New York, so you would be wrong. The only way to get OFF a ballot in this crazy state is, apparently, to be nominated for judicial office somewhere else within its boundaries. Even death is not an excuse (thus explaining the 208 zombie legislators we send to Albany every two years). So Alice tried a new tack, and moved the Working Families candidate out of state.
The Republicans challenged this as a reason for removing her vanquished opponent's name from the ballot. They won at the first state court level (likely because they got to pick which of the 13 counties in the 26th District where they were most likely to get a sympathetic Republican-leaning judge), were overturned at the second, and the state's highest court refused to hear a further appeal. So when I went to bed last night, Alice had two ballot lines against the Republican challenger's similar number of lines.
As Inspector Clouseau once said, though, "not enny meoure."
Dissatisfied with the justice being dispensed under New York's own election laws, Alice's opponent got a federal district judge to stay the state court decision. Why? How? No idea. I have access to all federal court filings in this district, and not a one of them is listed about this dispute. Which means they literally cooked this up after the close of business yesterday, took it to a judge's house (a Reagan appointee, I might add), and got a temporary restraining order which neither I, nor you, nor apparently Alice's campaign officials can even SEE.
The practical effect of this is to prevent the correction of ballots, to increase confusion, and to give the Republicans an even safer chance of winning back their own "safe seat" which, had they not been total fuckups the past eight years, would still be theirs for the taking. And still may, since there are still plenty of Wyoming County Republicans who would sooner fuck a sheep than vote Democratic (the only problem being to remind them to finish fucking the sheep before the polls close).