Buckle Up, Babies

~ Laura

It’s going to be a tough evening. Maybe a tough week. Nate Silver is still very confident about the Biden win, and yes, yes, he got things wrong in 2016, but he’s still my guy.

I’ve got the 538 live blog open in a tab on the computer. I have a shitload of work today before this evening, so I’m running away for a while. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be extremely online later today.

Published by Laura

11 thoughts on “Buckle Up, Babies”

    1. A conservative Indian-American radiologist I follow on twitter was promising to tweet his election day responses entirely in the form of cat photos and gifs.

      One of my conservative twitter gals tweeted today:

      “HOW IS IT ONLY 1:30?
      My house is spotless.
      I even washed my dog.
      I have baked pie. Made soup. Walked the dog—twice. Voted. Drove to Old Town for an outdoor barre class. MADE HOMEMADE BABAGANOUSH. Decorated my house for Christmas. On top of normal work.
      AND IT’S ONLY 1:30!”

      “Organized all the photos on my phone. Both inboxes are at zero. Paid all my bills. Raked the front yard. Now I’m getting a manicure and it’s….
      TWO THIRTY ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?!”

      Not being quite that ambitious, I’ve pulled out my copy of Joanna Gaines’ “Homebody” (which I’ve somehow never gotten around to) and if the internet gets stale tonight, I can page through that.

      I got the kids milkshakes and cookies after school, so that burned up an hour.

      I voted downtown around lunch time: no lines, lots of voting machines, and they handed out a pencil and pen to each voter, with the idea that you’d use the pencil to turn the dial on the machine, as opposed to touching it with your fingers. The ID/verification process was both thorough and fast. They’ve now set it up so that you can vote at any station in the county if you are a county resident, which has to be very helpful–not sure if this is just our county or a state thing. The person who processed me was a high school senior from my kids’ school.

      My oldest is now registered to vote, but she didn’t want to vote (she didn’t know who to vote for), so she didn’t. She did register for her spring college classes today, though. Maybe 2022 or 2024…I felt like my vote in the local mayoral contest was probably my most important vote today. Up until a few weeks ago, there were way more mayoral race lawn signs up than Biden or Trump signs–and that might actually still be true.

      Like

      1. We were hunting for the elusive churro truck, but it turned out to be shut down for the day by the time we got there.

        Like

  2. I- is so adorable. Independence day?

    Have you ever seen the paper on rainy Fourth of July and the probability of becoming a Republican? https://www.ne.su.se/polopoly_fs/1.100690.1384252659!/menu/standard/file/Shaping_the_nation.pdf

    “Using absence of rainfall as a proxy for participation in the event, we find that days without rain on Fourth of July in childhood shift adult views and voting in favor of the Republicans and increase turnout in presidential elections.”

    Like

  3. I voted on Oct 18th and dropped off at a drop box, ballot was counted by the 22nd. Washington is one of the four states that as of Tuesday morning had more voters already than in 2016 (Texas (108%), Hawaii (111%), Washington (105%), and Montana (102%)).

    Kiddo 1 sent mail i ballot from college and was counted on the 27th. Kiddo 2 is not yet 18 and thinks that he should get to vote. I agree wholeheartedly and we did note on reading the Constitution that our state could extend the vote to 16 year olds. We think they should start with letting 16 year olds vote on the Superintendent of Schools.

    I don’t think there are any competitive races on my ballot, though there might be an initiative.

    Like

    1. Was a legal challenge recently here in NZ to allow 16 year-olds to vote.
      https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/122565211/election-2020-lowering-new-zealands-voting-age-to-16-would-be-good-for-young-people–and-democracy

      Failed in court (judge determined that limitation of the franchise to 18+ was a reasonable limit.
      https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/122557334/judge-knocks-back-campaign-to-lower-the-voting-age-to-16

      General opinion was around 80% that 16 is too young. And while there might be exceptions, the majority of 16-year-olds don’t have the maturity to evaluate long term consequences of policy [Of course, you could argue that any random handful of legal voters don’t, either]
      However, you can’t be tried in an adult court, can’t sign a legal contract, and can’t serve in the armed forces until you’re 18.
      So, if you’re not personally responsible for the consequences of your actions until you’re 18, then you shouldn’t be voting for collective decisions before that age, either.

      In any case, it all seemed a bit moot. We have a strong history of active disengagement from voting of people between 18 and 30. Changing the age to 16 would just add another cohort of ‘non-voters’.
      Basically people are busy building their lives, loves and careers during that decade or so – and are focused on short-term personal, rather than political, issues (Yes, of course there are exceptions – I’ve voted in every election since I turned 18, myself)

      It will be really interesting to see if this changed for our most recent election – where we had 2 significant social issue referendums: End of life choice act (Euthanasia under strict medical qualifying conditions) and Cannabis referendum (should recreational pot be legal – medical already is).
      The 2nd one especially, might have been thought to appeal to the younger generation, and encourage them to vote. For the record, 1st passed, 2nd probably hasn’t (still waiting on special votes to be certain)

      Like

  6. Here’s a possible Thanksgiving idea:

    People who want to do a bigger multi-household Thanksgiving should think about moving Thanksgiving a week or two earlier, in order to be able to do it outside and/or with windows open. Even in our warm part of the country, Thanksgiving week has predictably nasty weather, but if Thanksgiving got moved a couple weeks forward, outside might still be doable.

    (We’re doing a nuclear family home Thanksgiving, but are trying to squeeze in a BBQ for our college freshman and some old classmates before the weather goes bad.)

    Like

Comments are closed.