Elections

After I took my absentee ballot to the county clerk yesterday I suddenly became much more interested in the election. On a scale of 1 to 10, my interest in the election prior to yesterday was probably only a 4.8, but after handing in my ballot it jumped to probably a 7.3. I was not very passionate about any of the issues, or even any of the candidates, but rather had a broader interest in arresting control of the government away from the GOP and seeing the advancement of progressive social issues. So far it looks like the elections have been satisfying in some areas, and not so satisfying in others.

First, the good news.

• The biggest news is that the Democrats took over control of congress by a large margin in the House and by the skin of their teeth in the Senate. There are lots of reasons why this is good news.
• Bill Ritter (D) won the governor's seat, soundly beating Bob Beauprez (R), ending 8 years with republican governor Bill Owens who I have not been a fan of (I guess we like to have governors named Bill here in Colorado). For the first time in 12 years there are more Democratic governors than republican ones.
• Ed Perlmutter (D) won Colorado's 7th congressional district, adding a democrat to the House.
• Democratic incumbents Mark Udall, Diana DeGette, and Ken Salazar all won their districts.
• Minnesota elected a Muslim to the House. I really like that.
• Boulder showed support for doing something about global warming and climate change by voting yes on Question 202 which will allow for an additional tax on energy bills with the money going towards funding programs meant to help Boulder meet Kyoto Protocol pollution emissions standards. While this is a step in the right direction, I think that this should be a much bigger issue. I'm glad that issues like Iraq and corruption got people out to vote for the Democrats, but in my opinion global warming is a far, far more important issue than either of these things and it should be a major issue at all levels of government, not just at the municipal level here in Boulder. Iraq, same-sex marriage, abortion, marijuana, immigration, corruption, minimum wage... none of them are as important as global warming in my opinion.

And now for the less-good news

• In Colorado, Referendum I ensuring equal rights for same-sex couples appears to have failed while Amendment 43 defining marriage as that between only a man and a woman seems to have passed. I'm not very passionate about this issue, but I would have liked to see it pass just because Colorado is usually so conservative and it would have been good to see us pass something progressive like this.
• Amendment 44 which would have legalized possession of Marijuana for people over 21 also failed. Again, I don't really care about this issue, but it would have been neat to see Colorado pass progressive legislation like this.
• While Colorado did add one democrat to the house, it failed to add three more. Democrats lost to republicans in 3 of the 7 congressional districts. This was to be expected though as those districts are heavily republican, and really that we even added one is good news, but still I would have liked to see more. Of those losses, I am most bothered by Marilyn Musgrave (R) winning her district because she is wacko.
• Denver had huge problems with their new electronic voting systems, but on the other side of the coin these problems were partially due to unexpectedly high voter turn-out.

I guess that's it. Overall I think it was a pretty successful election even if Colorado was still a little to conservative for my taste. I also wish people were as concerned about climate change and what to do about it as they are about Iraq. I'm also still a little bit jaded about the American political system in general and think that a two-party system is simply not adequate and that we would be much better off with a multi-party system, but that's a rant for another day...


Today's video is of Marilyn Musgrave: