voting heuristics

[ursula]

If any of you are qualified to vote in Washington State, but not registered (or need to update an address), here's the link. If you have a Washington driver's license or ID card, you can register online. I recommend permanent absentee status: it allows for careful, leisurely research, cup of coffee (or glass of wine) in hand.

I've seen (unsurprisingly) a flurry of posts about politics & whether it's OK to post about politics of late. I personally have a filter for partisan stuff. This post is not filtered.

I want to talk about some of the principles I use to make decisions about local elections. My experience is solidly Northwestern-- I spent about four years as an Oregon voter, and five as a Washington voter. That means a lot of my rules of thumb involve decisions about ballot initiatives.

1. Good government costs money.

While I was in high school, Oregon passed a series of property tax limits which made it impossible for local school districts to spend more money on education, even if they wanted to. Predictably, my district lost programs. I routinely vote for spending money on roads, schools, and libraries. I vote to spend money on cops and prisons, too: I personally feel that imprisoning minor offenders is a big waste of my taxpayer money, but given current minimum sentencing laws we need more prisons, so I vote to pay for the prisons.

2. If you want to change the Constitution, you'd better have a good reason.

One of the major uses of ballot initiatives is to change state constitutions. Since moving to Seattle, I've also seen several initiatives which wanted to change the Seattle or King County charters. I don't want ordinary legislation in my constitution-- the worst I've seen involved an Oregon proposal to change the tax rate on long-haul trucks-- and I also don't want to change the number of Seattle councilmen every two years. If a proposal involves basic rights for citizens, I might consider it. Otherwise, I'm voting "no".

3. Somebody's got to look out for the environment.

I grew up in the Portland suburbs. I expect developers to pave streams, build gigantic houses without yards, push interest-only financing, and then ask the city to spend millions of dollars expanding utilities. I now live in downtown Seattle, where everyone is hypothetically liberal but we can't put a transit package together to save our lives (and I mean that pretty much literally: consider the viaduct in the next earthquake). In practical terms that means I vote for transit, transit, public transit, and candidates who might get something done about transit.

What are your heuristics?

Comments

[gwen-the-potter.livejournal.com]

I don't care if one is liberal, conservative, republican, democrat, green, orange, or purple. Vote. One has no cause to complain if one does not vote. And elections in this state, and the US election, will be so close that every vote counts.

[p1kap1ka.livejournal.com]

I wholeheartedly agree that the major purpose of using the initiative process to revise constitutions is tto add things that are blatantly unconstitutional. Also, did you see the last batch of Oregon revisions? the cigarette tax in the Constitution? I mean, HONESTLY. there's a time and a place for taxes, and it's in ordinary legislation. Unfortunately, we've also used teh initiative process to shoot ourselves in the foot over the ability to tax in ordinary legislative ways, so... it goes into the Constitution, apparently. ridonkulous.

Note that Washington has also fuckered itself up with the road tax and vehicle flat tax. WSDOT is pretty screwed, and has been for a long time.

People wonder why I'm so vehemently opposed to the initiative process? this is why. and then they claim that the judiciary is pout of control when it tries to put some sort of check on it. Like it's not the POINT of the judicial branchc to check out of control legislation.

/endrant

Also it's pretty awesome that Oregon is always a permanent absentee vote, so I get to vote on the issues that concern me even though I'm mmiles away. Squee.

Anywya: heuristic: vote NO on all Constitutional changes, unless they're SHORT, SIMPLE, and I AGREE with them.

DON'T vote on things I don't really care about or understand - I think those decisions are best left to the people that have an opinion.

Have an opinion on as many things as possible

Don't vote for unopposed incumbents - even if it means writing in Bill the Cat. People shouldn't be *that* complacent about their re-electability.

[ursula]

Unfortunately, glasseye's citizenship hearing is after the registration window closes.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

And here I thought you were going to post something along the lines of http://staff.science.uva.nl/~bloewe/2007-08-I/ulle-core-logic-2007.pdf (this isn't the best example of 'voting heuristics' but it's the best I can do until Joel finishes up a paper he's working on. :))

[gwen-the-potter.livejournal.com]

But Yea! for getting the citizenship, though!

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this - I've been trying to get around to changing my address for a long time, now, and I had no idea they had such an easy system set up for it.

One question - is that same link the spot where you can switch to permanent absentee vote as you mentioned? I can't seem to find that part.

[ursula]

The mail-in form has a bubble for permanent absentee. If the online form doesn't, you might have to mail it.

[helloinsomnia.livejournal.com]

Schools, schools, schools. Did I mention, schools? Yeah, schools.

That's my big one, since my mom is an educator and I think education is so key to changing the world.

Actually, if it comes to spending money for social programs, I'm usually for it. Helping people, and creating a level playing field for everyone, takes money.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

What are your heuristics?

Off the cuff?

1 - Take care of the bottom of society and the top will take care of itself.

2 - Contrary to popular opinion, the free market is always more expensive. Sometimes it's better, but it's always more expensive.