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Election Day Recap
Author: BobR    Date: 11/09/2011 13:36:53

Normally, off-year elections are poorly attended and involve local and state races, or are "special" elections to fill vacated seats. In this case - a year before a presidential election - they can also be construed as harbinger of things to come. Yesterday's elections contained some rather large referendums, and provided some surprising results.

Two of the biggest referendums were the "fertilized egg is a human" one on Mississippi and the "repeal the anti-union bill" in Ohio. Both results came down on the side of personal liberty:
In Ohio, voters overwhelmingly rejected the law enacted last spring by Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-controlled legislature that limited the ability of public employee unions to collectively bargain.
[..]
In Mississippi, abortion rights advocates scored a somewhat surprising victory as voters defeated Initiative 26, a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have defined the word “person” to include every human being “from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.”

More than 55 percent of voters were voted “no” on the ballot measure, The Associated Press reported, falling far short of the threshold needed for it to be enacted.

It's surprising to me that only 55% voted against it, but there were apparently a lot of ignorant people that didn't understand the far-reaching consequences of the bill. On the downside, there were two other votes from those states that swung the other way:
Yet at the same time that Ohio voters were boosting labor unions, they also delivered at least a symbolic rebuff to Obama’s health care reform law by overwhelmingly approving a ballot measure saying that no federal, state, or local law or rule could compel any person or employer to participate in a health care system. The practical effect of that Ohio measure hinges on the outcome of legal challenges in federal courts to Obama’s health care law.
[..]
Meanwhile, Mississippi voters also gave overwhelming approval to a ballot initiative that will create a photo identification requirement for voters. According to the National Council of State Legislatures, Mississippi will now be the 31st state with a voter ID requirement and the eighth with a strict photo ID requirement.

In other states, hard-line Republican Arizona state senator Russel Pearce was replaced with a more moderate Republican (that's progress for Arizona):
The self-proclaimed “tea party president” had proven a controversial figure in Arizona politics. Pearce was the chief architect of Senate Bill 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law, and came under fire in March for reading an overtly racist letter on the floor of the state Senate.

Pearce had also said that Americans were not citizens of the United States but only citizens of their respective states. He had pushed for a bill to grant Arizona the power to ignore federal laws.

Maine repealed a law disallowing election day voter registration:
The citizens of Maine on Tuesday repealed a recently passed law requiring voters to enroll at least two days before an election.

With more than three-quarters of the state’s precincts reporting, 60 percent of voters had rejected the law, according to the Bangor Daily News.

“Whenever the party in power wants to cling to that power by changing the rules — by making it harder for you to hold them accountable, by making it harder for you to vote — it’s up to you to stop them,” State Rep. Bob Duchesne said during last week’s Democratic Radio Address.

Kentucky re-elected a Democratic governor:
Beshear’s win probably says little about Kentucky in next year’s presidential race: no Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Bill Clinton in 1996 and Kentucky is not expected to be a competitive state in the 2012 contest.

Beshear has clashed with the Obama administration over the Environmental Protection Agency’s blocking approval of permits for coal mines in Kentucky. In a Sept. 27 letter, Beshear told Obama that EPA officials were “obstructing a substantial opportunity to create and maintain high-paying jobs and have the potential to devastate job creation and affordable energy across the nation.”

In Iowa, the choice was between pro-gay-marriage Liz Mathis and pro-define-marriage-as-one-man-and-one-woman Cindy Golding. This led to the typical election eve robocalls from the Republican camp:
Citizens of Iowa Senate District 18 received a robocall on Monday night instructing them to call Democratic candidate Liz Mathis and ask what homosexual acts she approved of, according to the Des Moines Register.

“Homosexual marriage obviously involves homosexual sex. So before you support Liz Mathis, call her at 319-899-0628 and ask her which homosexual sex acts she endorses,” the automated call said.

It didn't work - Liz Mathis won the seat.

Unfortunately, in my neck of the woods, VA has just turned completely red at the state government level. That's right - the governor, the state Senate, and the House of Delegates are now all controlled by the Republicans. This does not bode well at all. The one lone bright spot is that my district elected the first openly gay senator to the state Senate (Adam Ebbin).

How did things turn out in your neck of the woods?
 

98 comments (Latest Comment: 11/10/2011 04:55:42 by livingonli)
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