summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2024-10-20 02:37 pm
summercomfort) wrote2024-10-20 02:37 pm
I voted!
I went back to check and apparently I forgot to do this for 2022, but I did do it for 2020.
So here's my local elections:
Ballot measures: (handy guide: https://calmatters.org/california-voter-guide-2024/propositions/ )
2- $10 billion bond for building school infrastructure. I voted yes -- apparently servicing this bond would be <0.5% of the CA general fund. It also allows the state to cover more of the building costs for poorer school districts
3- yes to removing the language against gay marriage that's currently in the constitution due to Prop 8
4- $10 billion bond for an omnibus of climate mitigation stuff. It looks pretty solid and wide-ranging, so yes
5- drops the vote % needed for passing local housing and infrastructure bonds from 66.6% to 55%. I think that's a good idea so that more of those will get passed, so yes.
6- makes it so that prisons can't force inmates to work. Instead, they have to actually pay inmates $$, or give them sentence reductions.
32- complicated measure sponsored by one guy (with $$ from a guy who wants to run for lieutenant governor) that would increase the state minimum wage from $17 to $18 over 2 years. I dithered a bit, since I do support minimum wage increases, but it seems like a lot of finangling for a $1 increase, especially when the current system is already going up because it's tied to inflation. Ended up voting "no", mostly because it feels kind of like a political chess piece, but I'm not sure I made the right choice
33- gives local governments ability to impose rent control and housing development policies on apartments built after 1995. YIMBY said it's a bad idea and I agree. We already have a decent rent control policy that prevents increases of >5%, and this is going to just make it harder to build new housing and increase the housing stock.
34- this proposition is funny because it's retaliatory. Basically, prop 33 is sponsored by an AIDS health nonprofit that deals in buying/reselling prescription medications. The organization makes about $2.5 billion a year, and has spent ~$100 million on sponsoring rent control measures over the years. They also have some housing that is under investigation. So the California Apartment Association sponsored this proposition specifically stating that nonprofit organizations that spend >$100 million on non-prescription purposes, that are also under investigation ... can't spend more than 2% of their income on things outside of prescription meds. Basically it's hyperspecifically targeting this one nonprofit. Extremely petty. Lolno
35- there's a voter-approved health care related tax that's set to expire in 2026, and this ballot would make it permanent ---- EXCEPT that it does these little tweaks to make it that the tax $$ gets taken away from community health centers and redirected towards hospitals. Kind of skeevy that way, especially since this ballot would lock it in. I'd rather vote for an extension of the current one in 2026, that would hopefully be more responsive the current medical needs
36- this one's weird. Basically it's trying to bring back more of the old 3-strikes law, in that the 3rd theft misdemeanor would be count as a felony. And drug trafficking would be a "treatment felony", in that you can go through 1 year of treatment instead of prison time? Anyway, one side says that it'll help with the fentanyl crisis as well as the petty theft problems. The other side says that the petty theft problems should be addressed by smarter policing, and that there's not enough treatment centers to make the "treatment felony" thing work anyway. I voted no.
More local stuff --
Our local newspaper did a cool thing this year where they sent the same questions to every candidate of a race and asked them to respond, and had a cute hover-over if the candidate wrote in additional comments. Super helpful way to do a side-by-side comparison when there's 9 city council candidates that I'm supposed to pick 4 of, for example. And these are really hyper-local questions, like "do you support adding bike lanes to x major road" and "do you support creating more transitional housing".
I'm pretty happy with who I voted for, though I probably shouldn't list them due to privacy, lol. Although I guess I've been in this town long enough that I can hopefully remember at the next election cycle.
There's also a cute city ballot measure that is adding a sales tax when properties are sold >$6 million. Definite yes to that one -- if you have $6 million to buy a property, you can afford a one-time 1% tax.
Oh! There's also a guy running for school board that has this gross line in his candidate statement: "I have concerns about rules demanding agreement by staff and students to biological falsehoods and keeping secrets from parents/guardians." EWWWWWW. (omg I was so disgusted by that line that I instantly noped out, and it's only now that I'm typing it up that I notice that the next line is about males participating in female sports. BARF) Thankfully this is a 7-choose-3 and the other 6 candidates are reasonable humans. This guy doesn't even have any children currently in the school system!
So here's my local elections:
Ballot measures: (handy guide: https://calmatters.org/california-voter-guide-2024/propositions/ )
2- $10 billion bond for building school infrastructure. I voted yes -- apparently servicing this bond would be <0.5% of the CA general fund. It also allows the state to cover more of the building costs for poorer school districts
3- yes to removing the language against gay marriage that's currently in the constitution due to Prop 8
4- $10 billion bond for an omnibus of climate mitigation stuff. It looks pretty solid and wide-ranging, so yes
5- drops the vote % needed for passing local housing and infrastructure bonds from 66.6% to 55%. I think that's a good idea so that more of those will get passed, so yes.
6- makes it so that prisons can't force inmates to work. Instead, they have to actually pay inmates $$, or give them sentence reductions.
32- complicated measure sponsored by one guy (with $$ from a guy who wants to run for lieutenant governor) that would increase the state minimum wage from $17 to $18 over 2 years. I dithered a bit, since I do support minimum wage increases, but it seems like a lot of finangling for a $1 increase, especially when the current system is already going up because it's tied to inflation. Ended up voting "no", mostly because it feels kind of like a political chess piece, but I'm not sure I made the right choice
33- gives local governments ability to impose rent control and housing development policies on apartments built after 1995. YIMBY said it's a bad idea and I agree. We already have a decent rent control policy that prevents increases of >5%, and this is going to just make it harder to build new housing and increase the housing stock.
34- this proposition is funny because it's retaliatory. Basically, prop 33 is sponsored by an AIDS health nonprofit that deals in buying/reselling prescription medications. The organization makes about $2.5 billion a year, and has spent ~$100 million on sponsoring rent control measures over the years. They also have some housing that is under investigation. So the California Apartment Association sponsored this proposition specifically stating that nonprofit organizations that spend >$100 million on non-prescription purposes, that are also under investigation ... can't spend more than 2% of their income on things outside of prescription meds. Basically it's hyperspecifically targeting this one nonprofit. Extremely petty. Lolno
35- there's a voter-approved health care related tax that's set to expire in 2026, and this ballot would make it permanent ---- EXCEPT that it does these little tweaks to make it that the tax $$ gets taken away from community health centers and redirected towards hospitals. Kind of skeevy that way, especially since this ballot would lock it in. I'd rather vote for an extension of the current one in 2026, that would hopefully be more responsive the current medical needs
36- this one's weird. Basically it's trying to bring back more of the old 3-strikes law, in that the 3rd theft misdemeanor would be count as a felony. And drug trafficking would be a "treatment felony", in that you can go through 1 year of treatment instead of prison time? Anyway, one side says that it'll help with the fentanyl crisis as well as the petty theft problems. The other side says that the petty theft problems should be addressed by smarter policing, and that there's not enough treatment centers to make the "treatment felony" thing work anyway. I voted no.
More local stuff --
Our local newspaper did a cool thing this year where they sent the same questions to every candidate of a race and asked them to respond, and had a cute hover-over if the candidate wrote in additional comments. Super helpful way to do a side-by-side comparison when there's 9 city council candidates that I'm supposed to pick 4 of, for example. And these are really hyper-local questions, like "do you support adding bike lanes to x major road" and "do you support creating more transitional housing".
I'm pretty happy with who I voted for, though I probably shouldn't list them due to privacy, lol. Although I guess I've been in this town long enough that I can hopefully remember at the next election cycle.
There's also a cute city ballot measure that is adding a sales tax when properties are sold >$6 million. Definite yes to that one -- if you have $6 million to buy a property, you can afford a one-time 1% tax.
Oh! There's also a guy running for school board that has this gross line in his candidate statement: "I have concerns about rules demanding agreement by staff and students to biological falsehoods and keeping secrets from parents/guardians." EWWWWWW. (omg I was so disgusted by that line that I instantly noped out, and it's only now that I'm typing it up that I notice that the next line is about males participating in female sports. BARF) Thankfully this is a 7-choose-3 and the other 6 candidates are reasonable humans. This guy doesn't even have any children currently in the school system!
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As I just wrote on 99 postcards, "Thank you for being a voter!"
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ah!! thank you for writing postcards!!! I was waiting for the parents at my school to organize one of those, but then my school decided to be like "that's electioneering so no" :///
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