Who are you voting for: Election Day is here!

[Lady Door]

Had an hour wait at the polls, from entering the line to leaving after voting. Could have saved myself time by submitting my absentee ballot by mail rather than surrendering it to vote in person, but I'm glad I decided to vote at the precinct.

Proposition 8, though? I am nonplussed and continually refreshing the California Secretary of the State's website. I think I just might become an activist once this is all said and done.

[Dhyerwolf]

LA voting is awesome, and takes like 5 minutes. Yay Obama, boo institutionalized hatred. Luckily, gay marriage is kind of inevitable as long as the issue keeps getting pushed (Which it will!), so we'll just end up winning in the end anyways.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Living in Oregon makes election day kind of boring. "Oh man I wonder how many hours before they even count my vote the election will be decided in this year?"

[Lady Door]

The streets are loooooooud with the honking and screaming of elated Obama-supporters, but this is Berkeley and that is not the least bit surprising (though, as it's pushing midnight, it's increasingly annoying). Proposition 8 is getting further and further from being voted down with each added precinct, however; I hope that when I wake up in the morning I'll find that they just hadn't put in Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Cruz counties. Maybe?

Ugh. However inevitable the legalization of gay marriage is, I am disappointed in my state, which at once thinks Change Is Possible and that voting in a constitutional amendment denying rights to a section of the population is a-okay (did you know that the State's own quick-summary of the proposition says "Eliminates the right for single-sex couples to marry"? Look at that: Eliminates the right. Ugh.)

... hokay, enough ranting about that. Election Day! Obama is president-elect! Yay! Etc.

[Dhyerwolf]

I'm just hoping that the ban gets shot down as unconstitutional damn quickly like the last one was. Granted, that took like 2.5 years to fully process, but hopefully it would go more quickly this time (Especially since they already have a prior judgment to base it off of!)

On the plus side, Conneticut starts issuing marriage licenses to gay couples within two weeks, IIRC!

[superaielman]

LA voting is awesome, and takes like 5 minutes. Yay Obama, boo institutionalized hatred. Luckily, gay marriage is kind of inevitable as long as the issue keeps getting pushed (Which it will!), so we'll just end up winning in the end anyways.

Yeah, I'd bet on it happening soon enough, but it still sucks that prop 8 is having the success it did. It frustrates the hell out of me here when even the local liberal democrats don't support gay marriage. I blame this on Pat Robertson.

I can't say I was going to be happy with the results either way this election, but oh well. Looks like the republicans didn't completely fuck it up and managed to hold onto 40 senate seats at least. At least that call I made in 06 turned out to be wrong, if barely.

[Taishyr]

LA voting is awesome, and takes like 5 minutes. Yay Obama, boo institutionalized hatred. Luckily, gay marriage is kind of inevitable as long as the issue keeps getting pushed (Which it will!), so we'll just end up winning in the end anyways.

Yeah, I'd bet on it happening soon enough, but it still sucks that prop 8 is having the success it did. It frustrates the hell out of me here when even the local liberal democrats don't support gay marriage. I blame this on Pat Robertson.

I can't say I was going to be happy with the results either way this election, but oh well. Looks like the republicans didn't completely fuck it up and managed to hold onto 40 senate seats at least. At least that call I made in 06 turned out to be wrong, if barely.

40 or 41, yeah. Georgia's having issues, not sure why, but that's the only other one they could keep. If the Republican there gets less than 50% it goes into a runoff and that's gonna be painful.

If they lose that, it's 58 Dem/2 Independent/40 Republican, and that's going into 2010 which is still likely to be a large down year for the Republicans.

Frankly I don't care if the Dems get a filibuster-proof majority or not at this point. Both states have advantages to me.

[Idun]

This is a response I made from another site to a guy who was asking why blacks are finally taking an interest in voting in record tournouts rather than in other elections because a white man isn't worth it, but a black man is:

I question your statistics on black involvement with the voting system in the early twentieth century. That said and not trying to get into an argument that seems to stem purely from racial idiosyncrasies or assumptions, a mass amount of people found a reason to vote for a particular person, be them black, white, hispanic, young or old. Look at Kennedy and the mass majority of middle class mixtures. This election shouldn't (and hasn't) rest(ed) solely on the Black vote; though it was strong, the younger demographic including blacks that were hyped about this election for personal reasons are the "people" that elected Obama.

Like it or not, the United States of America is still dominantly a Caucasian country - somehow I find it illogical that the "black people" are the ones who elected Obama. [Not directed at you; just a general statement to people I talk to]

I'm happy we're setting a precedent. I'm happy that being told in my deemed 100% African American middle school class that everyone has an equal chance or the pursuit of happiness regardless of racial boundaries HAS been reflected in this election. It disrupts the recent increasing notion that the American Dream can easily slip from your grasp; especially from all minorities grasps.

I'm also angry that just because I voted for Obama, and I'm Black, it's assumed that I voted for Obama because he was Black. But I don't care anymore, because who I supported moreso was elected and I'm just buckling down for the ride to see how efficient he is, as I would any other president. I told my mother I was worried about assassinations, but she told me if people were constantly worried about life and death situations through civil rights issues, we wouldn't be where we are now as Black people, as the People of America, or just as a people - which I understood completely. So now, voters got there. I'm in for the ride.

------

That said, I'm just glad it's over.

[Lady Door]

I am currently beyond words with regards to Proposition 8.

Though elated about his election, I am beyond words to express how I feel about the reasons people have said they were against having Obama elected.

I am getting a picture of my state, and of my nation, that I know I'd heard of but always dismissed as impossibly close-minded and irresponsibly self-centered. I have been painfully corrected.

... I will be spending the next few days finding the words. But right now, I am well and truly nonplussed.

[SageAcrin]

You have to understand.

Gay marriage, as a social issue, isn't about the actual marriage for a lot of people.

It's about wanting to legally treat these people as icky citizens 'cause they do something gross.

As long as you understand that no human really progresses past five anywhere *near* as much as they like to say they do, unless challenges to their world view cause them to mature, you too can tolerate humans.

I genuinely believe it's as much or more this reaction than religious ones.

I can't criticise too hard. I mean, what're we supposed to do, shove them all off cliffs and have gay people save their lives so that they realize they, too, are real human beings? People're dumb, they're bad at this "humanizing" and "relating" and "empathizing" stuff, they just want someone to blame when things go wrong in their life. An

As to the flip religious side? People focus on a few lines in the Bible and then ignore half the other stuff it says is wrong. The Bible's a code of how to live your entire life. Picking and choosing out of it and accepting, say, half, of the Old Testament so you can criticize others is wrong too, but hey, again, you can't blame people too harshly. They've been told this, not read the book through. It's a big book. They don't have time. Or the inclination. Or possibly the *ability*.

Yeah, sure, it's penalizable by death, IIRC, as is mentioned once or twice...

So's adultry. Also I don't think people make grain sacrifices any more or put women in little huts when they menstruate.

Oh, and to be less off on a tangent:

GO HOME TO ALASKA PALIN AHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHA-too much?

[Grefter]

As long as Gay marriage is even an issue then you are going to have a large percentage of the population be biggoted wankers who are pointlessly against it.  People fail and it shouldn't have taken this issue this year to make you realise it.  It should have been noticed when the issue first came up and there was so many votes against it.

Aaaand I have to chime in on agreeing with the comments regarding the apparent "Black vote".  If a group large enough to completely and totally swing the election exercises their right to vote and you piss and moan about that then my response to you is, what the fuck?  Booohoooo people executing their right to vote ;_;  We should totally take it away from them through whatever means necessary, like "whoops our name shared 2 sylables with that of a criminal, now you can't vote" or "You live in Washington HAHA!" right?

Yeah dude, good response to that bullshit.

[metroid composite]

Prop 8 is less a problem of being bigoted (the bigoted people and their advertising funding were imported from Utah).  Prop 8 is the problem that propaganda is too effective, and shouldn't be allowed to influence actual policy changes.

Consider my new roommate whom I don't know that well.  He lives in San Francisco, has plenty of gay friends, has watched and agreed with some of the crazy conspiracy theory left videos on the web (I think Zeitgeist, possibly Loose Change).  I found out on election night that he was against Prop 8 (repeating some of the "Yes" propaganda back at me). o_O

When it comes right down to it, propositions are just a broken system.  Whoever has the bigger advertising budget will usually win a proposition.

[Lady Door]

I am fairly cynical. I just give it a break when I'm speaking of vague groups -- "those people" who believe that gay marriage is a sin against God, or that believe in protecting the children from being taught about teh gayz as if they were behaving normally, or whatever else it is that "other people" believe that seems incomprehensible to me.

I was hoping California wasn't so dumb. I was hoping that the fact that Prop 22 was overturned (damn those "activist judges" interpreting the state constitution like that!) highlighted the real issue was about equal rights, not whether you liked gay people or wanted your children to learn about them. I was also expecting California to be, you know, true to form.

Aside from being wholly incapable of wrapping my mind around the arguments in support of Prop 8, what really, really bothered me was what m.c. brought up: the propaganda worked.

I was watching the San Francisco news last night, and they had a reporter at the Yes on 8 party. They were speaking with one of the directors, talking about how he felt about how the votes were going, was he surprised, etc. And you know what? He WAS surprised. He said their polls as of last Friday said that the measurement was lagging by 6 points and they weren't sure if they could make it change. You know what else happened this weekend? Yes on 8 ad-spammed the crap out of the California internets -- I saw Yes on 8 ads on every site that ran Google AdSense (until a few of the sites blocked the ads).

They also spoke of the door-to-door campaign they ran, about polling people, about people being "afraid that saying [they don't support gay marriage] would make them seem 'discriminatory' or 'not cool,'" and...

And now Prop 8 is winning by a pretty sizable margin, one that is unlikely to be overcome by the absentee and provisional votes they're working hard to tally.

Ignoring the fact that the people in the quote were for Prop 8, these people are seriously being swayed to vote or not vote or speak or not speak based on being perceived as "uncool"? Let's also ignore the fact that the very same people were afraid of speaking up for fear of being thought of as "discriminatory." HEAVEN FORBID they be exposed for that!

I mean... ugh.

One big fat What the fuck? from me.

[superaielman]

This is a response I made from another site to a guy who was asking why blacks are finally taking an interest in voting in record tournouts rather than in other elections because a white man isn't worth it, but a black man is:

I question your statistics on black involvement with the voting system in the early twentieth century. That said and not trying to get into an argument that seems to stem purely from racial idiosyncrasies or assumptions, a mass amount of people found a reason to vote for a particular person, be them black, white, hispanic, young or old. Look at Kennedy and the mass majority of middle class mixtures. This election shouldn't (and hasn't) rest(ed) solely on the Black vote; though it was strong, the younger demographic including blacks that were hyped about this election for personal reasons are the "people" that elected Obama.

Like it or not, the United States of America is still dominantly a Caucasian country - somehow I find it illogical that the "black people" are the ones who elected Obama. [Not directed at you; just a general statement to people I talk to]

I'm happy we're setting a precedent. I'm happy that being told in my deemed 100% African American middle school class that everyone has an equal chance or the pursuit of happiness regardless of racial boundaries HAS been reflected in this election. It disrupts the recent increasing notion that the American Dream can easily slip from your grasp; especially from all minorities grasps.

I'm also angry that just because I voted for Obama, and I'm Black, it's assumed that I voted for Obama because he was Black. But I don't care anymore, because who I supported moreso was elected and I'm just buckling down for the ride to see how efficient he is, as I would any other president. I told my mother I was worried about assassinations, but she told me if people were constantly worried about life and death situations through civil rights issues, we wouldn't be where we are now as Black people, as the People of America, or just as a people - which I understood completely. So now, voters got there. I'm in for the ride.

------

That said, I'm just glad it's over.

It's especially stupid to assume that because John Kerry won something like 90% of the black vote in 04. Obama probably helped with the youth vote some, but.. hell, that was one of his main strengths. I don't think it was due to race there.

Lady Door: *Nods* I can understand your insane frustration on this one. Hopefully it'll change with time. Wonder if the ALCU's challenge of it will hold any water.

[Lady Door]

The current injunction seems to ride entirely on whether Prop 8 is a proper amendment or is instead a revision. If a revision (based on the fact that it conflicts with the rights already established in the constitution, as upheld by those "activist" judges in San Francisco who turned over Prop 22), then there's a different process for putting it through and a voter-initiative is not the way to do it -- Prop 8 overturned. If not, ... well, Prop 13 from a while ago was an amendment, and it was integrated.

That seems like a pretty fine line to walk, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.

[Shale]

As much as I hate Prop 8 and am pissed that it passed, I really don't think that's the way to solve it. Anger at having gay marriage apparently passed by judicial fiat is part of what drove it in the first place, and this'll just double down on the whole thing.

[NotMiki]

Perhaps.  A similar ballot measure in Massachusetts was quashed by the legislature (by a necessary, and astounding, 3/4 majority), essentially preventing the people of MA from voting on the issue.  Three years later, it's a non-issue.  Gay marriage hasn't gained much popularity, but the world hasn't ended, and that's more than enough to kill any anti-gay-marriage enthusiasm.  In New England there's an attitude of personal privacy, a real what-you-do-in-your-home-is-no-concern-of-mine impulse.

Speaking of such things, I'm a big believer in religious freedom, so let me be absolutely clear that I mean the institution and not the people when I say fuck the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/3/15369/3779/711/651188

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/10/same-sex-marria.html

But since Prop 8, unlike any other state gay marriage ban, actually took away the freedoms of people who already possessed them, fuck everyone who contributed money to the yes campaign.

And while we're at it, fuck anyone who voted for it.  If you're the type of people who can't bear to cause others pain (and you live in CA so I know you are) I hope you look at the suffering you caused your friends and neighbors and you feel like shit.  I hope you feel a shame and regret that won't go away.  You stabbed your neighbors in the back because gays make you feel icky, and you should fucking suffer for it.

[BaconForTheSoul]

Living in Oregon makes election day kind of boring. "Oh man I wonder how many hours before they even count my vote the election will be decided in this year?"

At least the Senate race was one of the last things to be decided this year.  Merkley isn't exactly a breath of fresh air, but he isn't Smith either... so I guess that's good.

[Lady Door]

* Lady Door needs to stop watching the television. HEAD? MEET DESK.

Channel 2 news interviewing a Yes on 8 supporter. He's been fighting to keep marriage between a man and a woman since Prop 22. "It came up again, and again we worked on it, and it was another success." Mayor Gavin Newsom reignited the controversy by ordering the courts to allow same-sex marriage. It showed a clip from his speech earlier this year, saying something along the lines of 'This is how it's going to be!' "He was shoving it down our throats. That this is how it's going to be, and taking our freedom of choice away from us. And people don't like that."

Do these people hear themselves? REALLY?

...

I think a lot of the problem with being against Prop 8 is that people were angry about the "checks and balances" part of our government -- that is, that a body of 7 individuals could overturn what was the will of the voting majority of California (when the court overturned prop 22 as being discriminatory). The Yes on 8 people ran a smart but really misleading campaign about protecting the education of children and traditional marriage.

The Proposition system in California needs serious, serious revision. The kinds of things that end up on the ballot are not the kinds of things that should be up to a popular vote. The People Are Dumb. No one is fully informed on these things, and we are dependent upon the courts and all those people in politics and law who study this stuff for decades to maintain the rights we know and enjoy. When you give someone a choice, they are going to choose what benefits them. Equal rights is not about protecting the comfort levels of the majority -- it's about protecting rights.

Who I marry is none of your business. Whether I go to church is none of your business. Whether I have children is none of your business -- it's especially not your business if it's because I'm physically incapable (either because of plumbing mismatch or infertility) or because I make that choice.

I'm so angry and frustrated with this issue, and I think one of the things that bugs me the most about those who truly support Yes on 8 (not those who did so because the ads looked good, but damn those gullible sheeple to hell) is that their argument is almost entirely faith-based, and there is no arguing with them on any rational level by sheer virtue of their faith saying it is wrong. It is their right to vote according to their beliefs. They think my beliefs are just as wrong as I think theirs are.

But why can they not look past their beliefs, look into this wild, wonderful, beautifully variable world we have, and see that not everyone is like them? That some people make different choices in life according to their OWN beliefs, their own interests, their own ideals for their own lives? Why is it so hard just to let other people live their lives the way they want to live them?

If I can let you teach your children that a zombie who miraculously boozed the local water supply and magicked up some food will rise again and smite from existence all those who didn't believe in Him and His Father (who are the same person/entity, by the way!), you can let me teach mine that Adam and Steve are just as capable of love as Adam and Eve.

[Grefter]

I would say hey check the last few pages on the Grand Politcal Blah blah thread and see how people voting the same way on voting in their representatives is fucking horrible, buuuuuut this was voting on taking away liberty which is some seriously fucked up shit right there.

The fact that they can run a campaign on "OMGZ GOVERNMENTS TELLINGS US WHATS TO DO" is still fucking disgusting.  This is what your fear of "Big Government" gets you.

[Luther Lansfeld]

The anti-gay marriage people ran that kind of stuff? Um, what?

[NotMiki]

Absolutely.  Their message, and I'm going to be exceedingly charitable and not use any swear words to describe it, was that mandatory gay marriage means the government is limiting religious freedom by forcing churches to conduct gay marriages when they don't want to, and forcing schools to 'teach gay marriage' as well.  It's a bunch of crap, but in California people need justifications that aren't directly about preventing gays from marrying in order to convince them to prevent gays from marrying.

How dare those damn gays restrict my right for them not to marry near me?

Here's an ad the 'Yes' campaign ran.  Don't watch it if you have a weak stomach.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/21/a-childs-garden-of-anti-g_n_136663.html

[Luther Lansfeld]

So they just summerized a bunch of the reasons I agree with gay marriage. "THEY WILL HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS IN MARRIAGE!!"

[NotMiki]

That's the toughest part for me.  I can point to any number of external factors, but the fact of the matter is most people voting on this thing are voting yes because they sincerely do not want gay people to be allowed to marry.  Yes, the other stuff probably is what put it above 50%, but that stuff means nothing without a large core of people who are simply anti-gay.

Blaming the swing votes is like blaming the ref for blowing a basketball game for your team over a bad foul call in the 4th.  The call may have been bad, but if your team were up 20, it wouldn't matter a bit.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Sorry for the borderline necroposting, but since the above link was posted while I was away...


Anyway, that video really proves how homophobia is the last bastian of socially permissable prejudice. I mean, can you imagine if that was framed in terms of debate over interracial marriage? See for yourself how stupid it sounds:


"Did you know that churches that rent out their facilities for marriages could be forced to allow interracial marriages on their properties?"

"And because the California Supreme Court has made interracial marriage a fundamental right, legal defences made on the basis of religious freedoms are less likely to be able to succeed."

"If Proposition 8 fails, religious adoption agencies may be forced to place children in interracial marriages."

"Based on past experience, those who oppose interracial marriage on religious grounds will be increasingly labelled as intolerant and subjected to legal penalties and social ridicule."

"Did you know that nearly all public schools in California provide education about health and sexuality? If Prop 8 fails, children will be taught that marriage is between Party A and Party B, regardless of race."

"Children will be taught that interracial marriages are the equal of traditional marriages."

"Some [legal liberties] have already been lost, like photographers who refuse to photograph interracial weddings, and doctors who prefer not to perform artificial insemination of blacks, even when there are other willing doctors."