Doth quoth the DaveM

My Texas primary and caucus experience

Yesterday I voted in the Texas primary at my polling place, Round Rock High School, in the morning. The Democratic side seemed busier than the Republican side (that's a switch!), but didn't have lines at that time, around 9:30 a.m.

In the evening, I attended the caucus, or precinct convention, at the same location. The caucus was supposed to start at 7:15 p.m. or shortly after the last voter voted, but we weren't let in the building until 7:55. We all had to sign in and give our presidential preference, and apparently had to have our credentials verified, but I don't know if everyone got the message on that. We had about 130 people show up, which is impressive in what's been a heavily Republican district. I recognized at least 4 of my neighbors there, and that was nice to see. Sometime we Democrats feel a bit lost amongst our conservative neighbors.

The Clinton campaign complained that at some precinct the Obama supporters controlled the caucus packets, which are apparently just the instructions and paperwork. In our case, the temporary chair was a Clinton supporter. The first order of business after calling the meeting to order and signing in was to elect a permanent precinct convention chair and secretary. Two candidates ran for chair, one an 18-year-old high school senior supporting Obama, and another a 30-something Clinton supporter. It was close, but the 18-year-old won 17-15. Someone then nominated the Clinton supporter for vice chair, and we approved that by acclamation.

After this, the chair announced the vote count. Obama won around 59% to 41% or something close to that. We had 16 delegates to send to the county convention in Georgetown on March 29, so Obama got 10 and Clinton got 6. I was in the Obama camp and we had 10 volunteers to be delegates, and 4 of us, including me, volunteered to be alternates.

I think the rules for all this are a bit weird. You can vote in just the primary and the caucus, but not just in the caucus. I suppose the idea is that the people who care about the party get a second shot at voting. But I think Clinton has a point about the caucuses excluding those who have to work that night or have other duties. We have 12 hours to vote but we have to be at the caucus at a specified time.

I enjoyed the experience, and kind of regret that I didn't raise my hand to be a delegate to the county convention. Maybe they'll call me as an alternate.

Posted at 02:30PM Mar 05, 2008 by Dave Marquardt in Politics  | 

Bush's veto vs. signing statements

With President Bush's veto of the funding bill for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm wondering why the president isn't doing what he's done with past bills to which he objected to some aspect: add a signing statement saying he's going to ignore certain parts.

Actually, I don't really wonder. He knows with a Democratic majority on Congress, a signing statement for this bill would cause a heap of trouble. It would draw attention to all the other signing statements he's made, for one thing. Secondly, the Democrats would go after him for it.

I've wondered at times about these signing statements that say "I'm ignoring this part of this law." Isn't that saying the president will not defend the laws of the nation, even though the president took a vow to do that very thing? I've also wondered if that in itself is an impeachable offense.

Posted at 12:24PM May 02, 2007 by Dave Marquardt in Politics  |  Comments[1]

Austin happenings

Here in the Austin area, in addition to birds falling out of the sky downtown, we are having the intrigue of a race of speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. The current speaker, Republican Tom Craddick, has been speaker for four years, and many in the opposition, and some in the majority, do not like his leadership style. A couple of other Republicans and a Democrat entered the race to unseat him, and it has now narrowed down to a race of Craddick and Jim Pitts, with each claiming victory. The legislature opens tomorrow, and it may be interesting to see what happens in this contest. There are no rules for electing the speaker, and current debate in the paper is whether the newly sworn in representatives will elect to have a secret ballot or an open one. The problem with an open ballot is retribution if you vote for the loser. The problem with a secret ballot is that the public doesn't know for whom their representatives voted.

Posted at 02:38PM Jan 08, 2007 by Dave Marquardt in Politics  |  Comments[1]

Election reactions

I have a mixed reaction to the mid-term elections on Tuesday. Overall I'm happier about an election than I've been since about 1996.

On the local level, we had an four propositions for school bonds. A year ago one big bond proposition failed, with detractors claiming the amount of money was too big and that there hadn't been enough community input. I had voted for it, because I didn't see anything we didn't need in that bond issue and land and materials for new and updated schools is only going to get more expensive. The new bonds added up to a similar amount, but they all passed at about a 60-40 margin. Perhaps it just took more education and time to think about it.

At the state legislature level, I saw our existing Republican legislators reelected, so I wasn't all that happy about it, generally being a Democrat. I will say that my representative, Mike Krusee, has played a big role in transportation issues the past several years, so he's very visible. I just happen to disagree with building tollways instead of freeways. I did notice that Krusee got just over 50% of the vote, and his main rival, Democrat Karen Felthauser, got 44%, so I'm obviously not alone in my dissatisfaction with Krusee.

For the statewide races, I was again disappointed, but not surprised. Rick Perry was reelected with a mere 39% of the vote. Sigh. I do wonder what would have happened had this not been a 5 way race. Obviously a lot of folks didn't want Perry to be reelected, but it's difficult to tell what would have happened had the two independent candidates not run. How many would have stayed home, how many would have voted for Perry, how many for Democrat Chris Bell. Also, the fact that there's no runoff if no candidate gets 50% of the vote seems wrong to me. Either a runoff election between the top two candidates or an instant runoff election would be better, I think.

The rest of the statewide races also went Republican again, no surprise.

For U.S. Senate, Kay Bailey Hutchison was reelected. Not my favorite, but at least she responds when I write her letters, unlike Senator Cornyn.

And my local U.S. Representative, John Carter, a Republican go along if there ever was one, was reelected pretty handily too. I thought Mary Beth Harrell would be a much better representative, and she actually has a stake in this war business, being in a military family with a son in Iraq.

I am much happier about the results in the U.S. Congress, despite my own district not going along with it. Congress has not "checked and balanced" the executive branch the past six years, and I expect that to change now. I'm neutral on impeachment, as I think we need to actually investigate some things first, and see where it goes. I also think impeaching Bush by himself is no good, you also need to go after Cheney, as the idea of President Cheney makes me shudder!

We'll see how things go the next couple of years. I think the election has swung the congress back to the middle, really, and I hope the president also moves to the middle, but I'm skeptical at this point.

Posted at 02:10PM Nov 09, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Politics  |  Comments[1]

Take It Back

TrueMajorityACTION has an edgy animation encouraging folks to join their effort to take back Congress from the current crowd, and presumably to get it back in Democratic hands. Thought I'd pass it along, you can make up your own mind about it. I liked it, but I'm a yellow dog Democrat.

Posted at 12:21PM Oct 04, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Politics  | 

Why is 95% not enough? And why is 60% too much?

I find the threatened action of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist disturbing and puzzling. President Bush has gotten about 95% of his appointments (I'm not sure if that figure is just judicial appointments or all appointments) approved. So why the fuss about those that weren't? And why the willingness to abandon Senate traditions for this? When Bill Clinton was president, many more nominations got bottled up in committees and never got a vote. So why is 95% not enough? They seem to want to forget that the U.S. constitution is designed to protect the minority from being trambled by the majority. This definitely seems like the majority trampling on the minority.

Additionally, U.S. federal judges are appointed for life. So why shouldn't judges get at least a 60% vote? Seems like we ought to have greater concensus on such an appointment.

I should note that I generally disagree with the Republican point of view. But I'd have an issue if the Democrats controlled the Senate and tried to do this too. Republicans seem to be in a hurry to consolidate power. I note the efforts to re-redistrict state legislative districts in Texas and Colorado. Why couldn't they just wait? They were probably on the road to winning a number of those districts over time anyway.

Posted at 11:39AM May 04, 2005 by Dave Marquardt in Politics  |  Comments[2]