Thursday, November 09, 2006

How's your spelling?

[Here's another post from the previous blog site.]

Monday, October 23, 2006
How's your spelling?
Watching the race for Illinois Governor is interesting. In the same way that watching the State Legislature vote away our inalienable rights is interesting. You can see where its going and there’s not a d**n thing you feel you can do about it.

Lets briefly mention some problems that are obvious to myself, perhaps its because I’ve moved here from out of state. Sample ballots? Seen any? Downloaded any? Perhaps I’ve been spoiled, but in NJ the League of Women Voters always mailed out sample ballots. Go to the IL League of Women Voters and see if you can find anything on their website that will give you a clue as to who is running for what in this state.

This is consistent with the general nature of the stealth candidates. In the Belleville precincts there is often only one candidate to vote for. Even the Republicans don’t bother trying to run candidates against the Democratic machine down here. And since there’s no opposition there’s not a lot of information available on the candidates that are on the ballot.

What about the candidates not on the ballot? Oh, you didn’t realize that there really are write-in options? I’m not talking about Mickey Mouse. Due to ballot access requirements that, in part, have been declared unconstitutional by a Federal court, independent and alternative party candidates are driven to run as write-in candidates. However else I may feel about the Green Party, their platform and their candidates, give them kudos for actually their names printed on the ballots. Now if they could figure out a platform that didn’t include a punitively progressive income tax they might get people voting for them other than socialists, single issue environmentalists and students.

I’ve met two of the other write-in candidates. Randy Stumblebeam and Mark McCoy.Randy is representing the Constitutional Party.

I use to call myself a constitutionalist. No longer since the term has essentially been co-opted by a group that, apparently, has not read the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. I refer to: http://www.constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php#Familywhere they wish to impose choices driven by religious belief upon everyone. The same can be said for their stance on abortion as well. I’m Pro-Life. I think life is a good thing. But I consider abortion a personal choice between the people who are responsible for the pregnancy. I liked Randy. I think it could be an entertaining evening to sit around with him and a few other intelligent people, like McCoy (Libertarian) and Whitney (Green Party) and discuss natural law, individual rights, and the line between personal beliefs and public policy.

Mark McCoy. http://www.markmccoy.com/ An interesting person. Like Randy he firmly believes that the rights listed in the Bill of Rights are individual rights, not collective rights. Mark is also intelligent enough that he realizes that you can not go from our current culture of a nanny state to free society based on individual liberty in a single step. Or even a few steps. However, starting a campaign 37 days before the election is going to be a serious handicap to overcome.Mark more closely matches my political beliefs. On the other hand, is there an inherent value to supporting Whitney ( http://www.whitneyforgov.org/ ) simply so that an alternative party gets the Illinois benefits of ballot access for the next election?

After the election I’ll have more to say about Illinois law and Election Judges.

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