As part of my regeneration.org punch list, I have a directive to vote in support of initiatives and candidates that promote education and family planning... This is confusing stuff, but I did the best I could. Let's check back in November and see what carried the day.
President/VP- Harris/Walz. Have the Sierra Club endorsement. Trump drilling track record and Project 2025 did not look very eco-friendly. Anyone else would not have a chance of winning the election. Trump won. I think not going on Joe Rogan cost it for her.
Senate- Schiff- Looked more qualified and has a "protecting our environment" plank in his platform vs. a MLB retiree. Won!
46th District- Correa. Correa has Sierra Club endorsement and is the incumbent. Of all the Republican ticket, Pan is the most the most compelling in his reminiscence to Andrew Yang and the ideas of UBI, school choice, gut lobby power, and curbing national debt... That said, Correa is leading by a large margins in the polls and even though he has no express environmental objective, looks like he has a voting record against raising national debt. Approval vote for both. Won!
68th Assembly- Valencia. Incumbent. Tardif had some appeal for his pro-school choice position, but then I looked at the one review of his sheet metal small business and figured Valencia was the safer choice. Won.
SAUSD Area 3- Suarez. This sucked. The incumbent looks like he got involved in a drunken hit and run after doing an Elks Lodge pub crawl of some sort. The other candidate to offer a statement basically said their agenda was to defund the school. I went with the 3rd option no statement wildcard and while curious about the brief 2 month stint at a private school we considered sending the kid to, thought her current employer (teen mom support org) seemed more sane than my other options. Incumbent won.
SA Mayor Amezcua- someone I thought was a polling service called me about my plans and ended up seeding doubt about the qualifications of Vazquez. At any rate, if she's working on homelessness and affordable housing, I feel like I'm seeing less people on the street and more developments going up, so keep up the work. Won.
Proposition 2- yes. Especially in that includes Charters in scope.
Proposition 3- yes. It is hard to find your person these days, let's expand the pool of viable matches.
Proposition 4- yes. These are 2 apocalyptic scenarios I find most plausible. Let's avert if we can.
Proposition 5- no. If this were geared toward infrastructure, sure, tax us >1% assessed value to keep utilities in good working order. The affordable housing component they are leading with gave me pause though. How is this not the equivalent of asking the government to buy mortgage backed securities?
Proposition 6- yes. uh, sure, as a Quaker, this looked a bit like slavery, even if I'm not sure how prevalent it is in practice. This went no.
Proposition 32- no. IDK if increasing minimum wages work and couldn't find compelling data to show that they do?
Prop 33- no. Lots more googling on efficacy of rent controls. Having lived through rent hikes when I moved here, I can sympathize with renters. That said, that hike drove me into long term homeownership which was a win. Control could keep people in their spots longer which is probably better for the local social fabric of a neighborhood. But then delving into Brookings stuff (admittedly giving off a conservative think tank vibe), it could also disincentivise landlords from keeping the properties in good working order and create gentrification if they can convert the space to condo designation to avoid the controls and squeeze the housing market even more. So I basically fell back to my free market roots of thinking property holders will do a better job maintaining the building if they have greater agency over how it is priced. Plus the discussion of this prop made it look like its initiation might have been an over-reach of an HIV interest group.
Prop 34- yes. See above. Discussions didn't talk much about this, but a statewide negotiation for drug prices seems like something that should have been done already.
Prop 35- Yes. This looks like a step in the right direction of making healthcare accessible for more/all. No one is even formulating an argument against.
Prop 36- No. The idea of commuting sentences for possession/substance abuse if people completed therapy was pretty intriguing. I didn't like that it was bundled with and people focused on this repeat offense harsher penalty. I couldn't find any evidence that this would do anything to deter the crime and we might just incur more costs keeping people incarcerated... but maybe that is one way to ensure housing for all? I think this passed, which is fine.
Prop G- Yes. Some arguments against along the lines that they hadn't been transparent enough with their spending of the last bond, but in general, it seems like community colleges/trade school are a good investment in the community and an employable workforce. No, but kind of relieved when MacGyver pointed out how much they were asking/tax payer.
Prop I- Yes. For the above reasons, and that they had a lot more detail about what they needed to spend it on. A little sore that this wouldn't support infrastructure charters could use, but hey.
Prop CC- No. See prop 33.
Prop DD- Yes. Not sure how this will be verified, but I don't think saying it costs the city too much is a reason to keep slightly under half he population disenfranchised. Didn't pass, so kind of relieved not to have to sort out the implementation.
Prop EE- Yes. No arguments against, this is a documentation thing.
Prop FF- No. General dislike of something worded to sound like it is a restraint but is actually a huge raise. I would like to believe that giving council members larger compensation would mean there would be less graft, but I don't actually think that's how that works. It might make it possible for more working class people to serve, particularly if this is a role that is more than part-time. But decline this one and see if they revise it to be more explicit next time.
10/10 and ballot's in the mail, but this was an interesting infographic, I am a libertari-crat, it would seem? ... https://igs.berkeley.edu/library/california-ballot-proposition-guides/november-5-2024-general-election/november-5-2024
