Month: November 2010

TPM has an automated map. Nate Silver urges patience: 

As I warned you, it's going to be some time before we get any sort of meaningful results from Indiana and Kentucky. The biggest potential surprise so far is in Indiana's 2nd district, where Jackie Walorski, the Republican, has a 1,500-vote lead so far on Joe Donnelly, but only 3 percent of precincts have reported. If Mr. Donnelly lost, especially by a significant margin, that would be a bad sign for the Democrats.

The WaPo's Fix got a little, er, excitable at 5.01 pm today:

Man oh man…starting to get exciting now. T-minus 2 hours until polls close in Indiana and Kentucky.

Wired Election Party: a nicely put together Twitter-powered website.

From CNN:

The economy isn’t just the most important issue to voters this year – with unemployment hovering around 9.6 percent, it’s roughly twice as important to them as the other top issues of concern combined, according to early exit polls. Sixty-two percent of voters name the economy as their most important issue this year. Health care ranks a distant second, at 19 percent. Illegal immigration and Afghanistan follow at 8 and 7 percent.

More:

Voters may not be happy with the Democratic Party. But they aren’t too thrilled with the GOP either, according to early exit polls. Democrats have a 10-point favorability gap: 43 percent of voters have a positive opinion of the party, while 53 percent aren’t thrilled. The Republican Party also gets a thumbs-down from 53 percent of the nation’s voters, with just 41 percent saying they’re happy with the GOP.

Nate Silver, who is live-blogging, says these should be mostly ignored:

Whatever these polls say, you should mostly ignore them; early exit polls are not intended to be taken at face value and can even be rather misleading. Here are 10 other reasons to ignore them.

Ambers agrees with Nate.

A reader writes:

I know you favor decriminalization of pot, but Proposition 19 is not the way to get it done in California. 

The proposition is actually a bit of a mess.  It doesn't create a central state regulatory body or entrust an existing body with the responsibility of regulating pot.  It leaves the responsibility to all the local governments to regulate.  Ugh.  The word is "patchwork."  And it creates this odd protected class of employee pot smokers by preventing discrimination in employment based on use unless the employer can show "actual impairment" of job duties as a result of use.  This is a nightmare litigation scenario. 

It isn't as bad as the opponents say ("your kids' bus driver will be high!") because driving under the influence and other activities will still be illegal, but there are concerns that the proposition will require employers to show actual impairment of job duties if the employer requires that employees refrain from smoking at lunch or right before coming to work.  I'm quite sympathetic to decriminalizing personal use but, as with most propositions, this isn't the way to get it done.

Another writes:

The problem with marijuana consumption and traffic safety is that there is no reliable metric or tool (as with alcohol) to judge whether someone is too impaired to drive. I'm a state of CA employee and I've talked to the folks at the state Office of Traffic Safety (who have done an excellent job reducing DUI fatalities in the state) and they firmly believe that Prop 19 would be a law enforcement nightmare. There are very few police who are trained in recognizing impairment in drivers. How do you decide if someone is too stoned to drive? Who's gonna pay for all that training? Drug policy experts like Keith Humphreys and Mark Kleiman all believe that marijuana consumption will increase with Prop 19 and with this the state will surely see an increase of stoned drivers.

Another:

I have believed that pot should be legal since I volunteered for NORML in the early 80s. So I was initially for Prop 19 … until I actually read the details of the proposition and arguments from both sides. Two concerns are leading me to vote No. One: The idea that each municipality can set its own regulations for commercial sales and its own tax rates strikes me as a disaster waiting to happen (similar to the backlash with medical pot, as cities try to rein in the explosion of dispensaries). My vision has always been a single set of regulations for the entire state (or country, really) and single taxation rates. Prop 19 allows the complete opposite.

Another:

As a Californian in San Francisco, I can tell you the simple reason Prop 19 is failing. My stoner friends want it to pass, but my liberal-but-not-stoner friends feel like they don't know what they are voting for. There is no clear picture of what a post-liberalization state would look like. I don't know anyone who thinks medical marijuana has created a problem, and people now smoke openly in the streets (remembering that is legal if you have your medical marijuana ID card). But even medical marijuana has been messy in the actual administration of the laws concerning pot clubs and municipalities. Without a solid image of what a post-legalization society would look like, people on the fence are hesitant to vote for such a dramatic change.

Reading his blog at Newsweek gives me a headache. So many boldfaces, exclamation marks, colors and question marks. And it somehow evokes – about three people will get this – Glenda Slagg.

538's guide is among the best. The first races to report:

Much more here.