Election eve

Well, this is it, after all the hype and anxiety.  Just one more day to go.

Like about forty million other Americans, I've already voted.  For the most part, the choices were not difficult.  Our incumbent Democratic senator Wyden is outstanding -- for example, he was the first senator in the country to publicly support same-sex marriage, and he worked hard to defend our state's voter-enacted assisted-suicide law even though he personally opposes assisted suicide.  The Republican challenger is a QAnon qrackpot and is also running on the ticket of the so-called "Constitution party", actually Christianist theocrats.  One can hardly imagine an easier decision.

For the House race in my district, I'm less familiar with the candidates, but the Democrat is endorsed by a passel of unions and every seat counts toward preserving the House majority (and the polls, for what they're worth, have this race quite close).  So the Democrat it was.

The race for governor was the difficult one.  The two main candidates are neck-and-neck and there's also an independent candidate, Betsy Johnson, polling in the 15%-to-20% range, so her chance of winning is low but not nonexistent.  I ended up voting for Johnson, who offers the kind of sensible-centrist politics I want to see -- she supports abortion rights and gun rights, and promises fast action on affordable housing and tough policies to tackle the explosion of crime in Portland.  Unlike in most cases, there's no issue of "wasting a vote" that could have gone to the lesser of two major-party evils, because the two major candidates are equally unacceptable to me, for different reasons.  The Republican is a forced-birther, wants to partly roll back drug decriminalization, and preaches the tired old mantra of tax cuts -- I'm not sure how much she could do against a Democratic-majority legislature, but a governor does have some substantial power.  The Democrat has done nothing to convince me that she'd bring any really fundamental change from the current disastrously-failed policies on the shootings, vandalism, etc that are ruining downtown Portland.  We can't afford to go on like this for several more years.  So I might as well vote for what I really want.

Oh, and I voted against slavery, too.  Yes, this was on the ballot.

This Oregon oddity is a dead letter due to the Thirteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution, but still, it should have been removed long ago.

A few last election-related links:

Here's a final look at the close Senate races.

Trump and his ilk are already trying to stir up doubt about the results.  But a repeat of the lies that followed the 2020 election would be very unwise.

Manchin is still too green for the wingnuts.

A Kansas-like abortion referendum is on the ballot in Kentucky.

A Wisconsin wingnut is suing to stop counting of ballots from members of the military.

Wingnuts and Russians are spreading misinformation on social media again.

Positive news from around the country here.

Electoral-Vote will be live-blogging the results starting at 6:00 PM eastern time on Tuesday.