How To (Legally) Cast Two Votes for President

The briefer version of my previous post.

However much you might like the positions or message of a third party candidate like Bob Barr or Ralph Nader, most people at least have some opinion as to which of the two "mainstream" candidates would be worse.  Truth be told, I think that a lot of us fit into this broad category:  We really wish that we had more choices and that we could voice our opinions with a little more expressiveness than we currently have.  

The Dream

Actually several countries already have a voting system which allows precisely this kind of expressiveness and many have been advocating the adoption of such a system here.  The general idea goes something like this:  Each candidate is listed with a series of numbers next to their name allowing voters to express how much they like or dislike them.  Assuming that a candidate passes a viability margin (for example, so many percent of voters need to at least express an opinion about the candidate), the scores are totaled up and divided by the total votes cast for them.  The candidate with the highest score wins. I would encourage people to read more about the variations, this is an excellent source: http://rangevoting.org/.  

The Reality

Personally - I think that it's a great idea, but we live and breathe in reality.  In the land of reality, even if a massive movement for this were started, it would likely take a generation to replace our current system.  Ironically, however, you can already cast a semi-preferential vote in our existing system, but no one does.  Here's how you can do it:

1. Figure out which of the major party candidates would make you less likely to want to move to Canada if elected.
2. Find someone whose selection is the opposite of yours.
3. Both of you request absentee ballots and arrange to meet up just before the deadline
4. Both fill out the ballots in one another's presence and walk them to the polling place, the recorder's office or mailbox together.

What's more, after I had this idea and blogged it once, I came across this, check it out:  http://www.votepact.org

All About the Benjamins - Part II

In part I of this article, we attempted to lay out a discussion of Governor Sarah Palin's executive decisions by stacking up funding decisions of equivilent dollar value (1/2 a million dollars): 23 elementary and middle school projects on one side, and a sports field on the other. The idea being that at the end of the day, while we can debate how much money the State should be spending, we should be able to examine choices that have already been made to fund items on one side of the scale and not the other: The money was spent and allocated.

Much of the discussion around the first article seemed to be whether or not these were "good" or "bad" executive decisions based on the veto reason listed on many of the line items mentioned, many of them stating "other funding options available". Keep in mind that these are line item vetos of things that made it through the legislature, so in a fair examination, one must consider what those "alternative sources" are, whether or not the items actually got funded and what kinds of implications this might have. It should be noted that Palin rode into office after NEA-Alaska and several school districts sued the State and that her campaign materials from that time specifically speak to the issue of better funding education. This whole discussion deserves its own article, so I will pause in this introduction to say that we will be dedicating a full post to that topic shortly in which I will (among other things)l chronicle my recent conversation with one member of the Anchorage School Board :)

In the article at hand, however, we will continue to stack things up on the balanace scales for people to examine more closely and hopefully continue to generate some intelligent discussion. On one side is $523,000 for shooting ranges and on the other is $522,534 for schools. Please note that in light of the things mentioned in the introduction, we have included the veto reason cited in this article.

These items took no cuts from Governor Palin (see the budget itself):

• Petersburgh Shooting Range
  Budget Page 25 (PDF page 27), Line #30: Improvements
  Total Cost: $25,000
  
• Juneau Hunter Education
  Budget Page 67 (PDF page 69), Line #7: Indoor Shooting Range Completion (Cost: $338,000)

These items took partial cuts:

• Ketchikan Rod and Gun Club
  Line Item #11: Facility improvements.
  Total Cost: $25,000
  Veto Reason: "Fund at reduced level"
  
• Juneau Hunter Education
  Line Item #46: Indoor Shooting Range Completion
  Post-veto cost: $25,000
  Veto Reason: "50% funding. One time only."
  
• Tanana Valley Sportsmen's Association
  Line Item #114: Shooting Facility Replacement
  Post-veto cost: $110,000
  Veto Reason: "50% funding. One time only."
  

It would be easy to get sidetracked in this discussion as to whether or not these are important things for the State government to fund, and that is a fine discussion to have. However, all things being equal, we should be able to compare priorities. The following items, of approximately the same dollar value were vetoed by Governor Palin:

• Resource Center for Parents and Children
  Line Item#105: Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) Program
  Total Cost: $15,840
  Veto Reason: "Lower funding priority"
  
• Tenana City School District
  Line Item #82: Repair School Bus
  Total Cost: $36,000
  Veto Reason: "Lower funding priority"
  
• Copper River School District
  Line Item #117: Glennallen High School - fire alarm and security system upgrade
  Total Cost: $100,000
  Veto Reason: "Other funding options available"
  
• Valdez High School
  Line Item #123: Fire alarm repair and completion (Cost: $15,000)
  Veto Reason: "Other funding options available"
  Line Item #124: Sprinkler design and repair ($18,0000)
  Veto reason: "Other funding options available"
  Total Cost: $33,000
  
• Big Lake Elementary School
  Line Item #139: Boiler upgrades
  Total Cost: $10,000
  Veto reason: "Other funding options available"
  
• Su Valley Jr/Sr High School
  Line Item #144: Library technology upgrades
  Total Cost: $7,500
  Veto reason: "Other funding options available"
  
• Creekside Park Elementary School
  Line Item #162: New library books
  Total Cost: $10,000
  Veto reason: "Other funding options available"
  
• Juno School District
  Line Item #41: 2008 Southeast Alaska Regional Science Fair
  Total Cost: $10,000
  Veto reason: "Lower funding priority"
  
• Campbell Elementary School
  Line Item #248: Domestic hot water heater and hot water pumps and hot and cold water
  Total Cost: $300,000
  Veto Reason: "Other funding options available"
  

I would guess that many advocates of smaller government would argue that neither should be State funded. Certainly we can respect that one could pose an interesting debate, however, it is a somewhat seperate debate. State funds were in fact allocated and a choice was made between the two. I pose the following simple question for comment: Why should the State spend money on shooting ranges while rejecting these funds for education?

All About the Benjamins

If you are like me, when you heard about McCain's selection of Alaskan governor Sarah Palin for VP, you reacted like this: "Ehhh...Who?" Instead of disseminating facts that might actually be useful to voters interested in learning about her, the media at large seems to be stuck on the sensationalism of irrelevant issues like her pregnant daughter or how hard the candidate on stage at the Republican convention "hit the opposition". If that is all of the information that we have, then how can we make a good choice? I hold out hope that Americans really want information, so my fiance and I have decided to start this blog and provide some interesting facts in the hope of sparking intelligent conversation.

After listening to governor Palin speak on Wednesday night we got curious about just how her executive veto pen worked. Thanks to the Internet, we quickly came to find the OMB Budget from Governor Palin's own Alaskan Government's site. There are about 26 pages to this budget, so we'll try to break it down over the next few days and take a critical look because these are the kinds of executive decisions we can expect.

PART I
Governor Palin allocated 1/2 a million dollars for this project:

• Fawn Mountain Sports Field
  Line Item #6: Completion of the Fawn Mountain Sports Field.
  Total Cost: $500,000
  

Now, I'm not blindly against spending money on a sports field for the community - I'm open to listen to the debate, and to be fair, I didn't hear it. However, one interesting comparison that we made was that she did veto the programs below whose combined costs total precisely that amount, which gives us some kind of balance (1/2 a million dollars on either side of the scale):

• Taku Elementary School
  Line Item #202: Purchase of emergency preparedness materials (Cost: $7,500)
  Line Item #203: Main Office hallway roof repair (Cost: $10,000)
  Line Item #206: Wireless internet hookup (Cost: $27,000)
  Total Cost: $44,500
  
  
• Tudor Elementary School
  Line Item #207: Flushometer replacement (Cost: $20,000)
  Line Item #208: Technology, books and supplies (Cost: $20,000)
  Total Cost: $40,000
  
  
• Rogers Park Elementary School
  Line Item #200: Multi-purpose room retrofitting (Cost: $20,000)
  Line Item #201: Technology, books and supplies (Cost: $25,000)
  Total Cost: $45,000
  
  
• Polaris K-12 School
  Line Item #198: Smartboards for secondary classrooms (Cost: $24,000)
  Line Item #199: Textbooks and science equipment (Cost: $60,000)
  Total Cost: $84,000
  
  
• West High School
  Line Item #194: Library equipment and furniture (Cost: $2,500)
  Line Item #195: Technologies and supplies (Cost: $25,000)
  Total Cost: $27,500
  
  
• Central Middle School
  Line Item #192: Technologies, books and supplies (Cost: $10,000)
  Total Cost: $10,000
  
  
• Airport Heights Elementary School
  Line Item #190: School furniture replacement (Cost: $15,000)
  Total Cost: $15,000
  
  
• Wendler Middle School
  Line Item #187: Furniture and computer replacement (Cost: $30,000)
  Total Cost: $15,000
  
• Dimond High School
  Line Item #234: Training Course for Teachers New to Advanced Placement Coursework
  Total Cost: $15,000
  
  
• Bayshore Elementary School
  Line Item #232: Printers and video camera for computer lab (Cost: $5000)
  Line Item #233: LCD Projectors (Cost: 23,000)
  Total Cost: $28,000

• Sand Lake Elementary School
  Line Item #227: School materials and equipment for Japanese Immersion Program
  Total Cost: $15,000
  
  
• Kincaid Elementary School
  Line Item #222: New audio system for classrooms (Cost: $27,000)
  Line Item #223: New computer and software for music (Cost: $40,000)
  Line Item #224: New computers for teachers (Cost: $36,000)
  Line Item #225: New media equipment for classrooms (Cost: $5,000)
  Line Item #226: Smart boards for classrooms (Cost: $38,000)
  Total Cost: $146,000

Again, this is certainly not to make the argument that every dollar of every item on this list is 100% necessary and that a sports park is a frivolous waste of money. What's more, I'm sure that there is more information that is hard to glean from a simple spreadsheet. However, what it does is provide some kind of equal comparison.

In my opinion (this is the opinion part of the article): If I were faced with the tough choice of cutting 1/2 a million dollars worth of "fat" from the budget- I don't think that these are the choices that I would have made. Seriously: Why waste money on things as frivolus as books and equipment, or emergency repairedness or flushing toilets - or a roof for our schools?