#downballot

Hey Seattlites!! Make sure your ballot has been ACCEPTED. This mayoral race is gonna be tight.

Track your ballot here:

For Texan voters, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, a primary Democratic Senate candidate who was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, wrote an op-ed reminding Texans that the Railroad Commissioner election is important if you care about the climate crisis. The Democratic candidate for the Railroad Commissioner is Chrysta Castañeda, whose platform is taking flaring more seriously than the anti-regulation incumbent.

If you care about climate change, look down ballot. Keep going after you make your pick for president and the Senate. Down in the statewide races, cloaked by a misleading name, is a critical choice. Don’t miss it. Texas voters have a power other Americans don’t. 

Oil and gas drillers ask for permission to waste Texas’ natural resources by venting natural gas straight into the atmosphere or flaring it (burning it off) and the Railroad Commission routinely approves them without even so much as a hearing. One commissioner can require a hearing and require producers to prove the necessity of flaring a greenhouse gas (methane) that is 86 times more potent than CO2. Another seat on the three member commission will be up in 2022. Electing candidates to these seats that take seriously their role to regulate oil and gas could have far reaching implications. Advocates that care deeply about climate change could move our state — long synonymous with oil and gas — into a clean energy future that will better position the state to succeed long term.

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In Long Beach, California, and in Denver, Colorado, voters approved taxes to put climate plans into place. The Long Beach ballot measure boosts an existing tax on local oil production by 15 cents per barrel. It will provide $1.6 million per year to fund community youth programs and a climate change action and adaptation plan. Denver voters decided to raise the local sales tax by a quarter of a percent, raising $40 million per year for programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (including public transit).

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The new GOP state supreme court Chief Justice Newby has fired top court administrative officials including executive directors and general counsel. Described as "unprecedented and unparalleled" power grab to remake NC courts.

I should add: Getting Newby on the NC Supreme Court has long been a priority of the same RSLC forces that helped create the gerrymanders in NC this last decade. Here are just some of the never before seen internal documents from his 2012 race.

All eyes are on the presidential matters, but watch how power plays out in the states. If you watch the documentary Slay the Dragon, you’ll know that sweeping downballot seats and exploiting voters’ ignorance about gerrymandering and downballot power was a GOP tactic to gain control and block progress. Recall that last year North Carolina courts were crucial in redrawing the gerrymandered maps when SCOTUS upheld gerrymandering on the federal level, but GOP domination in the courts can reinstall it.

Voters in Galveston County voting Precinct 334 in Hitchcock received a mail ballot that did not include the contested elections for Sheriff, 56th District Judge, and 405th District Judge. Although all county-wide offices in Galveston County are currently held by Republicans, the 334th precinct is heavily Democratic; according to county records, 104 voters in the precinct cast a vote in the July, 2020 Democratic primary runoff, while only 5 voted in the Republican primary runoff.

A sample ballot for Precinct 334 downloaded from the Galveston County Clerk’s website also showed the incorrect listing of candidates. A sample ballot for neighboring Precinct 336 has the accurate listing of candidates.

A reminder that checking your county office sample ballots can help you spot these errors and missing downballot races.

Addressing fears that Democrats will bring Cuban-style communism to the United States is a constant part of campaigning in her hometown. In Hialeah, a working-class city of about 230,000 that borders Miami, she estimated that 1 in 5 independent voters she talks to brings it up. It was something Collazo never heard when knocking on doors there as a volunteer on Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. It also wasn’t a major issue in 2016, when Hillary Clinton nearly won Hialeah and carried District 110, the seat Collazo is running for, by 7 points.

Yet in 2018, District 110 swung 17 points to the right after Florida Republicans made socialism a central issue in the midterms and prioritized outreach to Latinos. Only one other Miami-Dade County state house district, which also covers parts of Hialeah, moved further toward Republicans. Going into 2020, it was clear that Democrats had a major problem with Cuban voters, particularly among the more working-class recent immigrants that it once counted on to counterbalance the conservatism of older exiles.