Got my ballot in the mail on Saturday

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by COcheesehead

It is, but look at the choices, major bummer.

That's how I felt in 2000; I wanted to see Senator John McCain versus Senator Bill Bradley but instead we got tweedle dumbya versus tweedle deeya.

[dr.frog]

Originally Posted by COcheesehead

It is, but look at the choices, major bummer.

Well, the major bummer is that one of the choices is running to be a tin-pot dictator instead of President of the United States. How did our country ever sink this low? :-(

(BTW, I am an independent voter, and this is the first time I have ever voted for a Democratic presidential candidate.)

[Vision67]

Originally Posted by BarryK123

So there will be room for the pointless, idiotic pharma ads, which accomplish nothing except drive up the cost of drugs?

Actually, those pharma ads are a way for big Pharma to blackmail the news networks:

"Don't ever investigate and expose the fraud in big Pharma or that continuous revenue stream which funds your news division will instantly dry up."

[Therblig]

Originally Posted by COcheesehead

It is, but look at the choices, major bummer.

The old maxim applies: there may or may not be someone you want to vote for, but there's almost certainly someone you want to vote against.

And I think we've set an all-time winner in that category, by a vast margin.

And I even get to correct The Mistake of '78. Possibly.

[Therblig]

Originally Posted by Vision67

Actually, those pharma ads are a way for big Pharma to blackmail the news networks:

Not saying you're wrong, but it's at most a part of the explanation.

But never forget that of all the countries on earth, only two permit DTC pharma ads, and the other one really is a nation of sheep.

[COcheesehead]

Got an email that my ballot was accepted, both of them. Just kidding.

[Westerner92]

What a doozy of a ballot. You got to vote for not only whether you want corporate dystopia vs. banana republic led by a two-bit con; you got to decide on wolves, late-term abortion,
deliberately confusing tax schemes, and whether a few billion for the state government is worth $10-100 depending on your income. We even got to decide near-pointless department reorganizations. The state and local legislatures in Colorado seem like a formalities at this point, because they're not allowed to make many real decisions.

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

I took the time to do a quick scan of whatever Google could show me, regarding EVERY judge on the ballot this time around.

I actually did this when the informative booklet thing arrived, I researched all of the things and noted which way I wanted to vote so I'd be ready to get it done when the ballot got here.

I had to roll my eyes at their performance evaluations for those judges, when ALL of them said they're basically doing just fine. Like what, none of them are doing really great? Or badly? None?

As it turned out, a few were awesome, most were boring/ok/nothing wrong with how they do their jobs, and two were "Oh, hell no." I voted to keep all but the two of them. Welling and McHenry both had cases where they let rapists off the hook. There was actually some minor kerfuffle out there to be found, their communities doing petitions and such, but most of us wouldn't know if we didn't go checking for dirt.

This one guy, one of the other ones, was not only considered to be a good judge but there was an article out there about an elaborate zipline course he built in his yard for his kids. He sounded like a great Dad, and honestly in a world where I wish more Dads loved doing things for their kids, that means something to me. I'm glad I did not just vote for all of them to lose their jobs.

But I bet it's most common, that folks just vote all yes, all no, or no vote at all, on judges.

OK so what annoys me, is when there's an elected position and only ONE candidate shown and you can't write anyone in there, you either vote for that one guy, or don't vote at all, they have no competition. I mean why bother? Obviously he's gonna win? What's the deal with that?

Not sure if you used this website, but I found it very helpful: https://www.coloradojudicialperforma....cfm?year=2020

Here in Denver, there were only a couple that didn't have glowing reviews. I voted no on any that received comments about their demeanor or fairness, and there were a couple who, based off lack of response with a high proportion of negatives, I assume are truly troublesome. I'm hoping a higher "no" percentage might motivate them to take others' comments a bit more seriously.

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by Westerner92

What a doozy of a ballot. You got to vote for not only whether you want corporate dystopia vs. banana republic led by a two-bit con; you got to decide on wolves, late-term abortion,
deliberately confusing tax schemes, and whether a few billion for the state government is worth $10-100 depending on your income. We even got to decide near-pointless department reorganizations. The state and local legislatures in Colorado seem like a formalities at this point, because they're not allowed to make many real decisions.



Not sure if you used this website, but I found it very helpful: https://www.coloradojudicialperforma....cfm?year=2020

Here in Denver, there were only a couple that didn't have glowing reviews. I voted no on any that received comments about their demeanor or fairness, and there were a couple who, based off lack of response with a high proportion of negatives, I assume are truly troublesome. I'm hoping a higher "no" percentage might motivate them to take others' comments a bit more seriously.

I'll take Presidential Candidates with weird nicknames for $400, Alex...

I was actually mad that with that long, long list, Vermin Supreme wasn't on there. I mean, sure, he's a joke, but I have to think so were some of the others on our ballot? And hasn't that guy been "running for President" since approximately forever?

But even if one is not aware of a site such as the one you linked, with the basic fact that we all have search engines at our fingertips, there's no real excuse not to do 20 minutes of due diligence to see what this or that confusingly worded tax measure actually means, or to figure out that two of our local ballot questions here in the Springs were basically, "Should the City Council just be able to sell off the public parks, or do you think it should go to a vote when we want to do that?" and they just apparently had to write long paragraphs full of pretentious verbiage (to rival my City Data walls of text, even!) just to ask us that...