How Many House Seats will The Republicans win

What really pisses me off about this whole thing is that the turnout is expected to be higher than normal for a mid-term. They're thinking maybe 35%.

A little over a year ago, I was in Afghanistan for their elections. People walked over mountains, sometimes for miles, to get to a polling site, defying Taliban threats of reprisals. In Iraq, I saw people lining up at polling stations, dispersing when an explosion happened within earshot, and then within five minutes, all lining up to vote again. Here? Not so much. If it rains, some people won't show up, even if they're driving.

I fully support an American's right to not vote. But the levels of apathy shown by the average American is, well, pathetic. They have the privilige of the opportunity to vote in a pretty much free and fair election, and choose not to. And then go about telling people how great a Democracy* we are.

I've decided I'll vote Libertarian for Governor. Give the little guys a morale boost.

Democrats are in for nearly a clean sweep of all the Statewide positions in CA this year. Only question mark is for Attorney General, it's a fight between San Francisco's, well, unorthodox DA, and a chap from Los Angeles who come from a cop's family. If it were up to the police associations, it would be an easy answer, Harris is not appreciated by them. However, she does have the advantage of a 'D' behind her name, so a lot of party-line voters are likely voting for her anyway. In this case, I care a lot more about the AG outcome than the Governor outcome. In fairness, I've not had any great complaints about Jerry Brown's tenure as AG either.

As far as the props are concerned, a couple are easy ones for me. The prohibition on the State taking local finances, for example. The Congressional re-districting. (And, of course, the counter proposal to reverse the State redistricting from last election is an easy 'against'.) Though I won't be using the State parks enough to offset the $60 or so in car fees, the car regstration hike seems worth it as well, the parks are a little underfunded. The other environmental related one (suspends some of CA's laws until unemployment drops to more normal levels) doesn't appeal to me, that's another easy one.

Tempting though the '50%+1' budget proposal is (No pay for the legislature if they don't pass a budget? There's an incentive!), I like the 2/3 requirement, it forces some form of negotiation. The tax offset proposition seems appealing to me (a business that loses money one year can offset its loss against profits for the following year for tax purposes). And the "classify 'fees' as 'taxes'" prop also holds great appeal to me. Not least because the best argument against it is 'Big Oil, Tobacco and Alcohol companies are in favour of it'. I don't respond well to the Boogie Man school of politics, even if it's true.

At the county level, it's simple stuff. $30 a year parcel tax to aid healthcare (OK), additional $10 a year on motor registration for roads (not so much), term limits for the Water Board (I've never thought about it), a 10% tax on marijuana (If Prop 19 fails, isn't this irrelevant?), and a couple of other minor items.

I'll swing by and drop off my ballot tonight. Apparently over half the votes in CA are expected to be mail-in ballots, so some of the tighter races may not be known for a few days. Though I'm in a mandatory mail-in district, I still enjoy swining by the station and hand-delivering it. I'm told that in Oakland, they're using something akin to a single transferrable vote for Mayor, the voters are being asked to rank the candidates.

NTM

[ETA: It seems that as of last poll, 71% of voters in R.I. oppose the name change]
*Usual caveats about representative republics apply