Breathing a sigh of relief over the elections in Virginia.

[capri0mni]

...Even though the cute little punch card voting is gone now. Now we have touch screens. They're very shiny and colorful, yes, and I know people (like my aide's other client, Michael) who would find the touch screen system easier to work with than the punch card system. But I would still prefer to have a paper backup system.

If ATMs and the like can give you a paper reciept, why not your voting booth -- with the names clearly written out in black and white, so that anyone who could both read and count could double-check?

Speaking of double-checking: Our Democratic candidate for Governor soundly beat our Republican one, but the Republican (barely)won the Lt. Governor's post*. And as I'm typing this, we still don't know who won the Attorney General's post. Like the other two races, it was between a flaming liberal (and a reminder to you on my flist from across the pond, "liberal," here, means progressive left-winger) and a staunch conservative. The conservative, is of course, claiming victory. But when the margin is less than 2,000 when there were close to 200,000 votes cast, that makes a recount pretty reasonable.

Last night, I watched the coverage of the results on two seperate networks -- both local news teams. One team was falling apart at the seams, and could be heard muttering: "Oh for cri-- what do you want me to do about it?!" from off camera.

The other team was much more polished, and even had a "their own" political commentator. I wonder if this guy was a personal buddy of the station manager, or something, because his commentary was far from nuanced, or well reasoned. He did nothing to hide his astonishment that the Democrat won the Governor's seat, and that the other two ('extremely,' I think he said) liberal candidates came so close to winning anything at all. He concluded by saying something to the effect of: "After all, Virginia is a Republican state!" While that has been my general impression, during my 9 years here, I couldn't help thinking: "Well, obviously not, since we've now elected a Democratic governor two times in a row. Besides, it makes the Republicans look bad if they go around acting like they own the place."

*(Is that odd, for the Governor and Lt. Governor to run in completely different races? Or do they do that in other states, too?)

Comments

[heronheart.livejournal.com]

One thing I've noticed is that many states are very closely (but deeply) divided, often along urban/rural lines. It sometimes feels like a new civil war. It's not just the conservatives who are frothing at the mouth. It's sometimes kind of scary listening to liberals as well.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

You been listening to Air America Radio, then? ;-)


Sometimes, I think its the medium as much as the message. 'Course, as I am a proudly flaming Liberal, the rhetoric doesn't strike me as quite as harsh as it might sound to folks who disagree with me.

[cyloran.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to say that my county, which usually votes Republican, swung Democratic this time around. I think all of the negative Kilgore ads, especially the ones exploiting the families of murder victims, backfired on him big time.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Especially since Kaine never denied being against the death penalty, personally. But Kilgore kept insisting on beating that horse. I just wish the same had been true of the McDonnell/Deeds race.

Oh well.

I'm in Chesapeake (which is both city and county) btw. Which county are you in?

I'm also a life-long liberal Democrat from New York, who moved down here 9 years ago -- I certainly wasn't going to change my political views as soon as I crossed the Virginia border. I understand that there have been a lot of people moving into Virginia, in the last few years, so I imagine that I'm not alone.

That is what makes "political commentary" like "Virginia is a Republican State!" so assinine. Yeah? well things change, Bub. Deal.

[cyloran.livejournal.com]

I'm in Prince William, which usually swings Republican along with Loudoun. They actually made a big deal about it in the Post, these two counties going for Kaine. Personally, I'd like to think this is a sign of much needed change. And fancy that -- I'm a life-long liberal Democrat from Philadelphia who moved here 25 years go. :)

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

You're not that far from me, then. Prince William County is close enough to get mentioned during my local evening news... And my dad grew up in Germantoun, PA -- went to Germantown Friends' school as a kid in the Thirties

(Starts humming "It's a Small World, After All.")

And you know, I was thinking: if Kaine won because the Dems did a better job at their Get Out the Vote campaign, that suggests (to me, at least) that maybe the Liberals may have been living here all along, but have been intimidated into thinking they're a small minority, so why bother voting?

Yes, I know that's dumb. But I also know how powerful discouragement can be.