A mere six national polls from last week. The average:


Obama : 46.7
Romney: 44.3

Lined up with previous weekly polling averages:

Obama : 46.7 44.3 46.7 47.4 47.3 46.8
Romney: 44.3 44.4 44.3 45.0 44.3 44.3

Best news for Obama: Latest poll in Ohio showing him up by 6%, boosting the RCP average to 4.9%. For Obama, win Ohio, win the election.

Best news for Romney: Two polls in Florida which average out to a very small Romney lead, and push the RCP average to Romney +0.5%. For Romney, if he doesn't win Florida, he loses the election.

I still haven't figured out what happens if Feinstein were to die between June 5th and late August (if she were to die after that but before the election her name stays on the ballot). But whatever happens it can't be a bad thing in this particular election to vote for the candidate most aligned with your views, since Feinstein will win regardless of what I or anyone reading this does. And Feinstein certainly doesn't match that criteria compared to some of the other candidates' expressed positions. There are a number who are, for example, against the Afghan War, for marijuana legalization, etc.

All the other races have unopposed candidates. Except the one for Superior Court Judge. In the past, having absolutely no fucking clue how I would even evaluate how to vote for a judge, I've generally left these blank.

But having watched Occupiers in Oakland be snatched by the Oakland Police, arrested on made-up charges and generally fucked over by the judicial system, it occurred to me that it might behoove me to figure out which judge would be most reasonable to vote for. These judges are, after all, the ones who hear the cases.

Easier said than done. These positions are "non-partisan", and the candidates have no information on their website about how they feel about issues -- any issues. You might think issues like civil liberties, or prison reform, or three-strikes laws might at least be open for discussion. Nope. All it is is vague talk about fairness and experience and at best you'd have to read between the lines to figure out who is the progressive and who is the martinet, who believes in civil liberties and who believes in beating protesters.

So I'm still left without much of clue. I picked the one who, reading between the lines, seemed to be the most progressive. That was Catherine Haley. But I still don't have much of an idea.

Proposition 29 would increase the tax on cigarettes by $1 per pack, up from $0.87 to $1.87. The price of a pack of cigarettes is listed here as $5.19 in 2011, so this would increase the cost by a little less than 20%. The revenue will be devoted mainly to cancer and other smoking-related disease research. It is vacuously true, as the ads and flyers the opposition send out say, that the revenue will not be devoted to cancer treatment.

The tax is obviously regressive, and some make the argument that it will not even help the people who are paying for it. But if you believe in the efficacy of cancer research then of course people who smoke, who are more likely to get the diseases the research is targeting than those who don't would ultimately reap some benefit. Also, I believe there are measurable effects between price and smoking rates; some people who would otherwise have taken up smoking would therefore benefit (and some money is directed at smoking prevention).

I will say at this point that it is not obvious to me whether having the revenue be directed to cancer research is better than simply directing it into the state's General Fund, which is -- yet again -- experiencing a huge deficit which will surely mean cuts in social services such as health care and related programs.

The tax is also a spiked increase. I think it would have been both better and more attractive to phase it in, say, $0.33 at a time over three years. And it would have been better if it were to be indexed to inflation. (Taxes on cigarettes have not been raised by California for a long time (1994 comes to mind as what I read, so the tax on cigarettes in California, just like the non-sales-tax tax on gasoline, has in real dollars gone significantly over the years). Interestingly, they tried to raise the tax by $2.60 a pack (!) in 2006, and that was only narrowly defeated.

Raising the tax by $1.00 will not put California into the ranks of those states which have the highest prices for cigarettes -- not even close, according to the table I referenced.

All in all, as with Proposition 28, I again find myself unenthusiastically in support.

Nine polls taken this week form our national average.


Obama: 44.3%
Romney: 44.4%

Lined up with previous results:

Obama: 44.3 46.7% 47.4 47.3 46.8
Romney: 44.4 44.3% 45.0 44.3 44.3


Best news for Obama: Europe didn't totally collapse this week.
Best news for Romney: The stock market is still reeling from Europe not quite collapsing this week.

Proposition 28 would change the current term-limits law for State Assemblypersons and Senators. Currently, one can serve up to six years (three terms) in the Assembly and eight years (two terms) in the Senate, a total of fourteen years. But you have to switch Houses to do it.

The initiative would change that to a total of twelve years, without distinguishing years served in the Assembly or Senate. So a Senator could serve three terms, and an Assemblyperson six terms, if they chose to remain in the same House. This would only apply to people who have not been elected yet. The idea, I believe, is to allow people to gain more experience in one House or the other, and provide a chance for a leadership to develop instead of almost necessarily having new leaders in each House every one or two elections. As a balance, the total time one can serve is cut to twelve years instead of fourteen.

More detail can be found at Ballotpedia.

Insofar as it seems silly to both allow and effectively force a member of one House to seek a seat in the other House after a period of time, if they wish to continue as a legislator, the old rule seems unreasonable, and the new one better.

If you're going to have term limits, six years in the Assembly seems like too short a time, and eight years in the Senate marginal. I think ten years in the Assembly would be reasonable, and twelve in the Senate, but then you'd have the same problem -- people trying to move from the Assembly to the Senate once they hit eight years. If you believe experience (but not too much experience) is useful, then that's not optimal. You'd like your most senior members to stick around. So twelve years seems like a practical compromise.

If you think that people become entrenched after even a relatively short time (compared to say, Congress, where people can and have served for forty years) and that is bad, this change is probably not for you.

I'm not convinced of the value of such short term limits; OTOH, I could easily get behind, say, 24 years in the US Senate and House, and also on the Supreme Court.

But if the choice is between one of these two systems, and without really thinking long and hard about the implications nor doing any in-depth study on how the new system would help or hurt the legislative process in Sacramento, I'm weakly in favor of Proposition 28.

Sort of. It's not that far until June 5th, and my mail-in ballot is beckoning to be filled in and mailed out.

But there's only two ballot initiatives on the ballot, so what fun is that? (Fortunately, we can look forward to many, many more being on the ballot in November, including this one.)

I will ponder the two intiatiatives soon, but for the nonce we have the interesting tidbit that there are twenty-four people running for US Senator... while exactly one of them (Feinstein) has a chance of being elected in November, except that...

I realized I had no idea what happens if Feinstein dies between June 5th and the November election (she will be 79 in June). I still don't. The Constitutional amendment that put top-two voting in place in California doesn't address the issue. Google is not being helpful. The Governor could name a replacement for the remainder of her term, but does she remain on the ballot, does the second place person win by default, or is the third place person elevated to becoming a candidate? I don't see how it would be possible under the top-two law for the Democratic Party to name a replacement candidate. If she does remain on the ballot and wins, then presumably Brown could again appoint someone until a special election were held.

This seems important because, since Feinstein is going to win the primary, if the 2nd place finisher wins automatically if she dies, then you want to vote not for Feinstein if you were going to in the first place but for the best qualified other candidate in your opinion.

This came up because someone, perhaps in jest, suggested voting for Orly Taitz (yes, she is running) to add some amusement to the November race. But if there is even the remotest chance that Taitz could become Senator-by-default, then you wouldn't want to do this.

Poll #1840060
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

To tiddle?

( Answer )

Eleven national polls from last week! Listed out here.

The average:



Obama: 46.7%
Romney: 44.3%

Lined up with previous results:

Obama: 46.7% 47.4 47.3 46.8
Romney: 44.3% 45.0 44.3 44.3

The best news for Obama recently: He came out in support of marriage equality.
The best news for Romney recently: Obama came out in support of marriage equality.

I may have missed one, but I can't recall seeing any poll in which Romney is ahead by more than noise in any of the key swing states, and a large majority show Obama leading.