Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
Enlightened Voting
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 11/03/2010 - 11:40A monk told Joshu, "I have just entered this monastery. I beg you to teach me." Joshu asked, "Have you eaten your rice porridge?" The monk replied, "I have." "Then," said Joshu, "Go and wash your bowl."
At that moment the monk was enlightened.
I do not claim to have attained enlightenment, but as I thought about the elections yesterday, the old Zen story came to mind.
I spent yesterday slicing and dicing voting data to provide call sheets to volunteers for a State Rep candidate in Connecticut. When all was said and done, the candidate did not defeat the incumbent and ended up with the same percentage of votes as previous challengers had received.
In the evening, I read through the election results. State Reps whom I respect and call friends lost their bids for re-election.
This morning, I read an email from a list of group psychotherapists. They have been discussing “collective intelligence” which has been written about it bit recently in some of the scientific journals. One friend commented about obsessing about the election results and saying that it was clearly, in her opinion not a case of collective intelligence.
I noted that when politicians supporting ones views wins, it is collective intelligence. When the opponents win it is the electorate acting as an angry mob. A friend on Facebook shared a similar observation that David Brooks made from his particular perspective.
At noon, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz will hold a media briefing at the State Capital about the latest vote totals from Connecticut as well as an update on the Bridgeport Ballot Situation. Attorney-General Elect George Jepsen, Secretary of the State Elect Denise Merrill are holding a question and answer session at the Legislative Office Building half an hour later. They moved the time of their session back half an hour to avoid a conflict with Secretary of State Bysiewicz’s news conference.
Meanwhile, I am digging out of the emails that have piled up, doing a little laundry, and continuing my quest for enlightenment.
Connecticut Election Night Preview
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 18:59Everyone has been writing their prediction of who will win tomorrow in the big races and what it will mean for our state and our country. However, there is a theme that is perhaps being overlooked that is worth exploring. What role will minor party candidates play this time around.
There are several interesting aspects to this. First, there are the minor party candidates for statewide office. In the Gubernatorial race, Dan Malloy and Tom Foley face a third candidate, Tom Marsh, who is running on the Independent line. I saw my first Marsh lawn sign today. He had started off as a Republican and switched to the Independent party. With the race between Malloy and Foley being very close, Marsh may not get that many votes. If Malloy wins, and Marsh gets more votes than the difference between Malloy and Foley, there are going to be some upset Republicans calling Marsh a spoiler and traitor.
The U.S. Senate race looks even more interesting. Besides Dick Blumenthal and Linda McMahon, John Mertens is running on the Connecticut for Lieberman line and Warren Mosler is running on the Independent line. Both have run spirited campaigns. When it was looking especially close between Blumenthal and McMahon, Mertens and Mosler faced the same fate as Marsh in the Gubernatorial contest. This has been especially a concern amongst progressive Democrats who wanted to see the Connecticut for Lieberman line on the 2012 ballot, but don’t want to see Blumenthal’s chances threatened. I’ve now seen some Mertens lawn signs by the side of the road as well.
There is also the Brian K. Hill write-in campaign for U.S. Senate. It is not clear what sort of impact he will have. I’ve seen a fair amount of Hill lawn signs, and he has been trying to reach out on Facebook.
For Secretary of State, Treasurer, Comptroller and Attorney General, the Green Party and the Independent party both have full slates. The Libertarian Party has candidates for Secretary of State and Comptroller.
However, the minor party to watch is the Working Family Party. I’ve now received requests from two different organizations urging me to vote on the Working Family Party line. They have cross endorsed the Democrats on all of these lines and it will be interesting to see what percentage of the vote they get.
It gets even messier when you go further down the ballot. In a press release from the Secretary of the State’s office, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz notes that “There are as many as nine political parties running candidates for the various seats on the ballot, depending on the town and legislative district.”
This has presented some interesting ballot logistics. Fifteen communities will have double sided ballots and most of the ballots look like complicated bingo cards.
Looking at the State Representative races provides all kinds of interesting information. The Republicans are running 126 candidates and the Democrats are running 136. There are 16 open seats, 12 Democratic and 4 Republican. 9 Republicans are unopposed, as are 9 Democrats. In addition, there are 12 Democrats that appear on the ballot as both Democrats and Working Family Party candidates and have no opposition. The district with the most party lines is the 100th district where Democratic Incumbent Matt Lesser is on the Democratic and Working Family Party lines and Republican challenger John Szewczyk is also on the Connecticut for Lieberman, Libertarian and Independent lines.
Besides the 100th district, the Connecticut for Lieberman party has candidates in six other districts. The Libertarians have no other State Rep candidates.
The Independent party is running candidates in thirteen different State Rep races. In two of these races, they are cross endorsing with the Connecticut for Lieberman party. In six of the races, they are cross endorsing Republicans.
The Working Family Party has 59 State Rep candidates. With one exception, all of these are cross endorsed Democrats. The exception is David Stevenson in the 107th district where the Democrats did not nominate a candidate.
The Green Party has four candidates, none of whom are cross endorsed. In the 67th district, the Green Party candidate is the only challenger to Republican Incumbent Clark Chapin. Four other parties are fielding just one candidate. The Christian Center Party is running Daniel Traceski as the only opponent to incumbent Republican Penny Bacchiochi. The Buckman for Connecticut party is running Brien Buckman in a crowded race for Denise Merrill’s seat. The We the People Party is running David Parian in a crowded race against incumbent Chris Donovan and the Common Sense Party is running Bruce Siennick against Republican Incumbent David Scribner, whose only other competition is the aforementioned David Stevenson.
Rounding out the State Rep races, there are six Petitioning Candidates. Two are running against Democratic Incumbents that face no other opposition.
There are also six registered Write-in candidates for State Rep. Three of them are running in the 6th district where Democratic Incumbent Hector Robles is running unopposed. This afternoon, the Hartford Police Department terminated Officer Robles for various violations of the Hartford Police Department’s Code of Conduct.
How will all of these races turnout? We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.
Waterbury Applies Community Policing to Animal Control
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/30/2010 - 10:46My regular readers know that I’m interested in many topics, from politics to animal rescue. At times these topics fit together nicely and I’ve written a bit about various municipalities as they address animal control issues. People often look at animal control issues in the south and are horrified to find that states like Georgia put to sleep more than 100,000 animals a year.
Connecticut does a much better job, but still they put to sleep between two and three thousand animals each year. Waterbury has it particularly bad, receiving between 200 and 300 calls a month and putting to sleep between 20 and 30 animals each month.
The traditional goal of animal control officers is to keep the public safe from vicious or infected animals and to punish people guilty of cruelty to animals. However, some believe that is cruel to animals to kill them just because no one comes forward and adopts them within some legally defined brief period.
There are fiscal arguments about this. What is the cost of killing an animal? What is the cost of keeping them in a shelter? What are things that can be done to reduce these costs?
Perhaps the best way to reduce costs is to take ideas of community policing and apply them to animal control officers. The U.S. Department of Justice describes community policing this way:
Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.
Some municipalities seem to take the exact opposite view when it comes to the animal control aspects of their police departments. The animal control officers take an adversarial position with local rescue groups. As these problems become more and more apparent, other municipalities are adopting wiser approaches.
Hartford animal control officer Sherry DeGenova is a hero among many animal rescue activists and her application of the ideals of community policing to animal control is one that municipalities across the state should be adopting. She works closely with local media, rescue organizations and anyone else that will listen or lend a hand to help adopt out animals from Hartford.
Yesterday, I received an email from the newly appointed Officer in Charge of the Waterbury Police Animal Control Shelter, Sergeant Rennee’ Harvey. This email is another great example of a local municipality trying hard to find more humane and cost effective solutions to animal control. I applaud Waterbury for these efforts and hope that members of the media, rescue organizations and other groups join in this Waterbury’s great new effort of applying community policing to animal control. Likewise, I encourage other municipalities to look at how they can apply community policing to animal control.
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 10/27/2010 - 09:10
The CT Election Boycott
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/26/2010 - 09:04I'm getting fed up with this political campaign. I'm wondering, who is with me if we try a boycott? Seems our future politicians have enuf money to spend bashing each other... what about us???
A friend had posted that on her Facebook page last night. It is a great illustration of the old adage that negative campaigning depresses turnout. The goal is to depress the turnout of a candidate’s opponent’s supporters, thereby making it so that the candidate running the negative ads needs fewer votes to win.
Yet perhaps it is time to challenge this adage. If you stay home, you are telling the campaign strategists they are right. You are rewarding them for their bad behavior. The problem is, many voters just aren’t aware that they have choices.
The most recent Quinnipiac poll asks this question:
If the election for United States Senator were being held today, and the candidates were Richard Blumenthal the Democrat and Linda McMahon the Republican, for whom would you vote? (If undecided) If you had to choose today, would you vote for Blumenthal or McMahon?
Blumenthal gets 54% of the vote. McMahon gets 42% of the vote, with 1% voting for someone else, no one listed as not voting and 3% listed as not knowing.
The problem is, the candidates are not just Blumenthal and McMahon. There are two other candidates who are on the ballot and several write-in candidates.
Suffock University conducted a poll a few days ago that listed all four of the candidates on the ballot:
In the race for U.S. Senate your ballot lists four candidates in the following order: Republican Linda McMahon {mick-MAN}, Democrat Richard Blumenthal {BLUE-men-thol}, Connecticut for Lieberman Candidate John Mertens {MER-tins}, Working Families Candidate Richard Blumenthal or Independent Warren Mosler {MOSE-ler}, for whom will you vote or toward whom would you LEAN at this time?
In this poll Warren Mosler gets 2% of the vote and John Mertens gets 1% of the vote; three times the number of people voting for other candidates that Quinnipiac finds.
An interesting question in that poll was
Linda McMahon has released an ad stating that Richard Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam. Does this make you more likely to vote for Linda McMahon, Richard Blumenthal or one of the other candidates for US Senate?
30% said they would be more likely to vote for Blumenthal, 25% said they would be more likely to vote for McMahon and 5% said they would be more likely to vote for one of the other candidates. In other words, 35% of the likely voters are more likely to vote for against McMahon and 25% are more likely to vote for her as a result of her ads. This doesn’t sound like a winning strategy.
Over in the Governor’s race, we see similar results based on the type of question asked. Quinnipiac asks
If the election for governor were being held today, and the candidates were Dan Malloy the Democrat and Tom Foley the Republican, for whom would you vote? (If undecided) If you had to choose today, would you vote for Malloy or Foley?
Malloy gets 48%, Foley gets 42% and 2% say they would vote for someone else. However, the Suffolk poll asks
In the race for Governor your ballot lists three candidates in the following order: Republican Tom Foley, Democrat Dan Malloy, Working Families candidate Dan Malloy, or Independent Thomas Marsh. For whom will you vote or toward whom would you LEAN at this time?
This poll has Malloy getting 49% of the vote, Foley only getting 38% and Tom March getting 4%.
All of these polls focus on ‘likely voters’, that is, those who have not been turned off and are thinking about boycotting the election. How would the results change if these unlikely voters, instead of staying home, came out and voted for a minor party candidate? Could the dynamic be changed so that candidates who run negative campaigns run the risk of causing their party to lose major party status?
Personally, I would like to see more candidates talking about their strengths in solving problems and their stances on issues and less time on negative advertisements. Even more important to me is that we increase voter participation in the coming election.
So please, if you don’t like any of the major candidates, don’t sit this election out. Get out and vote for whichever minor candidates you believe would be the best elected officials. If you do like some of the major party candidates, by all means, get out and vote for them, especially if a backlash against negative campaigning could hurt your favorite candidates’ changes.
