Vote By Proxy

Everything I've written on this blog so far has to do with national politics. With the midterm elections and all the campaigns, that is all that's been in the news. But now that that's over, I want to focus on Utah politics.

Here is a news story from the Daily Herald that raises some questions. What should happen when an elected official of government is in the military and gets called to active duty?

There is a law in Texas that says those officials can chose someone to take their place while they are gone, and in the past three officials chose their wives to represent them. On one hand, that is good because most likely their wives had the same opinions as them and could always ask them for advice if they weren't sure. On the other hand, what if the proxy's opinions were very different? Then to official ends up being someone who the public didn't vote for, and they are not being well represented.

I agree that there needs to be something in place to protect the officials jobs while they are away serving our country. And this would be the best solution that I could think of, so I would support this bill.

National Opt Out Day

There are some people trying to start a protest of the body scanners that are being introduced in all of the airports. The protest calls for people traveling on November 24th, the day before Thanksgiving and also the busiest travel day of the year, to opt out of the body scanners. That means the TSA has to give those people invasive pat downs that take a lot longer than a scan.

I think this protest is stupid. It would make me very mad as a traveler if I was made late for my flight because of long lines created by protesters. I am not necessarily in support of the scanners, because I do think the images are invasive, but I understand the need for security. I hope Thanksgiving travelers do not listen to the organizers of this protest. If they want to protest, then fine, but don't do it that day and ruin many people's holidays.

Alaska's New Old Senator

Lisa Murkowski won the election for her Senate seat, making her the second person ever to win as a write in candidate. Over 100,000 Alaskans voted for her, to give her a 10,000 vote lead over Joe Miller. Miller claimed that many of her votes were invalid, because of misspellings or other errors. He claimed that a write-in candidate's name must be spelled exactly right to count. The Lt. Governor Craig Campbell disagreed, saying as long as the voter's intent was known, the vote counts. Even if all of the disputed voted were thrown out, Murkowski would still have a 2,000 vote lead over Miller.

Murkowski herself gave partial credit of her win to the fact that over half of the Alaskan electorate is not aligned with any party, giving them more freedom to vote for the candidate, instead of the party.

Republicans Back On Top

Senate Map by New York Times

I think everbody kind of expected that Congress was going to be completely different after this year's elections, and they were right. 58 formerly democratic seats in the House of Representatives are now held by Republicans. Not only did congress change drastically, but the majority of governers are now Rebulicans also. Interestingly, this year's midterm campaigns were the most expensive midterm campaigns ever seen by this country.

Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said, "Voters sent a message that change has not happened fast enough.” I thought that was interesting that a leader of the democratic party would make that comment, when the Obama campaign two years ago was all about "change". I agree with the majority of Americans in this case, that change is not happening fast enough. And I will go further to say that the changes that have been made so far, like the health care reform, are not changes I support.

President Obama made a comment about hoping that he can cooperate with all the republicans in congress now. It sound like he is expecting to have to make a lot of compromises in the next two years, with the majority of congress working towards different goals. He did not get the support he was hoping for from his home, the seat he used to occupy in the Senate is now held by a republican.

All in all, this was a historic election, and I hope things in this country will start looking up now.