Election coverage
It's no easy task to find useful information on the candidates for offices other than the US Senate and state governor. What's really frustrating is when there is a useful tidbit about Candidate A next to a not-useful tidbit about candidate B, as in this blurb from the Boston Globe on the race for Attorney General:
Republican Lawrence W. Frisoli, 56, is a lawyer who served a two-year term on the Cambridge City Council in the late 1970s. He has trumpeted a platform that backs gun rights and capital punishment for heinous murders. Martha M . Coakley, 53, the Democrat, is aiming to become the first woman in an office her party has held for nearly 40 years. She is finishing her second term as Middlesex district attorney.
So now I know that Frisoli favors gun rights and capital punishment, and that Coakley is a woman. Since I am not someone who will vote for a candidate solely based on her gender, this is not the most useful phrase the Globe could have chosen to describe her candidacy. For all I know, this is the extent of her platform.
Information on the Massachusetts state ballot questions can be found here. I have carefully read Question 1, which would permit the creation of new "wine-at-food-stores" licenses, which would license grocery stores to sell wine (and only wine, not beer or liquor). I have yet to find any reasonable argument against it that isn't purely protectionist. It's a good bill.
Question 2 has merits, but I think it would serve to make ballots more confusing, and as such, would probably do more harm than good. It would allow multiple parties to endorse the same candidate. For example, Jane Doe is the Democratic candidate. The Green Rainbow Party (a real party in Massachusetts) also thinks Jane Doe is nifty, so they choose to endorse her as well. Now Jane Doe's name appears twice on the ballot: once as a Democrat, and once as a Green Rainbow. On the plus side, this allows Green Rainbow supporters to vote Green Rainbow, but still vote for Jane Doe, who has a much better chance of winning than someone backed only by the Green Rainbow Party. As neat as the data one could collect that way would be, I don't think it would be terribly useful, and I think having a candidate multiple times on the same ballot would be confusing.
I don't feel like I know enough about Question 3 to cast a meaningful vote one way or the other. It has to do with child care providers and collective bargaining.
Republican Lawrence W. Frisoli, 56, is a lawyer who served a two-year term on the Cambridge City Council in the late 1970s. He has trumpeted a platform that backs gun rights and capital punishment for heinous murders. Martha M . Coakley, 53, the Democrat, is aiming to become the first woman in an office her party has held for nearly 40 years. She is finishing her second term as Middlesex district attorney.
So now I know that Frisoli favors gun rights and capital punishment, and that Coakley is a woman. Since I am not someone who will vote for a candidate solely based on her gender, this is not the most useful phrase the Globe could have chosen to describe her candidacy. For all I know, this is the extent of her platform.
Information on the Massachusetts state ballot questions can be found here. I have carefully read Question 1, which would permit the creation of new "wine-at-food-stores" licenses, which would license grocery stores to sell wine (and only wine, not beer or liquor). I have yet to find any reasonable argument against it that isn't purely protectionist. It's a good bill.
Question 2 has merits, but I think it would serve to make ballots more confusing, and as such, would probably do more harm than good. It would allow multiple parties to endorse the same candidate. For example, Jane Doe is the Democratic candidate. The Green Rainbow Party (a real party in Massachusetts) also thinks Jane Doe is nifty, so they choose to endorse her as well. Now Jane Doe's name appears twice on the ballot: once as a Democrat, and once as a Green Rainbow. On the plus side, this allows Green Rainbow supporters to vote Green Rainbow, but still vote for Jane Doe, who has a much better chance of winning than someone backed only by the Green Rainbow Party. As neat as the data one could collect that way would be, I don't think it would be terribly useful, and I think having a candidate multiple times on the same ballot would be confusing.
I don't feel like I know enough about Question 3 to cast a meaningful vote one way or the other. It has to do with child care providers and collective bargaining.