Tag: democracy

Carol and I are getting ready to cast our vote in the upcoming election. Early voting starts today at Cohasset Town Hall, and we wanted to be ready. So we sat in the kitchen and did some research on the candidates and the ballot questions.

We no longer have a real newspaper in Cohasset. There’s the Coastal Mariner, but it’s a typical Gannet local paper, with very little actual local news. There’s the online Cohasset Anchor, which has some good lifestyle stories but it’s not a place I’d look for hard news on local elections. As for the regional newspapers, the Quincy Patriot-Ledger used to be an OK source for local news, but it’s yet another Gannet paper where staff has been cut to the point where there’s not much local coverage any more. As for the Boston Globe, they pretty much ignore southeastern Massachusetts.

So we turned to the League of Women Voters for information about state and local elections. We went to https://www.vote411.org/ and entered our address. Up popped a list of every candidate for every race. We looked at the Massachusetts Information for Voters booklet, which is mailed to everyone in Massachusetts and contains comprehensive information about the five ballot measures we vote on this year.

In this post, while I’ll offer some opinions about the election, more importantly I’m going to reflect on democracy and the democratic process. And my first reflection is this — we hear a great deal about the presidential election, both in the news, on social media, and in face-to-face interactions. This emphasis on the presidential election makes it seem like we’re voting for emperor or king. But U.S. democracy encompasses far more than Harris vs. Trump (and before you complain, I listed those two candidates in alphabetical order). In fact, the overemphasis on the presidential election is harming our democracy. So let’s talk about all those other elections.

We started by looking at the candidates for the U.S. Senate. The League of Women Voters sends out these standard questions for all Senate candidates to answer:

Continue reading “Voting”

Carol and I just voted. No lines, no waiting. No anxiety — at least, no anxiety in the voting process itself.

Today’s Daily Journal, our local freebie newspaper, reports that the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Belmont, Calif., is hosting a “stress-free zone” this evening — a place where you can go and not talk about politics, and not look at media. Rev. Michael Arase-Barhau of the church suggests people bring knitting, a book to read, adult coloring books, whatever.

Carol and I have a different destination in mind: we’ll be going to sing Sacred Harp music at Inder’s house in Oakland. And last night, we went to our congregation for a song circle organized by VJ, in the spirit of election eve song circles (the difference was that ours allowed any gender to participate). I don’t do adult coloring books (maybe I should), but singing works for me as a way to reduce anxiety.

It’s not just the presidential election. Here in Silicon Valley, we have a number of local ballot initiatives for rent stabilization measures. These initiatives are proving to be divisive. In our congregation, we have people on both sides of the rent stabilization issue, and while there isn’t any visible rancor, there are definitely some people who know not to talk local politics with each other.

Maybe this is the biggest problem. Here in the U.S., we lack skills in talking about disagreement. You either agree with someone, or you refuse to talk with them. You don’t like Hillary Clinton? then you won’t talk to a Clinton supporter. You don’t believe in God? then you’ll refuse to talk to Christians. We Americans believe in competition rather than collaboration; in market-based decisions rather than wisdom-based decisions; in individual rights rather than communal good.

No wonder we’re anxious.