election results

Locals already know this, but for anyone else who was curious about the results of the elections I wrote about yesterday... from the county returns:

( Read more... )

Ravenstahl won the mayoral election, which isn't too surprising. I had hoped his margin would be lower, but a 35% share for a Republican in a city that's 5:1 Dems:Repubs is something Ravenstahl should pay attention to.

I'm pleased that the Libertarian candidate for controller got 10% of the vote. While there's still a long way to go and Pittsburgh might be degenerate, I think the best path for third parties given the official biases against them is to win smaller races and work up from there. I'd love to see a libertarian on city council. (No, not enough to run.) Remember, until yesterday our mayor hadn't been elected as mayor.

In other news: county-wide, 26.7% of voters (over 69,000 people) used the "straight party line" option. Sigh.

(no subject)

I used to think I wanted the internet in my brain, but I've reconsidered.

The phone rang around 8:30 this morning. That was early enough to be plausibly important, so I answered. The caller butchered my name (my last name doesn't even have several of those morphemes); my suspicion that it was a junk call was soon confirmed.

She was calling from "Concerned Women for America". She got about three more words out before I said "don't call me again" and hung up. That was based on the rudeness of a solicitation at that hour, but I also had a negative reaction to the name of this group I'd never heard of before, and I found myself wanting to look them up while on the phone, with no computer immediately to hand. Every word in that name except "for" set off a warning bell (and "for" is on probation due to proximity). Taking them in the order the alarms sounded:

• "America": in a political context, high correlation with rabid right-wingerss
• "Women": you're going to try to categorize my beliefs, interests, and priorities, and you will be wrong
• "Concerned": you have a crusade

If you want to see how I did, check Google. It's not hard.

Maybe I don't want a neural link to the internet. It's much easier to scrub the pollution from a browser cache when it's on disk.