Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Lisa and I cast our 2024 General Election votes on Saturday. We typically vote by mail, but the recent ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that declares that ballots cast by mail and postmarked before election day but received after that date are invalid, regardless of state law on the matter, are invalid makes us nervous, even though it should not take more than a couple of days for mail to get from Fernley to Yerrington (the county seat). My thought on the court ruling is "So much for states' rights." And I'm certain that the Trumpist Party will try to use that to overturn the results if they aren't what they want, so the election will end up at the Supreme Court.

Anyway, we went over to City Hall, where there was a long queue for the voting machines, but no wait to drop our ballots in the drop-box there. That should, as far as we can tell, avoid the "postmark" issue.

There were many down-ticket races in which I did not cast any vote, because the only candidate was a Republican, and those races aren't those covered by the ability to mark NONE OF THESE CANDIDATES, which is a possibility in Nevada. (It's only symbolic, as shown when NOTC won the race for the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor a few elections ago; in such a case, the runner up gets the nod.)

I suppose I should thank the people trying to make sure that only Real Human Beings (i.e. Trumpists) sent out a "Vote for Patriots" recommendation list. These are people trying to stack the school board with MAGA loyalists. I'm surprised there are any women on their list; I though women were supposed to stay home and they shouldn't be allowed to vote anyway. But in any event, their endorsement list in a non-partisan race made is much easier for me to vote: I voted for the other candidates in that race. Now it's only a matter of degree when voting in a county that is around 80% Republican, presumably mostly Trumpists who are convinced that the Leopards would never eat their faces, but I reckon I can vote for the lesser evil in this case. Similarly, there isn't even a Democratic candidate for my member of Congress, and the No Party Preference candidate on the ballot is a former Republican, but he seems to be one of those people who says that the party left him, not the other way around, and it's slightly less bad.

There's one state ballot measure in which I have a great interest, and that is Question 3, which would establish ranked-choice (Instant Runoff) voting in most raced. (Not for President, unfortunately.) I note that both major parties oppose it, which doesn't surprise me at all, as RCV/IRV reduces party power and tends to return the least-disliked candidate rather than the most-liked, and based on how I see it work with the Hugo Awards, that's a good thing.

Nevada is apparently a battleground state. If you colored the map by county, you'd think it was a 98% Republican landslide state, but fortunately, land doesn't vote; people do. We've done what we can. I hope enough people who want to be able to hold a free election four years from now also vote this year.