I've started trying to vote in-person day-of again.

Don't want the balance of early ballots to lean too Democrat, lest Republicans declare them all fraudulent.

Craft room, music, maybe an edible, and my phone locked in a drawer is my current plan.

John Oliver talked about the midterms on Last Week Tonight this past Sunday and showed a clip from some local news in Iowa(?) of someone talking about how, normally, there are loads of Republican/Trump signs in the area but they've been missing this year. One can hope.

A town right-winger is running for school board. She's pro-ICE (and an outright racist, go figure), anti-LGBTQ, and she insulted an atheist veteran in the town FB group by saying this is a Christian country (she's a Christian fascist). My town didn't announce who the candidates were until it was too late to get put on the ballot, and the names are essentially unopposed. My wife and I wrote me in, it's the best we can do until the next election but there was no way I was putting a vote for her.
Other than that my representatives are establishment Democrats owned by AIPAC and they didn't get primaried so just more of them.

1. Gerrymandered district map was passed and overturned by a court. Now we have a ballot proposition to uphold the court's decision or implement the shitty map.

2. A vote for an amendment to overturn the amendment we just voted for, which overturned an abortion ban. Bonus: it avoids using the word abortion and talks about women's health and banning transgender healthcare for minors (which is effectively already banned).

3. Grift for the anti-tax crowd, and another confusingly-worded one that makes it harder to remove corrupt sheriffs.

Republicants are bringing their A game on confusing ballot language that's technically correct but obfuscates the actual change, and the advertising everywhere is furthering that.

I'm in TN, and our Republican trifecta is pushing a constitutional amendment to ban state property tax. Note: we don't have a state property tax, we haven't had one since 1949, but they want to enshrine a ban in our state constitution. Seems to be a recurring theme of Republicans aiming to ban things that don't exist or impact our lives at all.

We just have an ask to pivot our school board from a location based system to an "all district" system, which does mean that it could be a problem of stacking it with people from certain areas (we are a mostly rural district) but right now they just appoint people to fill the board anyway which is less optimal.

This board had a "fire the teacher for the gay book" issue before I moved there so this matters!

A straight-up "Implement a dedicated library tax." About as straightforwardly worded as possible.

Literally getting constituents to vote for a tax. I don't have high hopes since the entire purpose of this tax is to stop the urban areas that already fund the library system with taxes from subsidizing the rural areas that get free service and refuse to chip in any.

They all start going off about how libraries should be funded with donations, but go silent real quick when you point out donations are a crap system for ensuring payroll goes out on time.

Some idiot shouted "No taxation without representation" and I was like "This is literally that."

In Austin we have a few. The biggest is probably Proposition I which is essentially requiring recurring "third-party audits" of our city government... which we already have happening, like, there's a third-party audit in process right now. City council already approved recurring third-party audits earlier this year. Part of Prop I also "would require the independent consultants to identify areas of savings for the city that exceed the cost of conducting the audit"[1]. That's the bit that worries me, it seems mostly like a way for consultants to come in and recommend what to cut a la what McKinsey and Co does to businesses.

Something interesting I found about Prop I is that the majority of the Save Austin Now donations are actually from local individuals, which is not what I've been hearing local Democrats say[2]. Regardless, Save Austin Now has been tied to some pretty lame movements in Austin so I still don't really see why I'd be voting with them.

Some other smaller propositions we have are essentially ways for city council to hide from the public, and hopefully those props fail.

I knew the ballot was going to be long, but getting two sheets double sided still surprised me. On the bright side, half the issues were real quick to vote on. Still a bit nervous to see if any of them were worded sneaky enough to cross the finish line.

Paxton is genuinely one of the worst candidates for a statewide office anywhere ever. He was impeached by his own party over his misconduct in office, has run a horrible campaign propped up by the world's least likable person and is supported by the most unpopular president of all time. I've seen more than one comment from lifelong Texas Republicans who are going out to vote for Talarico simply in opposition to Paxton.

Here's a quote from the NYT:

Rey Gonzales, a 62-year-old Republican living in Houston, said that he had been troubled by the allegations that led to Mr. Paxton’s impeachment and by reports that he had been unfaithful in his marriage. Mr. Gonzales, who says he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020 but did not vote in 2024, says he plans to support Mr. Talarico purely out of dislike for Mr. Paxton. When asked what he liked about Mr. Talarico, his answer was succinct: “Nothing.”

Of all the races playing out today, I would be most shocked by Paxton winning.

There's always a few elected positions in my area that are uncontested, or have "select up to 3" one only 2 names are listed. Theres a running joke in my friend circle that we're all going to write in the friend that would most hate to be elected to anything.

I was [...] had 35 things to vote on

I had 64! Probably a similar percentage were uncontested.