Internal refugees and the return of the ballot measure wars

Transgender folk are fleeing to blue states. This didn't begin with Trump coming back into office; aggressive persecution in red states revved up the push out at the beginning of this decade.

Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis provides a statistical picture.

The American Transgender Refugee Crisis
If this were occurring abroad, to an ethnic minority, we would call it ethnic cleansing. 

... Annualized, what we are seeing is a displacement rate of roughly 15% a year. And because trans people are largely not fleeing blue states (which means that the pool of leavers would actually be the 47% of trans adults who live in the 29 states with at least one restrictive law), the rate among trans people in the states doing the persecuting is closer to 29%. Nearly a third, in a year.  

... the sheer scale of this movement is breathtaking. Hundreds of thousands of trans people have had to flee persecution within the borders of the United States ....

... To put this in perspective, the last time an American subgroup migrated at these rates was the Great Migration, in which roughly 6 million Southern Black people fled Jim Crow violence and repression. This occurred over a period of decades, in the face of political repression, systematic violence, and legal apartheid. In its fastest decade, the 1940s, 1.5 million left the South—against a Southern Black population of roughly 10 million. Black America fled Jim Crow at about 1.5% a year, at a time when baseline inter-state mobility was higher than it was today. Trans America is fleeing red-state persecution at ten to twenty times that. ....

This should be seen as appropriately alarming to every decent person in the country.

... trans people who cannot afford to run are forced to hide.

Since November 2024, 55% of transgender adults report taking steps to be less visible as an LGBTQ person in their community—at work, at school—compared to 24% of LGBTQ people overall. This is what “eradication” looks like in practice. Instead of forcing the trans person to leave the state, the fascists are forcing the trans person to leave themselves. ...

To subject some of us to this level of terror -- along with migrants and all people of color -- is simply not okay.

• • •

In general, many Democratic politicians know they have to hold the line on trans rights -- however little actual sympathy they may feel. But those who break ranks with trans rights should feel heat. It's sad to see this happening in Ohio where there's an actual contest for governor: Top Ohio Democrats retreat on trans issues, leaving some transgender activists feeling abandoned.

I can begin to understand Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur's defection; she's ancient, a good labor stalwart, and yet uniquely continues to hold a district that has been redrawn many times by Republicans to make it more hostile to her. But for the Democratic candidate for Governor, Amy Acton, to adopt a transphobic trope about "boys playing in girls sports" crosses the decency line.

• • •

Meanwhile, it seems that the trans haters are experimenting with the ballot box. In five states --Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Washington -- citizen initiative petitions have put anti-trans measures up for a vote this fall. This feels awfully familiar to anyone who lived through the gay marriage wars of the early 2000s. For a long time during that period, fear and ignorant revulsion enforced by initiative succeeded across the country -- until it didn't. Before the Supreme Court got around to upholding gay marriage, very blue states had legalized marriage and then voters in Colorado repealed one of these bans which they had passed a decade earlier -- marking the turning tide.

Erin in the Morning warns of this new danger from the transphobes and other all purpose MAGA zealots.

... For transgender people who have sought refuge in blue states to escape the bans spreading through Republican-controlled legislatures, these measures represent a new and more direct threat: the possibility that their neighbors, not distant lawmakers, will vote to strip their rights.

Erin's description of the Washington state proposition suggests to me that it might well encounter successful opposition. 

... a ballot initiative funded by conservative hedge fund manager Brian Heywood would institute a K-12 sports ban—and require every girl who wants to play to have her sex verified by a doctor first. The measure’s language is explicit: to be eligible, a student must provide a statement from her health care provider “that verifies the student’s biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.” That requirement applies not to transgender students specifically but to every girl in the state who wants to play any sport with a sex-separate classification—from basketball and soccer to cheerleading, bowling, and golf.  ...

Yeah, sure -- subject every girl child to physical sex verification! I can imagine some resistant kids and parents. 

Washington state has a proud history of fighting terrible initiatives. I'm pretty hopeful about the voter's finding their way to turning down this one. 

The Missouri trans-hate initiative is a sneaky one. Republican pols have added the anti-trans stuff to an anti-abortion measure as a sweetener. Considering Missouri voters passed a citizen measure protecting abortion rights a couple of year ago, they've got resistance to overcome. Might transphobia get a new batch of abortion restrictions across the finish line? Read about Missouri trials and tribulations here.

• • •

Something delightful to close this catalogue of horrors; how about a little joy? Here's Dylan Mulvaney, a transwoman who appeared in a beer commercial and has been subjected to unrelenting persecution by MAGA bigots ever since, delighting in being herself: 

What is it that I have that they don’t? Oh my God, freedom. I am free in a way that they will never have the privilege to experience. And they want to use their power to take away my freedom. But what they don’t understand is that my freedom has zero contingency on what they can provide for me, because my freedom is fully dependent on the moment that I acknowledged my real, authentic self, and every day since. And sharing that with the world? It’s just icing on the cake. But they don’t want me to be able to share that, because it would mean young people realizing that if someone like me can be themselves and find success and freedom, then they can find success and freedom for themselves too.

You go, girl! 

California elections: I was both wrong and right

California's June primary election taught me some lessons about the numerous vehement opinions I bring to our election system.

For many years, I argued that widespread adoption of "abseentee" or "vote by mail" would detract from voter engagement rather than increase it. I was wrong.

I used to argue that campaigning to enhance Election Day -- marches, parties, the common accompaniments of 19th century elections -- would be the best way to increase turnout. This sort of thing does work in some contexts: homeless advocates have been known to march groups of street-living foks to City Hall to vote with some effect. But there is overwhelming evidence that automatically sending every eligible voter a ballot that can be mailed, dropped in a drop box, or delivered to a polling place is more effective.

Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle describes the extraordinary success of mail ballots in our state:

... California had the second-highest voter turnout (40%) of any state that has held a primary so far this year.  The state with the highest turnout: Oregon (41%), which, like California, mails a ballot to every voter. 

Trump doesn't like this, but if you want more civic participation, make convenience voting easy! 

• • • 

However, seeing the "top two" primary voting system in action in picking the candidates who will be on ballot in November was the absurd farce I've always thought it. In loathing the "top two," I was right. 

Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton skewers the strange consequences of this systemic gimmick. 

... [Former state Sen. Abel] Maldonado says he crafted the current system 16 years ago believing it would produce “pragmatic and commonsense” officeholders. But that has failed, he acknowledges.

... Voters, regardless of party affiliation, can vote for any candidate. And the top two vote-getters, regardless of their party, advance to the general election. ... The idea was that candidates would be forced to appeal to centrist voters — not just party ideologues — and more moderates would be elected.

... Actually, the electorate has become so polarized in recent years — particularly during the Trump era — that very few centrist voters seem to be left.

... Democrat Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, favors dumping the top-two.

For one thing, she says, there was too much focus this spring on whether any Democratic gubernatorial candidate would qualify for the November ballot. Fear spread that so many Democrats were running that they’d splinter the party vote and two Republicans would finish first and second.

She wanted to hear less talk about the horse race and more debate over substantive issues.

“People were obsessing about a Democratic shutout,” Gonzalez said. “And people were waiting until the last minute to fill out their ballot because they wanted to vote for the candidate who was ahead to make sure someone made the top two. We didn’t have a policy discussion.” ...

Maybe we can get rid of this abomination? We implanted it by ballot initiative and we would have to vote it away in order to revert to a system in which each party gets a nominee. My instinct is that this would not be an easy campaign to win: voters tend to be protective of any arrangement which they think gives them more choices and presumably that's what defenders of the "top-two" would argue.

• • •

Meanwhile, it would be totally hypocritical of me not to point out that my candidate for US Congress from San Francisco is only still in the running because of the "top-two" system. If we'd had party primaries, Scott Wiener would be a Democratic shoo-in for November. In the current system, Connie Chan, still gives us a chance to elect a progressive, union supportive, Chinese immigrant from this city.  That seems like a good idea ...

How Democrats win California: there are a lot of us and we vote

Republicans don't win statewide and urban elections in California. There simply are too few GOP voters to get their candidates over the top. So -- naturally -- for a party that has a hard time with reality, they say our elections must be rigged. Bulls__t!

I am no longer a subscriber to the Los Angeles Times. The editorial policies of the paper's nutcase, Trump-loving owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, made sure of that; I quit. But I still seem to get the paper's California Politics e-newsletter and that means I can read occasional dispatches from one of the most plain spoken columnists writing anywhere, Anita Chabria. 

Chabria recently responded to Republican whining about our elections with a useful explainer of how the state conducts our voting.

... Voter rolls are a huge refrain in conspiracy theories and the subject of numerous (mostly unsucessful) lawsuits by Trump’s Department of Justice. Trump is demanding that the federal government “audit” the voter rolls to ensure ballots go only to legal voters, which is one of those scary and ill-conceived ideas that sounds reasonable on the surface.

... So what’s the deal with voter rolls? Are they really the dark heart of a Democratic scam to rig elections? Or is the scam that Trump and MAGA are attempting to use the boring and bureaucratic nature of voting rolls to do the very thing they claim to be fighting — undermine of free and fair elections?

... Voter rolls are the lists of eligible voters kept by each state. States run elections, because, well, the Constitution. But that structure is also a good idea because states keep closer track of who is a legal resident and where they are than the federal government. 

Republicans charge the Dems cook the books, putting fraudulent people on the rolls. Not so.

... voter rolls are “loose,” according to Chris Fowler, a professor of geography and demographics at Penn State who specializes in voting rights. Most states have laws that strive to be inclusive and are slow to remove people from the lists, precisely because we want as many people to vote as we can get.

Some people in California are added when they get a driver’s license. Some people move and ask the postal service to update their voter registration. Some people register once, move dozens of times and never think to tell their secretary of state.

Some people die. Some people get married and change their name. Some people don’t vote for 10 years, then do. You get the idea. Life happens, and updating voter registration is rarely our first thought.

But doesn't that mean that people who shouldn't be on the rolls can vote? Well no.

... here’s what the conspiracy folks leave out: Being on the voter roll doesn’t automatically mean a vote will be counted or even that a ballot will be sent. It’s just the starting point of everyone who might be invited to the party.

There are numerous safeguards, such as signature verification, that cast ballots go through before the vote is considered legitimate. When there is doubt, the vote is “cured,” which is an unnecessarily convoluted way of saying local election officials may go as far as tracking down the actual voter and making sure they are legit. Yes, if there is a question, actual people contact an actual voter. If they can’t get in contact, the vote is usually set aside.

The MAGA demand to audit voter rolls ignores all this reality and is instead based on the false idea that voter rolls translate directly into counted votes.

The game MAGA is running with voter roll audits is that it was never about election integrity. It’s about suppressing the vote of Black people, brown people, young people and others who tend to vote Democratic and also tend to have more unsettled lives that would lead them to have inaccurate information, such as conflicting addresses, on the voter rolls. 

I should add that Chabria is also a fair minded commentator. She points out that the baseless whining is not from all Republicans. 

[Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve] Hilton on Tuesday addressed the president’s unfounded but vociferous claims that Democrats have massively cheated in our recent election.

“We’ve got teams standing by, we’ve got lawyers standing by, very focused on that,” Hilton told reporters, including my colleague Seema Mehta, outside the L.A. elections headquarters. “We don’t want to let anyone down, we don’t want to let anything slip away, and we’ve seen nothing.”

Hilton made the November runoff; he's not served by denouncing the vote. He's going to lose; there aren't enough Republicans in California to make a contest. If you want to know who Hilton is, I recommend this delicious piece on his toxic past as a British conservative ad-man by Finton O'Toole in the New York Review of Books. [Free link.]

Primary day in CA

Not much here. Voting has been slow at polling sites. After all, eligible Californians received ballots by mail and have multiple options to turn them in. 

Spent the day piloting an election protection scheme, on standby for disruption that wasn't going to happen today. But come November, might it?

Two very quiet polling sites. 

Marching for hope and a future

Yesterday thousands of Alabamians and friends from all over marched in Selma in support of a "National Day of Action for Voting Rights - All Roads to Lead to the South." The Supreme Court has decreed that racist white politicians can rig elections so NO Black politicians can have chance to represent their communities anywhere that white Republicans control state legislatures. That's just fine, say the infamous black robed six. No more Voting Rights Act in practice. No, this is not fine. Too many people have fought and died for the right to a meaningful vote.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson recounts the struggle to win voting rights for all people in 1960s which culminated in Alabama.

Mickey Welsh / Advertiser

... Selma voting rights activist Amelia Boynton invited the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the city to draw national attention to its struggle, and he and other prominent Black leaders arrived in January 1965. For seven weeks, Black residents made a new push to register to vote. County sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2,000 of them on a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.

Then, on February 18, white police officers, including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed man, 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson died eight days later, on February 26. Black leaders in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression.

 Mickey Welsh / Advertiser

On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured the skull of young activist John Lewis and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

On March 15, President Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he said. “[A]ll of us…must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.

Under the protection of federal troops, the Selma marchers completed their trip to Montgomery on March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people. That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members who tailed her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city.

A bipartisan majority of Congress passed the Voting Rights Act by a vote of 77–19 in the Senate and 333–85 in the House. Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 6....

Mickey Welsh / Advertiser

The photos included here come from a wonderful photo gallery at the Tuscaloosa AL news site. It's well worth your time.

• • • 

I'm old enough so that the deadly SNCC Mississippi Summer project the year before, the Alabama voting rights campaign, and the Selma march over the bridge are part of my personal memories. A white teenager in a GOP household in Buffalo, NY, could follow the civil rights struggle in newspapers and short TV news broadcasts. I remember being mesmerized by the righteousness and bravery of the marchers.

And I was not as alone in that, as many white teenagers might be today. The private girls high school I attended had never had any Black students until my senior year; I bet the powers that be looked far and wide for the one shy girl who integrated that culturally rigid white place. She was enough younger that I never got a sense of how it turned out for her. 

But I do know that my graduating class were moved by the events of our time. It was the custom that each graduating class collect a sum of money to donate to the school toward something we thought would make the place better. We took a vote, all sixty-some of us, and made a plan. I was part of a delegation that went to the head of the school to present our plan: we wanted our class gift to begin to fund a scholarship fund for Black students. We more or less thought the school was a good place and we should share it.

As I remember, the principal seemed aghast. He was probably correct, even then, that there were legal impediments to such a racially conscious fund. I don't remember what we ended up doing for a class gift.

But in the mid-60s, it was possible for white teenagers to feel something in the wind, to identify with changing times. Can we again find that hope for a better, more just, more equitable country? There's nothing else to do ...

On enforced ignorance of history

It should probably not come as a surprise that this very cogent denunciation of the Republican Supreme Court's murder of a pillar of racial justice under law should come from a writer whose experience is in studying and teaching the American Civil War to school groups and other ordinary citizens.

Kevin M. Levin pulls no punches about the Callais decision: 

Jim Crow Didn't Die. It Went to Law School. 

... The Voting Rights Act was written in blood following years of sacrifice and bloodshed. It came directly after Selma. After the clubs and the fire hoses were unleashed on African Americans trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

Alabama police assault John Lewis, Selma, Alabama, 1965

It came after centuries during which Black Americans were systematically oppressed and for decades following the end of Reconstruction, when they were legally stripped of the franchise. The Act was the hard-won answer to a hard, ugly question: will this country actually mean what it says?

For sixty years, imperfectly but meaningfully, it tried to. Today, that answer is being rolled back. 

But this ruling does not exist in isolation. It sits inside a broader campaign of manipulation and erasure.

Look at the push to return Confederate monuments to public property—statues of men who took up arms against the United States to preserve the institution of slavery and white supremacy. The argument made for these monuments is almost always framed as “heritage” or “history.” But heritage is a choice. 

We choose what to honor. Returning these statues to pedestals of prominence is not a neutral act of preservation. It is a statement about whose history matters, and whose suffering can be brushed aside in the name of regional pride.

Look at the Trump administration’s assault on how Black history is taught and remembered. Federal pressure on universities and schools, the gutting of diversity programs, the reframing of civil rights history as divisive “ideology” rather than documented fact. These are not random culture-war skirmishes. They are part of a systematic effort to make the full truth of American history inaccessible, uncomfortable, or simply illegal to teach.

It’s a cliche, but true. You cannot understand where you are going if you are not allowed to honestly reckon with where you have been.

Self serving, exploitative lies about the full humanity of all people, and enshrining those lies in an economic system and laws, got us a Civil War once. It seems all too likely that the philosopher George Santayana's aphorism will be proved out again: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Little as the MAGAs might understand this, an important way to avert more civil conflict is to fight back against their attempt to erase accurate history. Oddly enough, truthful history can make possible a path forward.

Calling all California Democrats

We've got a race for a new governor on the ballot this year and, for the moment, it's a mess.

As you probably know, California chooses most of the candidates who appear on our November ballots by a crackpot "top two jungle primary" system. (I've always hated this foolishness, but the voters chose it by referendum, so here we are.) Everyone seeking a state office runs on the same ballot in the June primary; that includes all Democrats, Republicans, and whatever other nuts may be out there. 

Only the two with the highest number of votes in June get to move on to contest the fall election when most normal voters get around to tuning in. That's what the primary is for, to pick the genuine candidates. Or at least what it should be for: weeding out those with no chance. 

But this year, a ridiculous number of politicians think Californians just might decide to want them as governor. In addition to two right wing Republicans who have fractional support, eight Democrats are competing for our votes. 

Five of the Dems are living also-rans who have proved unable to break into more than 8 percent (and usually much less) in polling. 

Three of the Dems are running neck and neck in the mid-teens in polling. And of those, any of the three might have a chance to win the job. The other low-polling five are vanity candidates, just taking up space. 

The two Republicans also poll in the teens. No Republican is going to win the governor race against any Democrat. Dems are some 45 percent of the state's electorate, while Reps are about 25 percent while the rest are independents who mostly vote for a Dem.

But while the Dems divide their votes among eight candidates, five of whom haven't got a chance, it's numerically possible that the top two highest voter winners in June could be the two Republicans! Dems would not have a November candidate.

The five also-ran Democrats need to do the state a favor and DROP OUT NOW!

The ones who should drop out now for the good of the state are:

Xavier Becerra: info@xavierbecerra2026.com

Antonio Villaraigosa: contact@antonio2026.com

Matt Mayhan: mayor@sanjoseca.gov

Betty Yee: info@bettyyee.com

Tony Thurmond: info@tonythurmond.com

Some big names there. But these folks have not caught fire and merely endanger their state by staying in a race they can't win. Their personal ambition should give way to the good of the community they claim to want to serve. I've provided email addresses: we can thank them for their service and ask them politely to step aside for the common good. 

Then, take your pick among the genuine Dem prospects; links are to their websites:

Katie Porter 

Eric Swalwell 

Tom Steyer 

If we can get the also-rans out of the running, we can forget about the two Republican knuckle-draggers. But serious California Dems need to step up and let the voters choose their candidate without letting personal ambition risk the well-being of us all. 

• • •

For a more temperate description of this absurd California kerfuffle, see this link. 

St. Paul voters defy risks to send a message

Something remarkable just happened in St. Paul, Minnesota. If you don't know, St. Paul is the twin city to Minneapolis, the other side of the upper Mississippi River. These are two jurisdictions, yet one city.

The miraculous thing that happened was that on last Tuesday, Meg Luger-Nikolai won a special election to the state legislature. Yes, she's a Democrat. Democrats win here.

I have more than once spent short bits of time in the Twin Cities on various organizing jobs. I've seen a little of this very Democratic city; I've even seen what kind of people show up to the political party nominating caucuses. Here's what some of them looked like in 2006; I doubt Luger-Nikolai's new constituents look much different now: a little cold with a lot of opinions.

But, as David Nir of the Downballot -- a site that analyzes local elections -- writes, St. Paul voters came out in the middle of violent federal repression that might have been expected to reduce turnout. Not so.

On Tuesday night, Meg Luger-Nikolai, a labor lawyer and Democrat, won a special election for her state legislature with 95.3% of the vote.

Like I said, that could never really happen, right? ... what matters above all else is where the race took place: St. Paul, Minnesota.

Like its sibling on the western bank of the Mississippi, the state capital of St. Paul has been just as much a victim of another would-be dictator, Donald Trump.

The smaller of the Twin Cities has been under siege by ICE for months, its new mayor, Kaohly Her, told The Guardian last week. And the savagery unleashed in Minneapolis, which has reverberated throughout the country and worldwide, has been felt especially keenly in its closest of sister cities.

It was Her’s former seat in the state House that Luger-Nikolai ran for and won, a supersized victory that helps answer a grim and difficult question on many minds: What would happen if Trump tried to send troops into cities right before Election Day?

It turns out, as election law expert Justin Levitt put it, voters will “crawl over broken glass to punish the street gangs gassing and disappearing children.” Despite Trump’s terror campaign, the regime’s opponents overcame whatever fears they might have had to turn out en masse—even though, thanks to ICE’s penchant for smashing car windows, the broken glass is all too literal. Its supporters, meanwhile, seem to have stayed home.

It was by no means easy. In fact, Democrats had to toss the usual campaign trail playbook.
“This election took place while our neighbors were, and still are, being terrorized by ICE agents during this federal occupation,” Luger-Nikolai said in a statement to The Downballot. 

“It made it impossible to run a normal campaign. People were afraid to open their doors or talk to someone they didn’t know, and we pulled back from those typical strategies out of respect and care for our neighbors.”

“Yet in the conversations we did have, voters raised the same concern: deep disgust with what they are seeing and fear for families, schools, and small businesses in their communities,” she continued. “Families have been destabilized, students pushed into uncertainty, and livelihoods disrupted.”

But, said Luger-Nikolai, the end result was “not only a win at the ballot box, but a powerful affirmation of community resilience in the face of extraordinary circumstances.” Luger-Nikolai’s new district has long been a deep shade of blue, but that backdrop only heightens her achievement.

In the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris carried it 84-13, offering little room to improve on those numbers. ... Though Harris won by 71 percentage points, Luger-Nikolai won by 91. That 20-point overperformance would be stellar anywhere. In a district like this? Astonishing hardly covers it.

... Recently, my good friend G. Elliott Morris from Strength In Numbers asked me that same question I posed earlier during a livestream: What would happen if Trump deployed troops to intimidate voters just ahead of an election?

It’s a scary thought, made much scarier by ICE’s blithe killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But as I told Elliott, such an attempt could backfire badly, generating even hotter anger with Trump and firing up voters as never before. 

Tuesday’s experience in the Twin Cities is the most vivid evidence we’ve seen of precisely that sort of ballot box backlash. Just as we’ve seen Minnesotans bravely confront Trump’s goon squad despite the grave dangers, they’re not hesitating to make their feelings known at the polling place, too.

If Trump was expecting ordinary Americans to cower at home while his thugs roam the streets, he’s already been proven wrong. And if he imagines that that same army of thugs might save him from electoral catastrophe, voters in St. Paul likewise just showed how very wrong that calculation may be. 

It's gonna be a long year. Meanwhile, let's push Dems to prove that the risks we may have to take to elect them are worth it.

Yes on 50: coming soon to whatever media you consume

Here's what is ahead of us this fall:

Yes, we have to do this -- we have to create more potentially Democratic Congressional seats in California to counter the House seats Republicans are carving out in Texas. In this episode of "they started it," California can't opt out. And won't.

For anyone who has had a hard time finding a place in the mushrooming resistance to Trump/MAGA, here's another all too familiar opportunity to make a difference. Spread the word.

Gerrymandering for resistance?

All Californians are being offered a chance to participate in resistance to Trump's effort to eradicate even feeble opposition. Lucky us to have a role, I guess. All Americans don't get such a relatively frictionless opportunity. But we do: on November 4 we'll get to vote on a state redistricting plan that should yield 4 or 5 new Democratic Congresscritters.

It's kind of nauseating to overthrow our own anti-gerrymandering initiative -- but we have to fight and at least this is, not yet, a violent measure unless you are a GOP Congress-member losing your safe seat. 

And it's being led by our very flawed Governor who hopes to ride it to the White House. Sigh. 

Pretty boy puff piece from the Nob Hill Gazette, 2020

I'm a longtime San Franciscan. I know Newsom is a very mixed blessing. Sure, he advanced the cause of gay marriage back in the day. But in the same mayoral season he kicked homeless people for applause lines. Kind of like what he did last spring with trans people. As with all our recent mayors, beginning with Willie Brown, the overriding thrust of his term was to tame this formerly flamboyant city into a sterile corporate headquarters and real estate magnates' paradise.

On the other hand, having Newsom out trying to lead the charge against Trump is a net win. This is how our system is supposed to work: let our pols compete to show they can be the best at enacting their constituents' gut desires.  

Grumpy columnist George Skelton of the LATimes gets it:

“It is really a calculated power grab that dismantles the very safeguards voters put in place,” California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin said in a statement last week, echoing other party members. “This is Gavin the Gaslighter overturning the will of the voters and telling you it’s for your own good.”

Power grab? Sure. Overturning the voters’ will? Hardly.

Newsom is asking voters to express a new will–seeking permission to fight back against Trump’s underhanded attempt to redraw congressional districts in Texas and other red states so Republicans can retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.

First of all, that anti-gerrymandering vote creating the citizens’ commission was 15 years ago. It was a wise decision and badly needed, and still a wonderful concept in the abstract. But that was then, this is now....

... Second, that 2010 electorate no longer exists. Today’s electorate is substantially different. And it shouldn’t necessarily be tied to the past. ...

So we have to vote for this thing ... maybe even work for it. Now that's a tiresome reality. Newsom is not my leader, but resisting fascism is my cause and this is one bit of what we can do.

It's Election Day in Tisbury

One thing I've noticed about Martha's Vineyard island, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts generally, is that they go in for a lot of voting. Popular, participatory democracy is alive and well around here. I don't know if they'll have a big turnout, but the residents of the town of Tisbury are having their say today.

At Tisbury special town meeting on Dec. 17, voters approved a $4.4-million borrowing request to renovate and maintain the Vineyard Haven library. The next critical step in the process requires voters to approve the spending request at a special town election on Jan. 7. 

... Previously, the library board of trustees created a nonprofit organization, which raised $1.6 million for an addition to the library, but during construction, the older portions of the building continued to deteriorate. According to trustees, there are major issues with roofing, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and overall integrity of the building, and those issues have continued to grow.

“We raised $1.6 million to build an addition that is paid for, but in the process, the building continues to deteriorate. We need to replace the roofs so we can put solar on it, replace the bathrooms, fix ceiling water leaks, and the exterior is rotting,” said Arch Smith, chair of the board of trustees. “In short, we have water coming in from the roof, and water coming in from the ground, and we don’t want it in the building.” 

If approved at the Jan. 7 special town election, bids for the construction project will be sent out to all possible contractors by late February, Smith said. -- MV Times

This island has wonderful libraries, though apparently the one in Vineyard Haven needs a lot of work.

I'll update here when we learn whether the voters are willing to go for these improvements and these costs to themselves.

January 8 update: The voters have spoken. "Tisbury voters on Tuesday approved a $4.8 million funding request that will be used for the addition and repair of Vineyard Haven Public Library. The ballot question passed by a vote of 305 to 130."

While we fixate on Trump ... MAGA mess below creates opportunities

The Downballot reports that Democrats are contesting far more state legislative seats all over the country than Republicans.

Across the 85 legislative chambers holding regularly scheduled elections in 44 states this year, Republicans are defending 3,169 seats while Democrats are protecting 2,616. But Republicans have failed to field a candidate in 1,066 Democratic seats, while Democrats have left 1,127 GOP seats uncontested.

While the Democratic figure for uncontested seats is slightly higher in raw numbers, on a percentage basis, they're playing more offense: Democrats are challenging Republicans in 64% of GOP-held seats, while Republicans, conversely, are contesting 59% of Democratic seats.

The totals reflect strong Democratic recruitment in many states, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, and even Idaho. In total, Democrats are running 2,042 challengers compared to 1,550 for the GOP. When accounting for open seats (which are also tallied in our new data set), Democrats are fielding 2,485 non-incumbents, versus 2,224 for Republicans.

The disparity also arises from the current dysfunction in the GOP. Lots of veteran legislators retired or were dumped by MAGA voters in primaries.

Altogether, 124 GOP legislators who wanted another term were denied renomination by voters, often for allegedly failing to adhere to far-right orthodoxy. Just 28 Democratic lawmakers, by contrast, lost primaries this year.

This is no way to build a political party. Perhaps a mob ... 

Assuming we live to fight another day, there's lots to build on here.

Voting together

The east coast branch of the UniteHERE national phonebank took a short turn through North Carolina last week to help on-the-ground organizers turn out voters to this Power to the Polls festival in a Charlotte park and their march to vote. Looks like they had a good time.

It's great to see our work is succeeding.

This effort, like many across the nation, aims to restore some sense of community to the election process though which we make our national and local democratic decisions.

Not long ago, there was only Election Day voting unless you submitted an excuse to vote by absentee ballot. But states in the Pacific Northwest experimented with mail-in voting and discovered this increased turnout (sometimes). Some states added early in-person voting options. The COVID year further encouraged many states to implement various systems of mail, drop box, and other options which reduced crowding and responded to some people's fears of being around others.

So, really, we no longer have Election Day as so much as Election Month. This year almost all states use some version of voting options distributed over time. 

A friend describes what living through the transition felt like:

When we lived in Colorado, we were some of the very early voters in line to cast our votes on Election Day, and at first I really didn't like that we couldn't have that moment duplicated here in Washington State. But now I have grown to prefer it this way, because we can be assured that our votes will definitely be counted and not manipulated in any way.

Early in the transition to early voting options, I was uncomfortable. An election is the most collective experience we participate in as citizens of a huge, wildly diverse, country. As Karl Kurtz wrote way back in 2007:

[Early voting] eliminates the notion of a national civic convocation of the American people on election day...

We've made voting a solitary action for many of us. Is this good? Certainly it is good for campaigners; we push early voting with gusto and profit by it because it reduces the number of people we have to reach on Election Day. (And early voting relieves voters in contested areas of that relentless flood of calls and texts.)

But I'm glad to see more and more groups creating public events like Charlotte's Power to the Polls march to remind people they are in this big thing together.

After all, voting is a chance to join in a celebration of the best aspirations of this country, even in these terrible times!

We even have election parties in San Francisco.

California state ballot measures: a whine and opinions

First, let me whine a little. I hate the profusion of ballot measures on which we are asked to vote every election. 

Many involve complex issues which the legislature and governor have been unable to resolve. Most of us know nothing about the matters they concern. To our elected leaders I say -- damn it, do your jobs! Sorting these interests out is what we hire you for.

Another sort of measure is something that somebody had enough money to pay signature gatherers to qualify for the ballot. Now I love quite a few signature gatherers; it's a hard job. And then we get hit with the TV and social media ads. I'm often disgusted by seeing money set the campaign agenda, even when I care about the issues.

• • •

Enough -- here's how I voted on the state props ...

Prop. 2 is a $10 billion school bond measure to fund repairs and upgrades to public schools. ... Statewide, 38% of students in California go to schools that do not meet minimum facility standards, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Opponents of the bill include the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. Dems and Reps for it. Voted YES.

Prop. 3. Repeals 2008 hate measure that outlawed gay marriage. Clean up time! YES

Prop. 4. The Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness, and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024 would have the state borrow $10 billion to pay for climate and environmental projects — including some that were axed from the budget because of an unprecedented deficit. There's little bit of something for everyone in this: water, coastal protection, fighting wildfires.

Probably not perfectly designed, but a product of the legislative process and the Governor's druthers. Okay. YES

Opponents of the bill include the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Prop. 5: According to the LA Times:  

Currently, most local bond proposals require a two-thirds vote of the public to be approved. If voters pass Proposition 5, this threshold will be lowered to 55% for bonds supporting low-income housing, road and transit expansions, parks, wildfire resilience and other public infrastructure projects. The existing supermajority requirement for local bond approval was written into California’s Constitution in 1879.

I think I'm against supermajority provisions wherever they exist. That includes the US Senate filibuster rule. We need to grow up. YES

Opponents of the bill include the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Prop 6. Would end mandatory work requirements for state prisoners. Most prisoners who work in the system earn .74 cents an hour. Yes. .74 cents an hour! YES, YES

Opponents of the bill include the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Prop. 32. Raise minimum wage to $18/hour. Current law, signed by Jerry Brown in 2016, gradually lifts the minimum but in many locales and many jobs, pay is not keeping up with living costs for California workers.

I used to say that, if you could raise the cash to pay signature collectors enough to put a minimum wage raise on the ballot, you barely needed a campaign. But that was in the sub-$10 minimum wage era.

Apparently, no longer. California Chamber of Commerce, the California Restaurant Assn. and the California Grocers Assn. oppose it; unions and anti-poverty groups don't like some of its complicated architecture.

YES. I'll vote for it because, hey, people got to live. But this one may be close.

Prop. 33: Basically would make it possible for municipalities to impose rent controls if they wanted to. Would give housing advocates a fighting chance of shaping the local rules.  This one is a good fight and good trouble. All the TV ads are lies but the principle is simple. Millions will be spent to sway our votes. Vote YES, YES, YES!

The opponents are the real estate industry. They will spend like drunken sailors to kill this. Proponents include the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and hospitality workers in UniteHERE Local 11 in L.A.

Prop. 34: This claims to be about spending on drugs by healthcare systems, but is actually an effort to get back at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation for putting Prop 34 on the ballot. It is funded by the California Apartment Assn. NO shit! Get over it!

Prop. 35: This tinkers with how the state assesses managed care health insurance groups to generate tax revenues.

• the California Hospital Assn., the California Medical Assn., the California Primary Care Assn., Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, labor unions, emergency responders and community health centers. Both the California Democratic Party and the California Republican Party support it.

• the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, the League of Women Voters of California, Courage California, and the California Alliance for Retired Americans oppose it.

This is an example of measures we never should have to vote on if the legislators and governor were doing their job.

Prop. 36: Will jack up the penalties for some non-violent felonies that we recently cut back on, like shoplifting. Look, I'm as pissed off as the next person that I have to get a clerk to unlock a plastic door in a Walgreens in order to buy my vitamins. But the idea that we can lock up addicted perps and thereby end crime is madness. It only leads to high costs for useless prisons that breed more crime. NO,NO

No, there is no Prop.37 this year. But just you wait ...

Coda: Note the numerous mentions of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. opposing various measures above. As a general rule, if those cranky old men funded by billionaire tax cheats don't like something, you can at least give it a look.

• • •

California state ballot measures here.

• • •

Meanwhile, you can help Harris-Walz get elected by joining the hospitality workers of the union UniteHERE on a national phonebank. Sign up here.

Ballots arrived in San Francisco yesterday

 

Time to get this done! The complex California ballot makes this urging to "Vote on Day One" a little daunting. But I've been pushing this principle all over social media because Simon Rosenberg has convinced me that getting people to vote as soon as possible makes a material contribution to the campaigns we're working on, even in this blue state and city.

Here's how he explains the value of voting as soon as we are able:

• when you vote early, on Day 1 of the early vote, for example, the campaign knows you voted and will remove you from their GOTV/field targets. ...

 

• It creates a very public permission structure and social pressure for voters who are not sure about voting, of when they are going to vote, to vote. “Hey other people seem to be voting I need to vote too.”

 

•  It is a daily affirmation of the health and vitality of our democracy, something desperately needed today. All these people voting, and voting successfully, is in itself a sort of repudiation of MAGA and Trumpism. ...

• A heavy early turnout leads to stories about “hey everyone is voting” ...

Over the next few days, I'll roll out commentary on how I dealt with California's maze of ballot measures and local propositions and make a very few candidate comments.

Let's get this done!

New voters?

Did you know that Elon Musk is a naturalized American citizen? Born in South Africa in 1971, the tech tycoon apparently thought, correctly, that his prospects would be improved by acquiring citizenship here. Good for him; in this respect, he's ordinary. (One doubts that actually...)

 

He's not only ordinary but also, as is common, butt-ignorant about his adopted country and the truths about immigration. 

 

It's neither easy nor fast for immigrants to become naturalized citizens who can vote.

The underlying US immigration legal framework has not been thoroughly overhauled by Congress since 1986 (regular order path) and 1990 (asylum process). There have been multiple administrative and court-ordered adjustments; both paths are barely functioning, starved (mostly by Republicans) for funding and strategic vision. Of course people want to come here -- for all our manifold faults, the country is both richer and safer than a lot of their home countries.

 

The most recent failed legal reform effort was this past year. Republican US Senator James Lankford hammered out an immigration compromise which could have passed with bipartisan support and which President Biden agreed to sign. Candidate Trump wanted to keep the existing immigration mess and successfully pressured Republicans to kill it, to the disgust of all parties.

There have been times in my life when my political work consisted of trying to encourage naturalized citizens -- yes, these folks are full citizens -- to join the voting pool. Despite excited headlines claiming "With an election looming, the U.S. is approving citizenship applications at the fastest speed in years," only a small increase in new citizen registrations has become normal in especially fraught elections. I think this phenomenon may date to the California anti-immigrant panic of the mid-1990s. But, just as for other Americans, turning citizens into voters is a slog, taking years to become habitual. And legally eligible non-citizen residents don't rush into the naturalization process; it's expensive, complicated, and sometimes emotionally wrenching.

The Pew Research Center presents some fascinating facts:

Most naturalized citizen eligible voters have lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. About three-quarters of immigrant eligible voters (73%) have lived in the U.S. for more than two decades. Another 20% have lived in the country for 11 to 20 years, while relatively few (8%) have been in the U.S. for a decade or less.

Among naturalized citizen eligible voters, more than half (55%) live in just four states: California, Florida, New York and Texas. These four states are also the country’s most populous when looking at eligible voters overall. Combined, they’re home to roughly a third of the U.S. electorate (32%).

 The naturalized citizen share of the electorate differs widely in some potential battleground states in the 2024 election. Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are widely considered to be among the swing states this fall. ...

In Nevada and Arizona, naturalized citizens make up 14% and 9% of all eligible voters, respectively. They account for 7% of eligible voters in Georgia, and about 5% in both Pennsylvania and Michigan. In Wisconsin, they are just 3% of the electorate.

In overall numbers, Georgia’s naturalized citizen electorate is the largest among these swing states at 574,000, while Pennsylvania is not far behind at 546,000. Both of these states were among the closest in the 2020 presidential election.

 What do I take from this statistical picture of naturalized citizens? 

• Like Americans born here, naturalized Americans don't vote automatically. If you want their votes, you have to talk with them and turn them out. Voting can be intimidating, even when Republicans aren't spreading lies in immigrant communities.

• It's not very clear that naturalized citizens have different issue desires and preferences than anyone else. (Well maybe Ukrainian-origin immigrants might be especially urgent in seeking aid to their relatives under siege.)

• This is still a country enriched by immigrants many of whom choose to become citizens. Immigration by ambitious strivers is what makes this country unique and interesting. It always has been.

It's more than a little sick that so many Republican pols are willing to beat up on some of the best of us.

He's got it ...

... I could not love this more. A 93 year-old man in Oklahoma bought a billboard declaring, “Women, the Republican party does not respect you…vote Democrat.” When a local news outlet asked Burt Holmes why he bought the billboard, he said, “Because I think women can win the next big election in the country if they will get out and vote.” Burt knows what’s up! -- via Jessica Valenti, Abortion Every Day

Let me steal a headline: on the uses of a Snoozer

Joe Perticone of The Bulwark called it "Snoozer Tuesday." I like that. I can think of nothing that came out of the primary on Super Tuesday except perhaps a chance for media outlets to take a practice run in multiple state for their work next November. We've known the presidential candidates since perhaps last May; the rest was mostly expenisve noise.

Erika D. Smith of the LA Times aptly describes what it felt like to be a California voter in this oh-so-predetermined exercise: 

We used to hear: “Vote for who you think is the best candidate for the office or who best represents your interests.”

Now it’s about the mass gamification of elections.

More fantasy football than rooting for the red or blue home team. More chess than checkers. There’s a slow shift underway from thinking of voting as a simple act of civic duty. Instead it’s becoming a series of strategic decisions and complicated calculations made in a desperate attempt to create a government of politicians who will actually improve our lives.

In practice, gamification looks like obsessively reading polls in an attempt to gain an edge or dispel rumors about your party. Or “wasting” your vote on the candidate you want to win, even if the polls say they won’t win, because you want to send a message to the political establishment. Or, my favorite, voting for a candidate you don’t like in a primary to help a candidate you do like win the general election.

Sure, not all of this is new. We’ve been told to “vote for the lesser of two evils” for decades. This country’s electoral process has always been imperfect. ...

Smith ended up following her heart and voting for Barbara Lee in the US Senate contest, knowing this was a sort of protest vote against calculated decision making. I applaud her, even though I did not take the same tack.

In the Washington Post, Robin Givhan hopefully speaks to what is meaningful amid the clutter and noise of an empty primary season; she reminds that there are a deep rights at stake here.

Voting isn’t merely a zero-sum game that ends with the winners crowing over their victory and the losers slinking away in defeat. That’s part of it, but not all of it. In a free and fair election, it’s sometimes not even the most important thing.

The vote itself is proof of faith. The person casting it believes that it matters. Denying them the opportunity is a callous dismissal. The depth of meaning in a single vote comes from our troubled history, our collective ability to effect change and the dignity inherent in expressing our singular desires to the lofty state, as well as to our next-door neighbor.

... As a country, we like to speak about the right to vote as a sacred act. But in the next breath, we characterize it as a tedious chore that must be accomplished in a blizzard or downpour. And when candidates dare to linger longer than electoral math suggests that they should — we liken voting to an enabling act in service to a narcissist.

But a vote has never only been fundamentally about wins and losses. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, the lack of access to the ballot box was characterized by activists as something that was humiliating, degrading and unjust. In contrast, the act of choosing one’s representative was an expression of dignity and respect. Victory wasn’t assured. Progress was elusive. How long would it take? Not long. But justice wouldn’t be instantaneous. It wasn’t a matter of a single election or the success of one candidate. The work was in the voting, which is to say, the work was in making one’s voice heard. Again and again.

It matters if one’s candidate wins or loses. Profoundly. Today, it matters more than ever.

But there’s nothing quite as searing as a loss in which a voter had to stand by in silence and watch as it happened.

People have died for the right to have a say; even when our choices lose, our vote shouts "we are here."

It's primary day: about those languages

“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is,” [Donald Trump] said during an event at the border on Thursday. “Nobody [can] explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages — we have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They are truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.” -- Washington Post

Okay, we know that Donald is both clueless and bigoted when it comes to people who speak a language other than English -- though if he ever had an English teacher, she might wonder she'd made any impact on his ability to construct meaning in his native tongue.

Meanwhile, here in California, the legislature is considering a bill to ensure that all the citizens of this state can express themselves by casting a ballot. Calmatters reports:

California lawmakers are considering a bill that would expand language assistance and election services to immigrants who don’t speak English fluently, but a group representing voter registrars throughout the state says it will cost counties too much money.

California has the nation’s highest proportion of households that speak languages other than English. Nearly 3 million voting age Californians have limited English knowledge.

Assemblymember Evan Low, the Cupertino Democrat who co-authored Assembly Bill 884, said he hopes it will increase voter participation and strengthen democracy in California.



“California is one of the most diverse states and leads the nation in language diversity,” he said, “so it is important that we lead the way to providing in-language ballots and voting materials to reduce barriers and enfranchise more Californians.”

The bill, which passed the Assembly in late January and is before the Senate, would require California’s Secretary of State to identify the languages spoken by at least 5,000 voting-age individuals in a county who don’t speak English fluently, including groups not covered by current federal voting rights laws, such as Middle Eastern or African immigrants.



The Secretary of State would then have to provide language assistance, including a toll-free hotline and funding for county language coordinators, in areas where the need is most acute.

I can easily image that, to many harried election administrators, Low's bill looks like one more underfunded mandate. But, in my experience, people who do those jobs usually want everyone who is eligible to have a chance to vote, so they'll want to make this work.

... “We want voters to trust the government and that boils down to a voter in any community being able to understand what is happening in their own community,” said Pedro Hernandez, a policy director at California Common Cause, which cosponsored the bill. 

This is the great California experiment, something to cherish on primary day.

A sweet story of election day in a newish democracy

I don't know anything substantive about Taiwan. This island, populated by 23.5 million inhabitants, exists in a kind of sovereign limbo, claimed by China and inhabited primarily by people of Chinese ethnicity, but outside the domain of Beijing. How this anomalous situation came to be is a tangled story. 

Since China's current ruler, Xi Jinping, presses China's claim to rule the island, it's not crazy to fear the big country might try to absorb the little one. And U.S. foreign policy (non-Trumpified) pushes back, though cagily. The situation seems appropriately scary, given what China has done to democratic aspirations in Hong Kong and U.S. anxiety over our overstretched global power. Poor Taiwanese, balanced between monsters!

Taiwanese historian Albert Wu offers a presents a succinct pre-primer on how the island became what it is and some sense of its people's current opinions in an interview with political scientist Yascha Mounk. But what warmed my heart was his account of participating in the recent presidential election. Democracy is new and valued in Wu's Taiwan.

"What I've been really moved by the past couple of days is how democratic culture really has come to take root here. On Saturday, we went to the polls with my wife and her parents and, like many families, there are generational divides in Taiwan but also political disagreements. We've long had political disagreements, and we’ve talked about them. But on Saturday, we all went to the polls together. And the polling station was a five minute walk from us. We took our little daughter with us.

"In this election, 70% of people turned out, which is actually considered low for Taiwan. Normally it's between 75 and 80 to 85%. But 70% turned out. And when we got to the polls, there were multigenerational families, people pushing their elderly parents or grandparents. I'm sure many of them disagreed. But they just went to the polls. And many of those people had lived for forty years without ever having the chance to vote for their own president.

"There are always local elections, but people really take this privilege of being able to choose their elected leader seriously, and it was orderly: people were just lining up. When I was growing up, election day was really just a chaotic mess, people were still campaigning outside. I sort of missed that personally.

"But everybody got the day off. And afterwards, in Taiwan, eating is very important. So we strolled to this hotel and had a really delicious and wonderful meal. And even though we disagreed politically, we sat down and ate and talked about the future of our country and our hopes and dreams and desires for the country. And even though we know we've had some disagreements, we cherished that moment of voting together and being together.

"Coming out of the ‘70s and ‘80s, when there was a lot of ballot stuffing during the authoritarian era, vote counting is now completely transparent. And what they do is they open up the voting booths, and everybody can go and observe. And people will just open up the ballots and count them out, and so we went and watched the count.

"The polls closed at 4, and, by 7:30, all the votes were counted. By 9:30, we had a new president, and there was just this wonderful victory rally and all this confetti. And what really moved me is that by the end of the victory rally, everybody stayed behind and picked up confetti: they wanted to keep the streets clean, they picked up confetti, they stacked all the chairs. And the next day, it was as if nothing happened. It was just part of the normalcy of everyday life.

"My grandfather never in his life was able to vote for his own president. My grandmother died before the transition to a fully democratic country. And I think everybody, at least in my parents' generation, and in my generation, knows that. And I think that love for democracy is sort of baked into the current landscape."

As we strive to ensure our own aspiring dictator goes down to defeat in November, the experience of people newly able to make choices about their lives through voting can be inspiring.