Politics: From the greek “poly”, meaning “many”, and “ticks”, meaning “blood-sucking insects”

So, in general I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the race for Massachusetts Governor. I figure that the governor doesn’t really have much power anyway, since Romney vetoed a bunch of stuff during his administration, which is really the most you could hope a governor would do, and they pretty much all got overridden anyway. So, I think that the governor here is primarily just a ceremonial position that can try to set direction, but doesn’t really have much power. (I could be wrong on this, but it’s just how it looks from where I’m sitting.)

So I didn’t really pay attention to the primary race. Now that the final candidates are selected, I’ve started taking a closer look. As far as I can tell, they’re all trying to cut taxes, and they’re all socially liberal. Now, perhaps they’re all fiscally conservative and socially liberal to different degrees, but right now to me, it looks like all the candidates, *all* *four* of them, are *libertarians*! Or at least, they’re all much more socially liberal than I want. I just don’t get what exactly is the choice I’m supposed to be making?!

Voting for someone who believes that it’s okay for babies still in wombs to get killed by their parents just goes against every fiber of my being. (And that’s not the only issue, it’s just the one that sticks in my mind the most.) Should I try to find a candidate who may be better than the others on some issues, and vote for them, in the hopes that maybe my vote might make a difference somewhere? Or do I just write “None of the above” on the ballot and thereby throw away my vote in disgust?

It just makes me very sad and angry.

But at least, as I started out saying, hopefully the governor doesn’t have much power anyway.

4 thoughts on “Politics: From the greek “poly”, meaning “many”, and “ticks”, meaning “blood-sucking insects”

  1. Why some sort of ordering my choices might help, it doesn’t really indicate that I really want *none* of the options presented. Really, I think I want the None of the above option.

  2. Let me clarify my point. The Republican Party is afraid to run a pro-life candidate because he would steal votes from the pro-choice candidate. If IRV were implemented, the Republican Party could run both a pro-life candidate and a pro-choice candidate, hoping the former would win but including the latter to improve their chances.

    See? IRV removes the “game” element that makes running candidates you like a bad move.

    As for gubernatorial powers, the things to look for are appointment powers, disaster management, and informal legislative capacity. As an example of the latter, the governor is often asked to choose a significant number of members for panels and committees on Beacon Hill.

  3. The only person in this race I’d marginally call libertarian-esque with a subscripted l is Mihos.

    Healy’s crime and educations policies make libertarians cry. then laugh. until they cry again. And for someone in an awfully influential position, I can’t say I’m proud of her hiding from that issue.

    The watermelon party candidate needs no discussion here.

    I’ll confess to being fairly ignorant of Patrick’s platform, but I don’t hold high expectations.

    Mihos has problems, too, like his stance on execution, minimum wage laws, and I’m simply puzzled at his property tax proposals.

    So unless I find something really amazingly cool about Patrick, like he wants to repeal marijuana posession laws or privatize all the Commonwealth’s high schools, Mihos is probably going to be my vote.

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