{"id":162,"date":"2006-11-08T11:39:14","date_gmt":"2006-11-08T18:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rynosoft.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/?p=162"},"modified":"2008-04-08T17:29:12","modified_gmt":"2008-04-09T00:29:12","slug":"first-election-last-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/first-election-last-election","title":{"rendered":"First election, last election"},"content":{"rendered":"

I still remember the first time I voted. Voting in Riceville was always at City Hall, where there were probably two or three booths. The helpful election volunteer explained the whole process and what I needed to do. There were levers, I remember, and there were two big levers. One you could pull to vote all-Democrat and the other you could pull to vote all-Republican. At the time, I thought that was handy but something I would never use. I scrupulously considered all my options for each race and voted according to my conscience. Something I have done in every election since.<\/p>\n

But yesterday was different. Yesterday it seemed like there was a message to be sent and the only way for the intended recipients to hear it would be a massive Democratic victory. So I voted Democrat in every single race that had a Democrat running. Now the message has been sent. Will it be heard and heeded?<\/p>\n

How was the message sent? Let me count the ways:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Democrats will now control the U.S. House of Representatives<\/li>\n
  2. Democrats are guaranteed at least a tie in the United States Senate, with a very good chance of taking control (depending on how the recount goes in Virginia)<\/li>\n
  3. Donald Rumsfeld resigned<\/li>\n
  4. Rick Santorum lost<\/li>\n
  5. Ted Kennedy won<\/li>\n
  6. Democrat Ted Kulongoski won a second term as Oregon governor despite heavy negative campaigning by his opponent in the waning days of the election<\/li>\n
  7. 28 states now have Democratic governors<\/li>\n
  8. Four out of five U.S. House seats up for election in Oregon went to Democrats<\/li>\n
  9. Democrats prevail in 10 of 14 Oregon Senate races and retain control<\/li>\n
  10. Democrats win 24 of the 42 available seats and gain control of the Oregon House<\/li>\n
  11. Oregon turnout is expected to reach 71 percent when all votes are counted<\/li>\n
  12. All but one of the state-wide ballot measures went the way I voted<\/li>\n
  13. No local ballot measure I voted against won<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There were a few downsides:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Joe Lieberman won his Senate race. Can his vote be counted on?<\/li>\n
    2. Same-sex marriage bans were approved in six more states. Either people don’t understand the whole freedom concept, or I’m missing something.<\/li>\n
    3. Hillary Clinton won by a large margin possibly encouraging her to run for President in 2008<\/li>\n
    4. Harold Ford lost his Senate race in Tennessee but did you see his concession speech? Wow!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I still remember the first time I voted. Voting in Riceville was always at City Hall, where there were probably two or three booths. The helpful election volunteer explained the whole process and what I needed to do. There were levers, I remember, and there were two big levers. One you could pull to vote … <\/p>\n

      Continue reading “First election, last election”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[94,739,499,1562,188,439,738],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-democrats","tag-harold-ford","tag-memories","tag-politics","tag-riceville","tag-victory","tag-voting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peh6u-2C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2188,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/2188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}