Local elections 2012

Congress: Bishop (D) Beat Altschuler® 131,807/121,063 MY ED went ®
Senate: Gillibrand (D) Beat Long ®) 353,229/178,788 MY ED Went (D)

Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go into a self edited rant about (SELF DELETED) (DELETED ....... DELETED) I can do this rant because I'm part Lithuanian and there hasn't been a single smart (DELETED) since General (DELETED) and (DELETED).

Only 350,000 votes? You'd think a New York Senate race would log a lot more votes than that.

Bilbray (CA-52) is about 700 votes behind, and looks to lose. He's no longer in my district - he was forced to switch after redistricting - but you won't catch me crying a tear if he loses. Meanwhile, the new CA-50 congressman, Duncan Hunter, won handily. Not a shock; since redistricting, this district is considerably redder.

Neither of our Senators nor the Governor were up for reelection and our Congressman ran unopposed so I was kinda "meh" about the local elections.

We did have a medical marijuana proposal on the ballot. It failed, naturally. But hey, a couple of formerly dry Counties went wet so all those people in need of medical marijuana can just get drunk instead. That's just as good, right?

Some guy ousted Pete Stark up here in the 15th. No, I actually don't know the guy's name, even though I voted for him.

THe biggest news in my state was the constitutional amendment that would allow county sheriffs to serve more than two terms consecutively was defeated(here in WV you can only have 8 consecutive years as sheriff before you must step down and wait a term before running for the office again). Thankfully people must have remembered the corruption in local politics when that was not the case. I of course voted against the amendment as well.

As for the rest Tomblin won re-election to governor(I voted mountain party because I found both the Democratic and Republican canidate to be repulsive). I voted for Manchin for senate,

In the only other race I was concerned about, WV Supreme Court, my canidate Allen Loughry won.

Illinois Republicans got boned, thanks to redistricting. Tammy Duckworth managed to run a campaign that made Joe Walsh look like a civilized, rational human being. Considering Walsh is one of the largest douchenozzles in the country, that's really saying something. She really is a Blagojevich protege. She'll be the biggest wonk in the House.

Hey get this: Republicans actually lost the popular vote in the House, even while winning a 40+ seat majority. OMG where is the outrage?? Where are the Democrats demanding that Republicans capitulate and elect Pelosi Speaker? Where are the calls for the House to be abolished and replaced with direct democracy?? Gods, America's antiquated representative government system is irritatingly quaint.

edit: Also, how could this happen? Democrats assured us voter fraud was nonexistent!

David Frum had a really good take on the patchwork of failure that is America's national election system when compared to other free, democratic societies.

The web page was wonky. It listed total numbers for the presidental race but only Long Island numbers for the State race (on the same page). It took me a while to realize that. Actual state numbers were

Popular vote 4,171,246 / 1,535,855

Here is the joke of a message from our total failure of a leader Ed Cox - Chairman of the Republican Party of New York

Other disappointing losses in the U.S. House races: Allen West in Florida (who is fighting it, but unlikely to win); Mia Love in Utah (she would have been the first black Republican woman in the House); Richard Tisei in...Massachusetts I think (would have been the only openly gay Republican in the House), and Sonny Bono's widow Mary Bono Mack, who lost her seat in California after seven terms. Que lastima.