With the elections coming up November 3rd, I think it is important to spend some time understanding what exactly I will be voting for. Last time I went in to vote, I only showed up planning to vote for Hillary Clinton. I didn’t realize that there would be more than that on the ballot. From what I remember, there were some questions on the ballot which I read in the booth to try to quickly figure out which to pick. Kind of just going with my gut feel. There were also other positions on the ballot which I don’t remember how I filled. Instead of going in blindly or just voting along party lines, I think it will be useful to spend some time understanding what each of the roles I will be voting for actually fill and who fits the role best.

Before I get going with this, it may be worth spending some time understanding how the main branches of the federal government operate. There are 3 branches. The executive, legislative, and judicial. The legislative branch is composed of the congress and the senate. Congress has 435 members in the House of Representatives and 2 members in the Senate per state for a total of 535 members. The 435 members of the House of Representatives are split among the states based on the population of the associated state as determined by the most recent national census every 10 years.

It is the duty of each of the state governments to divide itself into a number of Congressional districts based on the number of members in congress they are allowed within certain boundaries (ex: all districts must be roughly the same population). This division process can lead to ‘gerrymandering’ where the district divisions are divided along party lines. Congressional elections are based on popular vote and take place every 2 years for the House (‘midterm elections’ when not also choosing the president) and every 6 years for the Senate.

The roles of Congress include passing new laws, national defense (declaring war, maintain military), impeachment of federal officials including the executive branch and judicial branch, raising taxes, and budgeting. To pass a new law, the President and 50% of both the House and the Senate must approve the law. If the President vetoes the bill, 66% of both the House and Senate will be needed for the bill to be passed. As part of the legislative process, laws are discussed between members of Congress. Filibustering is when members in the Senate plan to ‘discuss’ the proposed law indefinitely with the purpose of never bringing the bill to a vote. Should 60% of the Senate agree to vote on the bill, a filibuster can be stopped.

The Judicial branch consists of 3 tiers. District courts, Appeal courts, and the Supreme court. District courts, also known as Trial courts, handle the standard trial format. The facts are determined and relevant laws are applied. In general, a jury is selected to decide whether the defendant is guilty and the judge ensures that the trial is properly conducted. Once a ruling is made, the result is final unless the losing party believes that the law was improperly applied. Should this happen, the case may go to the Appeal courts. The Appeal courts decide if the law was properly applied. If they believe the law was improperly applied, the trial may go back to lower courts. If after the appeals court there are still questions on whether the law was properly applied (ex: different interpretations of the same law by different appeals courts), a petition may be made to the Supreme court to resolve the dispute. While the Judicial makes rulings, it is the role of the Executive branch to enforce the rulings.

The Executive branch consists of the President, the Vice President, and the ‘Cabinet’ consisting of the heads of the executive departments. This includes departments of agriculture, commerce, defense, education, energy, health, homeland security, justice, labor, state, and transportation. The President has the authority to appoint heads of each department in the Cabinet, select Federal judges on vacancy, and make international treaties with approval from the Senate. The President may also veto bills proposed by Congress, pardon crimes, and serves as the ultimate authority in the armed forces (above General but with no rank).

At a high level, each of the departments in the Cabinet do the following:

• USDA – Food safety, nutrition, climate.
• DOJ – Law enforcement (FBI, DEA). Head is Attorney General.
• CIA – Foreign policy intelligence and analysis.
• DOC – Supporting business, patents, analyzing economy.
• DOD – Military research and active duty.
• DOE – Improving education, student aid.
• DOE – Nuclear weapons, energy research and policy.
• EPA – Protect health and environment.
• HHS – Medicare, Medicaid, medical research.
• DHS – Counterterrorism, immigration, border security.
• HUD – Fair housing laws, Improving communities.
• DOI – Management/Conservation of federal land and natural resources.
• DOL – Worker safety, unemployment benefits, wage standards.
• OMB – Prepare the President’s budget proposal for Congress.
• SBA – Advocates for small business.
• DOS – Foreign policy and international relations.
• DOT – Transportation regulations. Cars, boats, planes.
• USDT – Printing money, collecting taxes, supervising banks.
• USTR – Assist in trade policy and negotiations.
• VA – Taking care of our vets.

On the ballot this year there will be the President/Vice President, Senator, Representative, ‘Councillor’ (typo on ballot?), ‘Senator in General Court’, ‘Representative in General Court’, and ‘Register of Probate’. For each of the state-level positions, there is only 1 nominee. Still, I feel it is also worth understanding what they do. The Councilor is a position on the Governors Council where Massachusetts is split into 8 councilor districts. The Councilor for each district represents the people in discussions with the Governor on state judicial nominees, sentence pardons and commutations, and allocating money from the state treasury. In Massachusetts, the General Court seems to be similar to Congress and the Governor seems to be similar to the President but at the state level. The General court consists of 40 senators and 160 representatives. The ‘Register of Probate’ acts as an administrator/clerk for Probate court (distributing assets of someone who has passed). It seems like only a few states elect an official for this role.

Now that I have a better understanding of the positions, I think it will be useful to spend some time looking at the different candidates. For President and Vice President, the options are Biden and Harris, Hawkins and Walker, Jorgensen and Cohen, and Trump and Pence. The policies of Hawkins and Walker seem extreme. Cutting the military budget by 75%, universal rent control, etc.. I tend to agree with most of what Jorgensen and Cohen say though in some sense it feels like their solution is always to remove governmental oversight. One curiosity is that the 4 parties on the ballot seem to represent a spectrum. Far left (Hawkins), left (Biden), right (Trump), and far right (Jorgensen). It is usually considered a waste of a vote to choose anyone other that Democrat or Republican. One thought that comes to mind is maybe a vote for one of the other parties will cause the main 2 parties to shift in that direction going forward. Ex: it punishes the main party with a decreased vote count so in the next election cycle they will adjust.

After doing some minor research into the candidates, I will be voting along party lines. One thought I had when going through this was that making myself fully informed before voting is not something I will be able to do in 1 week. Not only do I need to know each of their positions, but I need to know the underlying problems and scopes, the alternative positions, the pros and cons of each position, and I need to rank the relative importance of each position compared to their other positions and the positions of other nominees. I will consider these as topics going forward, but I don’t feel I will be able to do this by Sunday.

Regarding Question 1, the proposal is to require vehicle manufacturers to support a standard interface for accessing telematics data so 3rd party companies can remain competitive. The drawbacks seem to be that a common interface means there are increased security risks and the language of the bill poorly defines what data should be included in the common interface. In 2012 a similar proposal passed in MA which allowed repair shops access to the diagnostic and repair information available to the manufacturers. In my opinion, that seems sufficient and if it is not, the needed information should be listed out instead of using a catch-all. In this case I will be voting against the question.

The proposal for question 2 is a form of ranked choice voting. My gut feel is it is a good idea, but after some discussion, I’m not so sure. The main drawback of RCV seems to be that it makes the voting process more complicated. The proposed plan is to allow voters to rank candidate preferences on the ballot. When tallying, the least popular candidate will be removed and the ballots which ranked the candidate highest will use their next choice until 1 candidate has a majority of the votes. The against argument is that while in principle RCV seems nice, why the winning candidate was selected becomes hidden reducing transparency and increasing the possibility of bad practice and errors. Also, in practice the supposed benefits of using RCV have not been realized and in some cases the opposite effect has happened. While there are limitations in the current voting format, it is not clear to me that ranked choice will be worth changing the election process. In this case I will be voting against the question.

In this election I will be selecting along party lines and against both propositions. In all, this has ended up being a much more difficult task than I expected coming into it. But at least I now have a better understanding of how the government operates, the most popular political parties, and I have taken an important step on the path of being a more informed citizen.