Sunday, August 09, 2015

Week In Review: I Blinked And I Missed It

The week is a blur and I don't have much analysis to add. I've been deep enough in the caucus arrangement bubble that I'm several ten thousand tweets behind on news. Who won the Iowa Straw Poll yesterday?

Yes, I saw the debate. No, I have nothing to add that hasn't been said before. The Donald's supporters are anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, and anti-PC, and there's nothing the other Republicans can say to denounce Trump the man without denouncing those tendencies within their own-base.

He's also anti-politics, and that image is only enhanced by people with politico-journalism credentials attacking him. The only one with the anti-System credibility to take down trump might have been Jon Stewart, and as of this week it's too late for that. But laughter, not denunciation, is the weapon to use.
As for the junior varsity debate, most people are pegging Carly Fiorina the winner, but I give the nod to Lindsey Graham for rebranding it from the "Kiddy Table Debate."
Speaking of rebranding, this year will be Iowa's last Jefferson-Jackson dinner. I think Harkin-Hughes has a nice ring to it. As does Jacoby-Jochum to keep the initials. But my comments seems to be leaning toward Henry Wallace.

Locally, the UI gets ranked as Number Two Party School. Remember, Hawks, this is only the pre-season rank. We can still recapture the glory of that 2013 season!


In the rumor mill: A challenger for the thus-far unopposed godfather of 21 Bar, Rick Dobyns, in District A?

As for the school board, I haven't yet had time to wrap my head around that 13 candidate, 5 seat, two separate contest Survivor Island yet, except as far as it affects me at work. (My advice: order lots of ballots, because that turnout record the ICCSD set in 2013 is likely to break again...)
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3 comments:

  1. Eli3:09 PM

    The last line of this blog entry made me curious: How do you determine how many ballots to print? Have you ever had an election where you thought you might run out due to unexpectedly high turnout?

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  2. John3:33 PM

    It's more art than science. I look at past similar elections - for a school election we look at other school elections, not presidentials. I take into account population growth and how competitive we expect an election to be. For example, this school election Clear Creek Amana has no contested races so we scaled back.

    In bigger elections, the process gets more elaborate and I also estimate workload - an election day registration or a provisional ballot is a lot more work for the poll workers. But in school elections there's very few of those.

    More on this kind of stuff in this post from last fall:

    http://jdeeth.blogspot.com/2014/11/numbers-part-3-shop-talk-about-turnout.html

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  3. Mike Carberry6:41 PM

    Pauline Taylor officially announced her candidacy for Iowa City Council District A shortly after you left the meeting.

    ReplyDelete