as for me and my vote..

local:
- governor. I voted for rossi on three major grounds:
1. divided government. letting a single party run olympia for nearly twenty years has induced massive amounts of inefficiency, corruption, and the generally salient features of any one-party state that you expect, regardless of what name they bear. consider sheena's situation at public health: massive services for, you know, poor people are being cut while management positions in bright, new, and really shiny buildings are added. along with sophisticated and awe-inspiring technology for those managers to manage their now-dwindling functions really really well.
2. fiscal responsibility. our state's response, I suspect largely due to its nearly one-party governance, to any kind of financial difficulty is invariably to say "we can't do this! we must raise taxes so that we can provide new services! help yourselves by helping us." or rather, post-2004-election, do this under the guise of 'emergency legislation' and charge .15USD/gallon statewide in new gas taxes to 'fund' non-existent transportation projects around puget sound that will in fact be funded by tolls and new taxes installed at the time. see, that way, voters forget about the old massive tax hikes you installed to pay for your promised pretty roads and then you can tax them again later on and they won't know the difference. because they're just going to vote for a democrat anyway. thus encouraging accountability for politicians. anyway, rossi's clearly not from this pattern. I'm not expecting great things and perhaps he'll go too far (doubtful with a democrat-controlled state legislature; people forget these things..). in which case, we'll then have another fifty million years of one-party democratic control after him during which things can slide completely in the opposite direction for like, forever.
3. somehow my third reason got absorbed into #2. don't ask me why. maybe it's because I'm still pissed about the post-2004 debacle and general mismanagement of resources with our government.

- initiative 985. I voted no. summary:
1. another classic tim eyman initiative that sounds flippin' awesome at first and then becomes more and more sour; leaving you with a sort of bitter feeling as you realize you got taken in by a guy who's likely more about himself than actually helping traffic congestion.
2. I liked: the carpool lane, roadside assistance, and toll limitation bit. the last one I thought was important: just like new taxes, new tolls should be passed by a simple legislative vote instead of instituted by fiat.
3. but anyway, the thing meddles way too much with telling state & local government how to manage minutiae. that strikes me as a bad precedent for good governance from either the right or the left.
4. but seriously: having come from the east coast, the washington DOT is one of the most absymal organizations I've ever seen. seriously. and their knee-jerk taxation impulse for anything new just indicates some of the institutional non-accountability I hinted at in the governor description.

- initiative 1000. I also voted no on this one.
1. as a small 'l' libertarian (long discussion there), I was naturally predisposed to vote 'yes' for something like this. as contrasted with abortion where we don't have a clue about a fetus' consciousness or potential volition about whether or not it would like to be crushed or maimed or dead.
2. but the decisive thing here was what happened in oregon after they passed a similar initiative. essentially, the matter comes down to insurance.
2a. down there, they've had a number of cases where insurance companies would tell terminally ill patients that they would not help fund expensive, life-prolonging medication (which they funded before the initiative passed) in lieu of a much cheaper assisted suicide option.
3. which is the generally scary thing about government-run health care, now that I mention it. the availability of health care and its options should never be subject to perceived social interest. ever.

- initiative 1027 (I think). I voted yes on this one.
well, it seemed rather obvious. quality control for long-term care is just as important as quality control in the hospital. and the utter absence in the former (and associated horror stories from nursing homes) is pathetic.

- president. I voted for mccain/palin.
1. much like the governor note above, there's this whole divided government thing that I value. essentially, ideological 'movements' based upon bettering the people and sweeping out old corruption tend to very quickly settle into new corruption and new problems that are just as immature and/or, well, problematic. divided government at least ensures that the progress of such rhetorically boldened movements is kept pretty close to earth, if only by slowing its rate of 'progress.' there's also much better public accountability this way. which brings me to my second destructive reason..
2. essentially, the prospect of having a man in the white house who engages in the foundational lie and isn't called on it by a supposedly interested media scares the shit out of me w.r.t. the health of the republic. don't get me wrong: all politicians lie to a greater or lesser extent. the beautiful thing about our republic is that we have (i.) at least one opposition party and (ii.) a private media who both have self-interest in rooting out lies/deception to make the other party look bad or make news [of course, they often generate fictional or assumed 'deceptions' that lots of really smart people then process without ever worrying about whether or not they are verified; but that's a separate issue]. here though, no one really believes a word coming out of the republican party (for better or worse) and the media has been permanently engaged in worship mode for months. as a result, we've seen justification and rationalization for all sorts of massive lies/self-contradictions from obama's campaign and obama himself. not at all limited to:
- preconditions in negotiating with iran
- free trade
- foreign policy in latin america
- addressing russia
- iraq and the success/failure there
- israel
- tax increases/decreases
in additional to the foundational lies about obama himself and his transformative lightworking being, including:
- post-partisanship
- campaign finance
- his pastor and other radical associations
- any pretension or claim to being 'moderate'
- copious amounts of vacuous rhetoric and empathy that shrouds a very different policy vision
as I said, all politicians engage in a massive amount of deception. obama is no different in that. the crucial difference to my eye is the willingness for large numbers of smart/educated/important people to rationalize obvious self-contradictions into suave arguments for his awesomeness. the fact that the media has assisted this is abhorrent and sets awful precedent for future governance. it essentially introduces the possibility of no electoral accountability for a man who mouths the 'right' sort of words (judged by some informational elite), even if they sometimes include statements like "black is white." and even if mr. obama doesn't misuse that lack of accountability to his advantage, like I said: it sets awful precedent for the future.
2a. if you don't agree, imagine karl rove as president with twelve versions of fox news broadcast in every cafe. with everyone smiling knowingly about all the things they don't actually know, but merely assume. because, well, it's true dammit. then you'd live in my world - in reverse. either way, it's bad.
3. oh, and the last destructive reason that's more me-oriented rather than more global: I don't actually agree with him on, well, anything policy-related. and while it's very nice of him to consider little people like me that probably got brainwashed into a non-progressive value set, his voting record indicates that his consideration is purely abstract. I personally have no use for such big-minded people.
4. now, on to constructives. economically, if we have to choose between, say, increasing capital gains/property/estate taxes on the 'rich' (while crucially affecting small business and investment incentives for the not-so-rich) and not, then taking option 2 will be healthier for everyone - period. if you want to prolong whatever recession and economic troubles are country is plunging into, then a good way to do that is to motivate rich folks and corporations to move their money overseas by taxing the shit out of them. see, that way, you increase unemployment (since the jobs left) AND decrease economic output (since the money left) AND generate even more despair as your economy suffers even more, which naturally leads itself to invest more power in government to help out further. this was the good old great depression model that - not to be too blunt - prolonged the depression far longer than it would have likely lasted under a more minimal government approach. but hey don't believe me, listen to this guy. anyway, that's a long way of saying that populist rhetoric is all well and good (if entirely unjust: an extra zero on your tax return suddenly kicks in conditional social ethics that make theft legal and appropriate), but its historical effectiveness for, you know, actually helping the poor is actually poor itself. all the while, it also decreases individual conceptions of responsibility for their fellow man. because, well, Jesus didn't reaaallly call you to love your neighbor you know, yourself. that's government's job to 'make sure it happens;' your free will and love pale in comparison to the act of achieving nominal dependence on some impersonal entity.
4a. not that mccain's that great in this region either; but he's certainly better.
5. iraq. well, not that anyone cares about that place anymore not that it's doing so much better, but I do. and pissing away achievements there and disengaging from active conflicts with AQI and others to.. umm.. fight them in afghanistan even though they're primarily localized near iraq.. umm, oh I lost myself again. oh yeah: pissing away those achievements is quite dumb. tackle afghanistan/pakistan soon; secure one front first and then move on. you know, like you learn from basic military history.
5a. random interlude: I'm terribly sick of the fact that many smart people think of iraq entirely in terms of the 2003 invasion. you know, the folks that love to contextualize everything simply fail to contextualize this: that regardless of how you felt about whether or not we should have or should not have invaded iraq, we are there now. and we will be there for the near future. this act of presence can either be something that benefits the iraqi people, the middle east, and us, or it may not. the ethical question of 2003 is now a historical question; saying 'we shouldn't have gone there' is fine, but the statement 'and so we shouldn't be there now' does not logically follow. obama half-falls into this nonsense (likely for political reasons, thereby engaging much political support from the perpetually outraged) while also advancing this "they're in afghanistan! seriously!" business that, were it true, would be much more advanced in convenient leaks by higher-ups in the defense dept. in some fashion that shows that they aren't simply convenient for obama's benefit, but convenient toward shaping public policy.
5b. people forget, after all, that people and institutions act primarily out of self-interest. the defense department & co. have a vested self-interest in actually doing their jobs well. which means they usually know a helluva lot more what they're talking about than the vocal lot that make it onto sunday morning talk shows. of course, they also have a self-interest in manipulating publicly released information as well. but here, a hyperactive and tourettes-like press is actually useful.
6. for all that people have made fun of palin (to the point of absurdity), her policy outlook is actually the closest to my own; namely, small 'l' libertarian. not that people care about that when they can butcher quotes to prove that she believes in holy war; you mess with the narrative when you do that. not that it terribly matters anyway; vice presidents, even cheney, don't do that much compared to other offices.

hmm, that seems like a sufficient summary for now. I need to actually mail my absentee ballot and then get back to work.

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all in all though, none of this truly matters on an eternal timescale. I have voted my conscience while recognizing that my hope and duty does not reside in politicians or our republic, but rather in our God and King. it is my desire that beyond my vote, that His Will is done and that our government and its function reflects His wishes and desires. that whoever He wants in office will be elected.

but now I go back to my duty: love for Him and love for my neighbor. those He will lift me up to pursue independent of who is in earthly power. and as my hope lies in Him, He will bring about the change He desires in me, the change and redemption that I cannot bring to myself. praise be to God.