boxofdelights

In Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution, Elie Mystal quotes Cardozo School of Law professor Kyron Huigens:

The reason the popular vote diverges from the Electoral College vote is that each voter in Wyoming has more voting power in the Senate—and so in the Electoral College—than each voter in California.
Here is the proper calculation…. If Carol [resident of California] has one vote in the Senate, how many does Will [resident of Wyoming] have?
Fifty-seven.

Kyron Huigens, "The Electoral College Is Actually Worse Than You Think—Here's Why," Observer, February 27, 2019.

Wyoming has 584,309 inhabitants, two senators, and three electoral college votes. Mystal suggests that buying 500,000 Black people a townhouse in Wyoming would be a more effective way for some billionaire to defend democracy than a futile Presidential run. And it doesn't have to be 500,000: 278,503 people turned out to vote in Wyoming in 2020. And some of them voted for Democrats! 120,069 more Democratic votes would have sent Wyoming's electoral votes to Biden/Harris, and elected Lynnette Grey Bull instead of Lynne Cheney. In 2018, 74984 more votes could have elected a Democratic senator from Wyoming.

The Inflation Reduction Act will invest $369 billion in "energy security and climate change". Can we send some of that money to Wyoming? People who work in clean energy and climate change tend to vote Democratic. Also, creating a lot of high-paying jobs will make the whole community more prosperous.

I'm looking at the Californication of Colorado here, that turned Colorado blue, and thinking that Wyoming is the logical next step for Californians who are being evicted by climate change. If there were jobs in Wyoming, I bet they'd go there. What do you think?

Colorado has been mailing every voter a ballot for years, so this election process is not much different than normal for me: walk to the courthouse, drop it in the dropbox. Most of the people I saw on the sidewalk were not wearing masks, but everyone approaching or leaving the dropbox was.

I've never done it this early before: got the ballot on Saturday, dropped it off Monday. There were 21 candidates for President. None of them was Kanye. I did not bother to read up on any of the people on the ballot. This year, I am a party line voter. I did have to read about all the amendments and propositions. I thought Colorado had already joined the pact to obviate the Electoral College, but the pact's opponents got enough signatures to put a veto referendum on the ballot. I had to triple check: a yes vote means agreeing to join the pact. There were also tax shenanigans, gambling, gray wolves, abortion.

Air quality is a bit better, covid-19 infection rate is getting worse fast. There are four black bears raiding gardens and garbage in my neighborhood, but I haven't seen any of them.

Am reading V for Vendetta for Rekindle the Classics book group.

I love you! If you're American, please vote!

Hail! Very loud hail. Little dog with heart disease does not approve.




( cut for politics )

Another thing I learned today is that miller moths are very filling. The immature screech owls are not passing mouse school because there are so many miller moths to eat instead. I say, if they're flying well enough to maintain their weight on miller moths, they're flying well enough to be released, but. We Have A Protocol.

Books I gave this Jólabókaflóð:

To younger niece:
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
Fang Girl by Helen Keeble
To older niece:
Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
To Nixie:
The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks
La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
(I think there must have been one more here???)
To Mungo:
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction by Annalee Newitz
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
To Neal:
The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey

In other weather news Mungo's flight back to Montreal got cancelled. His new flight is at 5 a.m. Saturday morning, with a three-hour layover in Newark. I hope he doesn't get stuck in Newark.

( cut for politics )

I'm going to tag any political posts with "politics" from now on. If you have a paid DW account, you can filter them off your reading page.

Go to "Manage Filters" (https://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/subscriptions/filters), choose "Default view" (or whichever filter you read me on), and then click on my name. You should get these choices:

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Choose "none" from the dropdown menu on "the entry is tagged with". Click "politics" on the list of available tags.

I'm going to tag this post "politics" so the tag will be there to click! I am sorry that this option is only available to paid DW accounts. I will also put political posts behind a cut tag so you can avoid reading them.