Cap'n's Voting, part two...

I vote. I don't buy the arguments that it merely sanctions a corrupt system. The United States is still relatively free. Plus, I get a psychological thrill at the opportunity to lay the smackdown on people trying to coerce me.

Oregon uses vote-by-mail, so I get to fill out my ballot at my leisure and mail it in. Thus, I'm spreading out my voting thoughts over several posts. In my first installment I examined the Oregon statewide ballot measures. In this post I'll discuss the state and federal candidates. In the last post I'll discuss county and city candidates and ballot measures.

I'm currently registered as a Libertarian but I'm planning to change my registration to an independent. When the LP is wrong, they're really wrong, and I can't stand it. I don't want to be affiliated with them anymore.

Federal:

President

(R) Bush/Cheney. Bush is the only candidate who scopes the War on Terror almost as broadly as I do. I don't trust the others to pursue it properly. On my Presidential vote, I am a single-issue voter. (Bush's record is otherwise very mixed. I like the tax cuts and HSAs, but hate the subsidies and tariffs and Medicare expansion.) Badnarik (L) wasn't even tempting; I knew I wouldn't vote for him as soon as I learned even a little bit about him.

Senator

(R) King. I couldn't vote for Fitzgerald (L) because he opposes the action in Iraq. Wyden (D) panders to anti-oil-company conspiracy theories and opposes Social Security privatization. I'm not voting for King, who doesn't offer much to like, I'm voting against everybody else.

Representative

(R) Ameri. This isn't an endorsement, it's a vote against Wu (D), who extended unemployment benefits, wanted to increase the minimum wage, and opposes Social Security privatization.

State:

Secretary of State

(L) Morley. This is actually a vote in favor; his qualifications are impeccable. I don't understand his dislike for vote-by-mail, but he's not proposing to get rid of it, so I'm not too bothered by it.

State Treasurer

(L) Shults. It was a tough decision between him and Caton (R). I don't place a lot of value on Caton's experience as a money manager, so ultimately went with Shults on the hope that his party affiliation is a rough proxy for having a vaguely similar ideology to my own. This is the vote I'm least sure about.

Attorney General

(L) Smith. This is also a true vote in favor. Connolly (R) believes in the enormously wasteful war on drugs. Myers (D) panders to anticapitalism, and as a procapitalist extremist I'm very sensitive to that. ;)

State Representative (30^th District)

(R) Kitts. I almost voted for Semrau (C) until he exposed himself as a protectionist. I love globalization, so I excluded Semrau. I also couldn't vote for Sander (D) because he thinks it's his job to create jobs and to manage health insurance costs. I think the market can and would do that just fine all by itself if government would get out of the way.