Who to vote for in NH

If you live in NH, who should you vote for? Sheesh, don't ask me. Honestly, none of the major candidates for any job really excite me. The only candidate I really want to vote for isn't on the ballot. (No, I'm not talking about Bob Smith.) I'm talking about None of the Above. He's my favorite. All the rest are losers.

Well, with that commentary out of the way, how about some information? This is nowhere near comprehensive, it just fills a desire I had to write a little information down.

How to get candidate information

Project Vote Smart has a pretty good website. For each of the major elections, click the link (e.g. Governor, Congress). Then, for each candidate, click on their name. The notation "NPAT" or "No NPAT" indicates whether the candidate has filled out an information form on their positions on various issues. To see this survey, click the "Issue Positions" link on the top right corner of the page for the candidate. You can also check the voting record and campaign finance records for each candidate. There is quite a lot of information here.

For NH-specific information, go to NHPR's website for ratings of current legislators. A few current NH legislators are running for statewide or federal offices. (Right-click and choose Open in a new window if you want to read along.)

A few of the races

US Congress, District 1

For "Clark, Martha", you'll see her ratings from different groups. There are scores for the number of votes that she attended (i.e. when they vote on laws) - 99%, her voting record towards schools (86%), the environment (64%), taxes (82%), and women (100%).

For "Bradley, Jeb" (her opponent), votes attended 93%, schools 28%, environment 21%, taxes 76% and women 62%. Wow, he looks worse than Martha on taxes and the environment -- two issues that I tend to care about. I guess his ads worked on me (they make her look like a fat slob), as much as I hate to admit it. He actually is worse than Martha (mathematically speaking, at least) on all the ranked areas. (However, see below for some thoughts on where these numbers come from.)

Bradley and Clark are running for US Congress in the first district. The libertarian candidate isn't ranked here because he doesn't hold any office now but you can bet he'd get a 100% ranking for taxes, probably 20% for the environment, ?% for women, and 5% for schools. I typically use a vote for the Libertarian candidate as my way of saying "None of the Above". I can't generally vote for the major party candidates in good conscience.

US Congress, 2nd district

Do your own homework. Do you want everything spoon fed?

Governor

If you click the "what about the senate" link and scroll down to "Fernald, Mark", you'll see he gets a 99% for attendance, 75% for schools, 100% for environment, 57% for taxes, and 90% for women.

Since Craig Benson doesn't hold any office, he doesn't have a legislative voting record to rank. I won't make any guesses about his numbers. Mostly because "I can't say anything nice so I won't say anything". Unfortunately, I think Fernald is more dangerous than Benson so I may end up voting for Benson. Although it looks like Benson will win, so "None of the Above" might receive my vote.

About the rankings

To be fair about these rankings: if you look at the senate rankings it is fairly obvious that pretty much all the republicans and democrats vote with their party. In other words, if a particular bill is a "democrat" bill, then most of the republicans will vote no. Thus if all the "pro school" bills are introduced by the democrats, then the republicans will rank low. And if those so-called "pro school" bills are loaded up with unrelated crap that the republicans don't like then their scores go lower. It works the same way for "tax friendly" bills, except that these are introduced by the republicans. Indeed, in an election year the parties introduce bills that are "poisoned" by some provision that is particularly offensive to the other party so that they can say "Hey look, my candidate hates babies, apple pie, and the American Way."

Misleading (but highly effective) campaign ads

Speaking of which: one ad that really irks me is one currently running against Sununu. This puts me in the ugly position of having to defend Sununu, whom I do not like for other reasons, but I want to clarify something. "Sununu wants to take away your mortgage tax deducation." What a load of crap. Ok, so it's true, but how about a little background? The ad cites Sununu's vote on HR 1040 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.01040:). What did Sununu want to do by voting for this bill? Two things: first, simplify the tax system -- no more need to hire someone to do your taxes for you, no more special deductions for special interests. Second, make it difficult for Congress to pass laws that increase taxes, create new taxes, or create special deductions for special interests (it would take a 3/5 majority to pass these). It's highly misleading to accuse him of wanting to do away with the mortgage tax deduction. (But it is probably effective.)

So please try not to be a pawn in these stupid games. Think critically about what the ads are saying. Remember, they're funded by politicians -- so by definition the ads are almost completely lies. The ones that are documented are almost certainly lies.

(In case you're wondering: the reason why I think Sununu is (oh, how to phrase this politely) a "bad person" is because he actually, vote against the American Way last fall. Really.)

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