28 March 2011

Progressive Voting Guide for Wisconsin - April 2011 Election

Voting day is just in front of us and this year's election is of vital importance. As such, I am trying to collect together a Voting Guide to inform people of their options. As I've said before (brilliant idea #2), there needs to be a site that collects all elections and gives good information on EVERY race, from President to School Board to Coroner (what is a "republican" way of coroning?).

Find your polling place!

This is in no way meant to be an unbiased, non-partisan guide. Rather, I will try to inform you of the candidate that will make Wisconsin a better place. I am open to discuss (in comments here, when I see you next, or any other way) and will update this post with changes when I get better information, but I want to post this as soon as I can. Please let me know if you know of other races and any info you have on candidates.

Wisconsin State Supreme Court
JoAnne Kloppenburg is the clear choice here. She's running against incumbent David Prosser, a former Wisconsin State legislator who has refused to recuse himself from the Collective Bargaining case despite the fact of having served with Walker and others in the state legislature and virtually assured to vote in favor of the bill.

Kloppenburg will restore some badly needed balance to the State Supreme Court, which is currently weighted toward republican perspectives (Note: I do not mean conservative perspective, I mean republican).

Milwaukee County Executive
Though I'm not convinced that either candidate is ideal, Chris Abele seems to be the less bad (and perhaps actually good, I just don't know for sure). His opponent, Jeff Stone is a republican legislator who voted for Walker's Budget and the collective bargaining sham of a bill, so he is clearly a bad choice (and, incidentally, probably a bad person in general).

Milwaukee School Board
District 8
Again, I'm not 100% about this race. It seems like both candidates aren't ideal, but until we are fully committed to running quality progressive candidates at every level I guess I would lean slightly toward Meagan Holman, who at least seems smart. I hope someone sets me straight here if they know any better, but the only information I can find is onmilwaukee.com's coverage of the primary in February and their answers weren't necessarily substantively different, but very much stylistically different (or intellectually different).

Milwaukee County Circuit Court - Branch 18
Vote to retain Judge Pedro Colón, who I really know nothing about, but I like his smile. Oh, and he seems like a reasonable guy.