Schemas, Framing, and Our Brains

Election Result Links:

For: interim statewide and regional results for U.S. Senator, U.S. Representatives, and all the Washington State level offices, including the state legislative districts should be available through this link at the Washington Secretary of State’s website.

For: those races entirely within Spokane County (which includes state legislative districts 3 (central Spokane), 4 (valley north to Mt. Spokane), and 6 (mostly west of Spokane), check out the Spokane County Elections website here.

Post:

Trump, Vance, and the Trumpian Republican Party have been aptly saddled with the adjective “weird,” something that Vance’s “childless cat ladies” and a host of other past weird statements make particularly salient. When the electoral choice is between positive and forward looking vs. weird and twisted most of us know which side we’ll vote on. One only has to look back at the 2008 election and the manifest weirdness of Sarah “I can see Russia from my house!” Palin vs. the positive excitement about the Obama candidacy to appreciate how a label like “weird” can work. In this fall’s November election policy differences between the Trumpian Republican Party (think Project 2025) and local and national Democrats are stark and vitally important to our personal freedoms and the health of our democracy—but, and especially in a close election, the vibe really matters. 

Somehow I got on JD Vance’s email list. His campaign sends out three or four emails a day and the weirdness of the Subject lines speak for themselves:

“I will wipe the floor with Tim Walz.” (From someone who wants to be VP??)

“President Trump & I love you, Jerry” (If that doesn’t give one the creeps, nothing will.)

“President Trump is paying for your trip” (Really? No, it’s a lottery.)

“Immediate action required: I need your input!” (Hint: It links to a push poll. Duh.)

Then there’s Lara Trump’s email: “Feeling lonely?” (You can nominate your town for Trump rally. Whoopee!)

And that’s just a sampling of the weird and creepy from Old Donald and company. 

So where does this all lead and what does it have to do with rotting lettuce?

I’ve been reading—and enjoying—Jay Kuo’s Substack “The Status Kuo.” I encourage you to sign up. His posts are often served up with a healthy dose of humor. His end-of-week “Just for Xeets and Giggles” post is, for me, a window on social media I would not otherwise have—and one that often leaves me laughing uncontrollably. As a highly educated lawyer Kuo knows his way around the legal system and as the founder an CEO of a social media company he knows his way around the internet.

I have pasted below Jay’s commentary entitled “The Vibes Election.” I also wish to cite the older work of Brian Klass (linked in Kuo’s article and here) that forms the basis for Kuo’s post. Klass’s commentary is from January of 2023—but it rings brilliantly true.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The Vibes Election

This contest will be won on how folks feel. And that’s good news for Harris.

JAY KUO

JUL 30

You’ve probably felt the frustration before while talking to conservatives or independents, or even many fellow Democrats. No matter what the facts actually were—a strong economy, low unemployment, low inflation, crime and border crossings down—people just didn’t dig Joe Biden. He was just “too old.”  

It didn’t matter that Trump is just three years younger. Or that he is cognitively impaired, a criminal felon, an adjudicated rapist, and wants to end democracy. You could recite all of that and back it up with hard evidence, but it wouldn’t change people’s minds.

So why is that? And what can we do about it?

Here’s what to remember: Elections, for better or worse, are won on feels, not facts. As Professor of Global Politics Brian Klaas notes, the human “political brain” works by creating “schemas,” meaning shorthands for how to process all that information we’re bombarded with.

For Biden, that shorthand sadly became “he’s too old.” For Trump, it’s “teflon,” which carries a far more positive connotation. “Teflon Don” even survived an assassination attempt. 

And this is important: Once that shorthand gets baked in, the mind actively reinforces it, no matter what facts get put out. The “political brain” filters, sorts and often rejects those facts in order to buttress whatever pre-existing scheme it has adopted. 

That’s how Trump can successfully claim to his followers that all of his crimes are actually the result of Joe Biden witch-hunts. This claim is totally counterfactual, but it’s what the MAGA brain filters, processes and accepts.

There’s good news, though. Democrats recently have found a way to crack the code and create new shorthands that resonate with middle America. The “Republicans are weird” attack is working. So is the “Auntie Kamala” vibe. Today, I’ll explain the “political brain” theory a bit more and provide some recent examples of how schemas were used to devastate candidates. I’ll also show how Democrats are using them today to define and uplift Harris.

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The political brain and “schemas”

As Prof. Klaas describes,

The political brain is a brain defined by schemas. Political movements that understand that fact will usually beat those that don’t.

Republicans have battered Democrats on messaging in recent years because they intuitively understand schemas in a way that Democrats often don’t.

Schemas, according to Prof. Klaas, are “intellectual shortcuts for processing the information we encounter in our lives.” Those shortcuts are incredibly useful but also incredibly malleable. Klaas gives the example of an office:

[R]ather than remembering exactly what every office we have ever set foot in looks like, we develop a conceptual representation of what an office looks like. Then, when we remember an office, we fill in the gaps. So, even if we go into an office without a stapler on the desk, we often remember that a stapler was there later on, because that fits with our schema for an office.

And then here’s the kicker: Our brains quickly latch on to the ideas that match the shorthand versions we have handy. But when we encounter countervailing facts, our brains actually work overtime to alter reality so that the facts better match with our preexisting notions.

That’s why when you rattle off facts to someone who is on the opposite side politically, they likely won’t absorb them. Instead, their brains will work hard to create an explanation that accounts for the conflicting facts. The result is that the existing schema gets reinforced, not diminished.

Establishing the vibe quickly

When Ron DeSantis announced he intended to seek the GOP nomination for president, a lot of Wall Street bros and National Review types cheered. Here was a conservative cause warrior, fresh off a huge electoral win in his home state of Florida, which he declared was where “woke goes to die.”

The problem was, outside of these circles, it was obvious to anyone who’d actually met DeSantis that he was awkward, off-putting and even cruel. That smile looked painful and forced. His movements were stiff and unnatural. His war on Disney felt manufactured for political gain—plus, who goes to battle against Mickey Mouse and his own state’s largest employer? His attacks on gay and trans kids were harsh and bullying. Then there were the book bans, the demonization of migrants, and a new six week abortion ban he signed and announced under cover of night. 

Because of all this, everything around DeSantis started getting filtered through the “DeSantis is a weirdo” schema. His white boots moment became a meme and a punchline. His debate performances were as “Ron the Robot.” And his candidacy began to tank fast.

The same thing is now happening with JD Vance, largely because the Democrats learned something from the former GOP strategists at the Lincoln Project about how to create a politically fatal vibe around a guy like Vance. His weirdness around women isn’t just a personal failing. It extends to actual policies that would control women’s lives and bodies. Strict abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest. A belief that childless cat ladies are running everything. His proposal that parents with kids have more votes than those without.

These policy proposals transform the whole weirdo thing into something truly abusive and creepy. If your daughter were dating a guy like this, you’d plan an intervention and get your spouse and grandma involved if possible.

Klaas points to another recent and instructive political casualty in his own country: Liz Truss, the former British prime minister who famously could not outlast a head of lettuce. Writes Klaas,

The lettuce gag may have seemed like a silly sideshow, but when I saw it, I knew Liz Truss was toast. She had become defined by a punchline. Every piece of new information in the news was filtered through a schema that was shared across the British political divide: Liz Truss is an incompetent screw-up who crashed the economy and is likely to expire before a comically bespectacled bit of produce.

The bad news for JD Vance is that he is also fast becoming a punchline, whether it’s “Vladimir Futon,” dolphin porn, or the whole childless cat ladies thing. He is being laughed at, especially by women, which is the one thing men like Vance or Trump hate more than anything in the world.

Nice try, but no

The GOP has attempted to create schemas around Harris, but they keep falling flat. As I discussed in my recent piece in The Big Picture, the first volley of attacks portrayed her as the “DEI” candidate, which is MAGA shorthand for the N-word. Even Republican leaders recoiled at this and warned their members not to go down this path. 

Perhaps they also knew there would be reactions like this in her defense that would galvanize even more African American voters behind her:

The GOP has also tried to pin the “border czar” label on her, but it has fumbled this badly. For starters, there’s no such position, and Harris’s work was at the diplomatic level with Central American countries, not at the border. “Diplomacy czar” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. And when Republicans decided to actually impeach an official over the number of migrant crossings, they targeted not Vice President Harris but Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. I guess Harris wasn’t the “border czar” after all.

Attempts by Trump to paint Harris as a “Marxist” and a “communist” have also failed to stick, in large part because the GOP has called everything and everyone that for years, and it just doesn’t resonate with the average voter. A shorthand only ever works if there is some deeper truth behind it. Biden really is old, for example. Trump really does seem like Teflon Don. But Harris as a communist? Only if every other Democrat they don’t like is, too.

The failure by the GOP and Trump to create an effective schema to pull down Harris has left a wide opening for supporters of Harris to define her with positive messaging instead. Her quirky sayings about falling out of a coconut tree have become popular coconut emojis. Her laugh is now a weapon of joy against Trump’s humorless and dark campaign. And her leadership in this moment, with progressive, democratic forces arrayed behind her, even became a new version of a well-known Avengers movie clip:

Beyond the memes and videos, and far more fundamentally, Harris offers an economic vision that is far closer to the mainstream, focused on affordable health care, job opportunities and education. She’s a fighter for freedom and associated with cool celebrities like Charli XCX and Beyoncé. And she represents the future, not the past, both in her vigor and her ideas. 

As a result, voters are increasingly enthusiastic to cast their ballots for Harris. Indeed, in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, she performs a full nine points better than Trump on enthusiasm among all voters. Those figures include an astonishing 26 point gain among Democrats for their own candidate since February, when Republicans used to have an 18 point lead on enthusiasm.

As Harris’s favorables have risen, we should understand that in the eyes of many voters now, she’s become the cool auntie with the funny laugh you just want to be around—and maybe even gain some wisdom and hope from. If the GOP can’t redefine her soon, then everything she does from here till Election Day could be filtered through the context of that “cool auntie” schema.

That means Republican attacks would only serve to reinforce that image among her supporters and undecided voters. And wouldn’t that be fun to see for a change?

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By Jay Kuo

Vote and get your ballot counted! More details.

Still haven’t voted and turned in your ballot? Git ‘er done. Don’t let procrastination and perplexity keep you from using the most powerful tool you have to shape your local and state government—your vote. As of last Thursday in Spokane County only 15% of eligible voters had turned in their ballots, five percentage points less than in 2020 at the same point (the last primary election held in a presidential election year). The first vote counts aren’t done until Tuesday evening, so we have no idea what segment of the voting public has taken the time to vote so far. Rumor has it that right wing churches are coaching voters and gathering voted ballots to turn in. Don’t let that sort of technically legal “ballot harvesting” determine your choices on the November ballot. Vote!

I have met, talked with and observed many of the Democratic and some of the Republican candidates on the Primary ballot—and I agree with the recommendations and rationale presented in the Progressive Voters Guide. Many other blurbs and guides, candidate websites, county Voters’ Guides, newspaper articles, and recordings of debates are available at your fingertips—if you have hours to comb through the material. (For example, listen here, to hear the candidates to replace McMorris Rodgers.) Both the Public Disclosure Commission (for state and local candidates and PACs) and the Federal Election Commission (for federal races and PACs) have a wealth of valuable information—but it takes some time, and a lot of clicking, to figure out how to navigate to the data you want to see. 

The race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has drawn eleven listed contestants, six “Prefers Republican Party” and five “Prefers Democratic Party.” For this race read the entry in the Progressive Voters Guide. The “Prefers Republican Party” candidates run from bad to worse. Democrats Carmela Conroy and Dr. Bernadine Bank are both endorsed by the Spokane County Democratic Party and both retain substantial campaign coffers to take into the General Election. (For links to the financial wherewithal of the eleven candidates check out this guide. Money isn’t everything, but it is nearly impossible to win without financial backing.) 

There is a little comfort, I suppose, in noting that many of the contests on your ballot have only two contenders, which means, in our slightly bizarre “Top two” primary system, that both will appear on the November General Election ballot. Even so, do your homework and cast your votes in these contests, too. Your vote counts. Candidates and campaigns use primary vote results as an indicator—so do campaign donors, PACs, and political parties. The Primary, even when ballot turn-in is unimpressive, is a better poll than nearly all of the campaigns can afford to run. 

Last Friday I wrote a very long post (partly for my own edification) on why we have the primary voting system we use in Washington State. You deserve a badge for diligence if you read to the end of that post and learned something you thought was interesting. In part I wrote it to expand answers to some of the questions that Jim Camden posed and answered in the article I’ve pasted below. I maintain a paid digital subscription to the Spokesman. I recommend it. I read it nearly every morning and view it as essential to keeping up with the local goings on. But I do not take the Spokesman as a single source. Mr. Camden’s article is shorter than mine, and well worth the time to read. Articles like this are one of the reasons I subscribe.

Vote! We should have some early results by Wednesday.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Spin Control: Questions about the ballot you received in the mail? We have some answers

Sun., July 21, 2024

By Jim Camden For The Spokesman-Review

For some 4.8 million Washington voters, the most confusing ballot of the past four years probably arrived in the mail last week.

If not, it will likely arrive this week.

It’s the state primary ballot, which actually comes once a year about this time, but tends to generate the most questions in years divisible by four.

The first question is almost always, “Didn’t I just cast a primary ballot?”

The answer is “Yes, but.” The qualifier is that the primary ballot cast in March was a presidential primary ballot for the candidates seeking the nomination for either the Democratic or Republican presidential nomination. This primary is to narrow down the choices for other partisan races that will be on the November ballot.

So why does the state have two primaries?

That’s a bit more complicated, and involves a fairly long history that we’ll condense here. The presidential primary is relatively new – approved in the 1990s, but the rules have changed several times since – and was instituted with the hope that Washington voters could play a bigger role in choosing the presidential nominee. (It hasn’t worked all that well, but that’s a different issue.)

To be counted by the parties, the presidential primary has certain rules that require a voter to state that he or she is, at least when marking the ballot, a member of the party of the candidate being chosen. If a voter says he or she is a Democrat and marks the ballot for a Republican candidate, or vice versa, the ballot isn’t counted. If a voter fails to say he or she is a member of one of those parties, and votes for any candidate, the ballot isn’t counted.

The state primary is older, dating to the 1930s, and it was an effort to give voters more control – and the political parties less control – of selecting the candidates in the general election. For many years, the Democrat with the most votes and the Republican with the most votes in any given race advanced to the general election, as did certain minor party candidates or independents who got a certain percentage of the primary vote. But a voter wasn’t limited in his or her choices, and could pick a Republican for senator, a Democrat for governor, an independent for lieutenant governor and even a Communist for state school superintendent. (Just kidding. The School Superintendent office is nonpartisan.)

But it, too, has changed in recent decades because of legal challenges by the parties. A state primary voter can still vote for any candidate for any office – one per race, of course – but instead of the Democrat and Republican with the highest vote counts advancing, the two candidates with the most votes advance. That’s why it’s often called the “top two primary.”

Does that mean the general election could be between two Democrats or two Republicans?

Yes.

Do the parties like that better?

Generally not. It is, however, a good lesson in being careful what you ask for, particularly if you’re asking the courts.

Why does the ballot say the candidates ‘prefer’ a particular party?

In Washington, voters don’t register by party and candidates don’t run with the approval of the party they claim. They may or may not be active members of the party they list as a preference.

Why haven’t I heard of some of these parties, like the ‘Nonsense Busters Party’ or the ‘Standup America Party’ or the ‘No Labels Party’?

Sometimes candidates just make up a name, often to signify something about their political philosophy. Others may just have too much time on their hands. There’s also probably no difference between the “GOP Party” and the “Republican Party” or the “Trump Republican Party.”

If I marked the presidential primary ballot as a Democrat or a Republican to vote in March, do I have to vote only for that party’s candidates in the state primary?

No. You can vote for any candidate you want in the state primary. You are also not required to vote for the same candidate in the general election that you vote for in the state primary. Just get the primary ballot postmarked or in a drop box by Aug. 6.

Why so many candidates? How did this happen?

If you’re puzzled by all the names and (sometimes) obscure elective offices that appear on the August Primary ballot, you’re not alone. (If you haven’t received your ballot—or you’ve lost track of it—contact your local county elections office today. Here’s a useful link that should easily get you to your county elections office website.)

Why, you might ask, are there twenty-eight listed candidates for Washington State governor? Must I read the blurb on each of these candidates in order to choose? Here’s good news: If you want an elections guide that rationally presents a preferred candidate for most races consult the Progressive Voters Guide. The “Other Candidates” section of the Guide for most offices offers perspective—and might save you from wasting a vote on a fringe candidate with no real campaign. For example, the Progressive Voters Guide recommends Bob Ferguson, the current Washington State Attorney General for governor, but offers perspective on just three other candidates—the only ones mounting remotely effective campaigns. Check out the Guide.

Vote, turn in your ballot, and urge your like-minded friends to do the same. Everything below is the result of my effort to better understand our primary system. I hope you’ll find it interesting—but what appears below is of less important than voting your ballot and submitting it this weekend!

Why is all this so complicated?

The U.S. Constitution leaves most of the details of election structure and management to the individual state governments—partly the product of the transportation and communication strictures of the time. As a consequence, different states hold primary elections on sometimes vastly different dates and by different rules. For example, our neighbor Idaho holds primary elections for state and local offices in May rather than August. Idaho’s currentprimary elections are party specific, i.e. in order to vote on the Republican Primary ballot one must declare oneself a Republican and, having made that declaration, one can only vote for candidates on that ballot. (Those rules could change by initiative this fall.) 

In view of this panoply of election rules and dates for primary elections it is a wonder that we have managed to regularize the date for the general election to the first Tuesday in November. It turns out that a national date for the general election of presidential electors was established by federal law in 1845 in response improved communication (click here for the whole article):

Development of the Morse electric telegraph, funded by Congress in 1843 and successfully tested in 1844, was a technological change that clearly augured an imminent future of instant communication nationwide.^[6] To prevent information from one state from influencing Presidential electoral outcomes in another, Congress responded in 1845 by mandating a uniform national date for choosing Presidential electors.

State and local officials often (but not always) appear on the same November general election ballot as a matter of convenience and cost savings:

Many state and local government offices are also elected on Election Day as a matter of convenience and cost saving, although a handful of states hold elections for state offices (such as governor) during odd-numbered off years, or during other even-numbered midterm years, and may hold special elections for offices that have become vacant.

All that explains a lot about the near universality of the general election, but the rules and dates for primary elections vary wildly from state to state. In our mobile society learning civics in one state may not help you much if you move to another. It state has developed its own rules. Political science majors and political party operatives take advantage of our ignorance. Here’s a place to start looking at the variations in primary elections by state.

Another consequence of this state-to-state variation in primary election rules and dates is that the national media focus our attention on the presidential candidates and often ignore state primaries. Can anyone else identify with my surprise years ago when I moved to Washington State, registered to vote, and heard there was an election in August?? 

Washington State’s “Top Two” Primary

Click here for the step-by-step “History of the Washington State Primary”from the Washington State Secretary of State’s office. Briefly, from 1935 to 2003 Washington State held a “blanket primary” in which:

Except for presidential primaries, all properly registered voters can vote for their choice at any primary for “any candidate for each office, regardless of political affiliation and without a declaration of political faith or adherence on the part of the voter.” Under the blanket primary system, citizens may vote for a candidate of one party for one office, and then vote for a candidate of another party for the next office, and engage in cross-over voting or “ticket splitting.”

Note that, as I understand it, this system still gave the political parties a role in vetting candidates and offering them up to the voters in the primary election, that is, the way to the primary ballot was through the party system of one of the parties. 

Enter California and the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1996 California Initiative 198 was passed by the voters. It tried to convert the California primary election from a closed primary in which one had to declare a party and vote only among candidates of that party (like voting Republican in the current Idaho’s primary system) to a blanket primary that was either the same as or very similar to the system Washington State had been using since 1935. But, oh boy, the political parties in California didn’t like that loss of control at all. They filed suit in a case California Democratic Party v. Jones alleging that the blanket primary violated their First Amendment right of association. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the blanket primary system was struck down in a 7-2 vote with majority opinion written by Antonin Scalia. Ginsburg and Stevens dissented. Stevens wrote: “This Court’s willingness to invalidate the primary schemes of 3 States and cast serious constitutional doubt on the schemes of 29 others at the parties’ behest is an extraordinary intrusion into the complex and changing election laws of the States.”

In Washington State, years of legal and voter initiative turmoil ensued. (Read here for details.) Finally, in 2008 Washington State ended up with U.S. Supreme Court approval of our current “Top two” system. In 2004 the voters passed I-872 with 60% of the vote, but it took four more years of legal cases and wrangling to finally yield the “Top two” primary we have since used. Ironically, after all that, Washington State wound up with a primary system that leaves the political parties with even less control than they had under the long-standing-but-U.S.-Supreme-Court-invalidated “blanket” primary system we had conduced primary elections under for more than 65 years. Scalia’s intrusion be damned.

As a consequence of all that controversy in Washington State primary elections any number of candidates can register to run—no vetting or prior approval by any party is necessary. Candidates get to declare whatever they want as “Prefers _____” without any approval by anyone. The result is the cluttered and confusing ballot you may now have in front of you. The political parties are reduced to declaring endorsements for the candidates they favor, trying to get the word out to the party faithful, and offering financial and person-power assistance. Further irony: under “Top two” primary rules we sometimes are left to choose between two Republicans or two Democrats in the November General Election. 

More Details

Just looking at the ballot, even with the now-legally-required county Voters’ Pamphlet in hand, you could still be left to wonder why some races appear on the ballot and others don’t—or wonder what the geography is of the areas from which the various candidates are elected. 

Here are a few rules (some of which apply only to Washington State):

A lot depends on length of term. For example, U.S. Senators like Maria Cantwell come up for election every 6 years. That produces an alternation between presidential election years like 2024 and mid-term elections like 2022. (Of course, with just two U.S. Senators that means that in one third of the even-numbered election years neither of the Senators will appear on a ballot!) U.S. Representatives appear on the ballot every even numbered year. Similarly, Washington State Representatives to the State Legislature also appear every second year, while State Senators are on a 4 year rotation. About half of the state senate seats are up for election in even-numbered years coincident with presidential election years like this year, and about half are up in the “mid-term” even-numbered years like 2022. 

Unless there is an opening to be filled or affirmed, all the state executivebranch positions appear on the primary ballot coincident with presidential election years like 2024. All the federal, state, and even county commissioner positions that are up for election appear on the primary ballot (and the general election ballot) even if only one candidate files for the position. 

But from there on is where it gets a bit odd. In Washington State we elect our state level judges (unlike federal judges who are appointed by the president and must be approved by the U.S. Senate). In our current day hyper-partisan political environment it feels a bit unnerving to be asked to choose among candidates for judgeships. Other than consulting with friends who are familiar with the system, on what basis are the voters supposed to judge judicial candidates? It’s tricky business. They don’t exactly advertise their partisan leanings (judgeships are nominally non-partisan)—even though it is perfectly clear from recent events that some judges (at least in the federal system) are very partisan indeed. 

Judgeships appear on the primary ballot only when three or more candidates file for a particular position as in Washington Supreme Court Justice Pos. 2, an open seat for which I favor Sal Mungia. The “Top two” primary election winners for Pos. 2 will advance to the November General Election ballot. Washington State Supreme Court justices serve 6-year terms, and must be younger than 75 years. Often justices are first appointed by the governor to replace a justice who is stepping down. They then need to stand for election in the next even year in order to fill out the term of the retiring justice—and stand again when the term associated with the Position runs out. Positions 8 and 9 will appear on the November ballot along with the contested Pos. 2 “Top two” primary winners. (Mathematically, considering six year terms, each even-numbered year three of the positions should be at least on the November General election ballot.

In Spokane County there are two contested County Superior Court Judgeships (of thirteen total positions), Positions 8 and 11. Only the Position 11 race, with three challengers to Judge Fennessy (who is the incumbent and my choice), appears on the primary ballot. Position 8 (held by incumbent Marla Polin) has just one challenger and, therefore, this race, by the state rules, advances to the November ballot without appearing on the primary ballot at all. Roughly half of the Spokane County Superior Court judge positions (including the two contested positions) will appear on the November ballot, even those without challengers. Judges serve four year terms. The other superior court judges will come up again in the mid-term election in 2026.

Some of you might find a Republican or Democratic Precinct Committee Officer race on your Primary ballot, but only if two or more candidates are running to represent their party in one precinct. Otherwise (RCW 29A.52.171) a single PCO candidate “wins” just by filing for candidacy every two years and, without a challenger, never appears on a ballot (PCO candidates are chosen by the vote in the primary only. 

Maps of Districts

Reliable, readable maps of all these overlapping electoral districts (modified usually every decade) are surprisingly hard to come by—but once found they’re pretty they are pretty interesting. Here are some links:

Perhaps obviously, all the Washington State executive branch elected offices, like State Auditor, Commissioner of Lands, Secretary of State, etc. are elected by all the voters in a single district—Washington State itself. The same is true for the federal office of Senator.

Legislative Districts (LDs), the districts that elect Washington State senators and State representatives are probably best seen here:

(You’ll have to search on Google. WordPress refused to copy the link.)

By clicking different options under the “layers” icon (second from the right upper strip of symbols) you can choose to see the boundaries of the forty-nine LDs. 

By clicking another choice under the same icon you can explore the ten federal Congressional Districts (CDs) from which Washington State voters elect ten U.S. Representatives to the U.S. Congress (think McMorris Rodgers in CD5, “our” eastern Washington CD). Play with this map if geography offers orientation for the way your brain works.

Most of the county elective positions are elected by voters of the full county. The exception is the five new County Commissioners (See The Spokane County Commissioners for more detail. Three of the Spokane County Commissioners are up for election—but only one, Al French in District 5 (SW county) has drawn a a very credible challenge in Molly Marshall, a retired Air Force pilot, well versed in the wildfire, infrastructure, PFAS concerns of the West Plains and Latah communities that Mr. French has badly ignored and actively stonewalled while he served the developers of the area, especially around Spokane International Airport. Commissioners Chris Jordan (District 1) and Josh Kerns (District 3) appear on ballot of voters living in the Districts they represent (not county-wide) but both Kerns and Jordan are running unopposed. Commissioners Amber Waldref (District 2) and Mary Kuney (District 4) will appear on the ballot during the 2026 election cycle. 

Have a look at the map of the new districts. (Click here to see the map online where it might be easier to magnify and examine it. It is not an easy map to read.) Here is a much more readable map based on Googlemaps (but lacking the municipal boundaries). Take note that the five districts are required to contain roughly equal populations. The geographic size of each District hints at the overall average population (and voter) density.

There are some other arcane details, but the hour is late, this is getting long. Congratulations if you’ve read this far! 

Vote your ballot! Turn it in promptly

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. If you already voted your ballot and either mailed it in (postage is pre-paid) or (better) put it in one of the official drop-boxes—and, a few days later, checked at vote.wa.gov to see that it has been accepted, then congratulations! You are one of a small percentage of voters who didn’t put off their homework. If you’re not among those folks, this weekend is time to dig up your ballot from the junk mail pile, vote it, and turn it in. The deadline is postmarked before (not a sure thing if you’re mailing on Monday or Tuesday) or placed in a ballot drop-box before 8PM on Tuesday, August 6.

What a difference!

FIRST: Do Your Homework

If you’re a Washington State voter, do your homework, vote, and urge like-minded friends to do the same. Democratic ballot turn-in (deadline next Tuesday, August 6) is key to setting up our choices for the November General Election ballot. All the attention on the news at the moment seems to be on the presidential election—but we dare not skip the Primary or we could be condemned to choosing between unpalatable candidates in November. Emphasize to anyone who will listen that voting in this primary is essential, even though, to many, the choices might seem obscure.

The Progressive Voters Guide is an excellent resource that cuts to the chase, unlike, for example, an article by Ellen Dennis in the Spokesman yesterdaythat drones on about all the details of four candidates who are challenging the well-liked incumbent Washington State Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck. Ms. Dennis fails to mention a massive fund-raising disparity that suggests that none of these challengers has the wherewithal to actually mount a campaign.

Some followup

Many of my readers and I attended “White Dudes for Harris,” a three hour plus online forum that raised nearly four million dollars in support of Kamala Harris. The tone was serious, but upbeat, illustrating the marked change in tone of the Democratic campaign over the last couple weeks. 

The New York Times did a fair job of covering the event (that should be paywall-free if you want to read it). The article added that:

Before the White Dudes call on Monday, there was some predictable backlash from the Trump camp. “They should give it a more fitting name like: Cucks for Kamala,” Donald Trump Jr. posted on X, using a term popular in some far-right circles for a weak or submissive man.

(Mr. Morales Rocketto [one of the calls organizers] sighed. “For whatever reason, the Republican Party has really leaned into being creeps.”)

It dawned on me that I’ve never seen or heard of the Donald or Junior ever cracking a smile. Apparently, Junior, if he is even smart enough to understand the etymology of “cuck” from cuckold, is so uncertain of his own masculinity that he must attempt to demean men who value the women in their lives. How small, weird, and twisted. As further illustration of Junior’s weirdness, check out this video of Junior “interviewing” JD Vance. Meth, anyone?

The White Dudes for Harris gathering provided welcome relief from the mean-spirited lying vitriol that oozes from Trump’s Republican Party. Robert Reich yesterday morning totally captured the tone in a Substack post I’ve pasted below. Let us rejoice in Kamala’s genuine laughter! What a relief.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Kamala and the politics of joy

Versus Trump’s politics of grimness

ROBERT REICH

JUL 30

READ IN APP

Friends,

The last few years have been so bleak — Trump’s disastrous four years in the White House, the police murders of George Floyd and other Black men and women, COVID deaths, climate crises, Trump’s big lie, Biden’s declining health — that I had almost forgotten politics can be joyful.

And then Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic candidate for president.

She’s filling politics with a hope and exuberance I haven’t seen since John F. Kennedy ran for president. Her smile is spreading cheer. Her laugh projects joy. Her joyfulness is igniting excitement and enthusiasm.

She is still deadly serious about what America is up against. But she’s combining it with a jubilance that tells us we can triumph.

Instead of wasting her energy responding to Republican attacks, she continues to prosecute Trump rhetorically. She knows that the more the upcoming election is a referendum on him, the more likely it is she wins.

In her stump speech, she gets a big response from saying, “I have taken on perpetrators of all kinds” — and then delivers her punch line with a muffled laugh: “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Audiences hoot.

She doesn’t communicate this in a nasty or mean-spirited way. She communicates it with satisfaction. She takes pleasure in the fact that she was a prosecutor — and often of men who share many of Trump’s traits.

She also uses laughter to show affection. Her now-viral line quoting her mother saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” is followed by Kamala’s guffaw.

Laughter is based on connection. You laugh with other people. TV sitcoms used to have laugh tracks because it was easier for viewers to laugh along with everyone else, even imaginary others.

Laughing together is one of the important signs of humanity.

Contrast this with Trump, who never laughs. For him, it’s all anger, hate, and grievance.

Bullies don’t laugh with. They laugh at. Trump’s jokes are always at someone else’s expense. He ridicules disabled people. He’s nasty toward immigrants. He’s snide when he talks about liberals.

Bullies don’t laugh with because they have no compassion for other people. They don’t know how to laugh with others because they don’t know how to connect with others.

Trump criticizes Kamala’s laughter. “I call her laughing Kamala,” Trump said at a recent rally. “Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy.”

“You can tell a lot by a laugh,” he told supporters the other day. “She is nuts.”

One of Trump’s pals, Fox News host Sean Hannity, said on his show that voters “seem to detest” Harris on account of her readiness to laugh.

Republican compilations of her laughing are circulating online. Opposition research from the National Republican Senatorial Committee included “inappropriate laughter” as a way to criticize her.

Trump and his sycophants just don’t get it. In fact, they have it exactly backward. Americans love cheerfulness. We celebrate joyfulness.

Ronald Reagan understood this better than anyone. He always had a twinkle in his eye. It was always morning in America.

The most memorable moment in Reagan’s second presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980 occurred when he chuckled and said, “There you go again.” The chuckle turned the comment from what might otherwise be seen as anger into a good-natured rebuke.

When Americans are asked to choose between the politics of joy and the politics of grimness, guess what? They’ll choose joy.

Refute J.D. Vance

This evening at 5P PDT a new group (with 80,000 signups already) called “White Dudes for Harris” is hosting what promises to be an epic fundraising, organizing, campaign kickoff call for the Harris campaign. Here’s the signup link:

I don’t usually respond to this sort of thing—and, until 2016, I had never sent even one thin dime to a political campaign. One of the many Republican talking-point lies put on the airways and in my email inboxes is, “Oh yeah, the Harris campaign hauled in a lot of donations [since Harris’ candidacy announcement]—but…”, “JD Vance” asserted to me in an email yesterday that “she’s raised over 100 million” [spoiler alert, it’s now over 200 million]. Here’s his (the Republican Party’s) desperate formulation:

NOW – Shadow Billionaires unfroze TENS of MILLIONS of dollars to bankroll Kamala to the finish line

In fact, the New York Times reports that two thirds of the donors to the Harris campaign in the last week are new donors. Vance’s “Shadow Billionaires” is right in line with the time in 2017 that Cathy McMorris Rodgers stood right in front of me and invoked “George Soros” as the evil money behind Democrats. That was a bald-faced lie then just like Vance’s “Shadow Billionaires” is now. (And never mind the $20 million from billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel that bought Vance’s U.S. Senate seat in 2022—but then, I suppose, Peter Thiel isn’t a “shadow” donor. )

At five o’clock (Pacific Daylight Time) this evening is the “White Dudes for Harris kickoff call”. You can sign up here:

Yes, they’ll ask you for money (contributed through ActBlue). Contribute what you can, if only $5. The point is in the number of people who join in—not so much the individual dollar donations. And, yes, you’ll probably be sent “White Dudes for Harris” emails for your trouble. All of that said, I urge you to join me in signing up. 

I’m not one for social media, but I’m thrilled with the involvement of young people energized and hopeful over the Harris candidacy. Below is just one of the previews and ads (this one on TikTok) for this evening’s call.

Here’s the link.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

And…did he really say that? Yes, he did.

Vote. Don’t wait until the last minute. Ballots are due in by 8PM August 6th, a week from tomorrow. The Progressive Voters Guide is very useful. Once you vote, urge other like-minded people to do their homework and vote as well. Many of our choices on the November General Election Ballot are determined by this Primary. Don’t sit this out or, thanks to our “top two” primary system in Washington State, you could be presented with two entirely unpalatable choices in November in some races. 

For more details about registering, voting, and ballot turn-in in Spokane County click here. A day or two after you turn in your ballot check at the VoteWA.gov portal to confirm that your ballot has been received and accepted. If you haven’t received your ballot by now (or it is lost in piles of junk mail), you can still vote using a “Replacement Ballot” accessible at VoteWA.gov. Don’t delay. 

And on the topic of voting:

Did he really say that?

Speaking at the Turning Point USA’s “The Believers Summit” in West Palm Beach, Florida, last Friday, July 26th, Donald Trump said the authoritarian quiet part out loud. Near the end of his hour long rambling presentation to an assemblage of his adoring true believers of outright lies, insults, fabrications, and general horse manure Trump uttered these words:

“And again, Christians get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, y’know what. It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I’m not(?) Christian. I love you. Get out. Ya gotta get out and vote. In four years you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not gonna have to vote.”

Many of you have seen this quote presented by other Substack writers. I first saw it (with commentary) in Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From an American the next morning. Trump is blatantly announcing his intent, if he returns to power, to either dismantle or rig subsequent elections. As an admirer of Orban, Putin, and Xi we had best believe what he is plainly saying. 

You can watch the whole speech here on YouTube. I watched the whole sordid presentation to make sure the quote wasn’t somehow taken out of context. It was not. The quote appears near the end of the speech at 54:28. 

This quote should have been a headline in every major newspaper in the U.S. and the world—but, alas, if covered at all, it was mostly dismissed as “Trump being Trump”. No doubt Trumps surrogates, when asked, will downplay Trump’s plain words as Trumpian exaggeration. Think back to January 6th—and forward to the plans laid out by Project 2025 and the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. 

Spread this quote and the video link. We must not let this man back into the White House. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Vote like your freedom depended on it–because it does

Sorry. cancer treatment yesterday addled my brain so I didn’t get this posted at the usual 5AM. But here it is now! 

Post: By now if you’re a Washington registered voter, you should have received your ballot for the August 6 Primary Election. Make note that your now former right to make your own reproductive healthcare decisions is up for election on this ballot and every ballot. Vote accordingly.

For much of the last half century we all thought it was marginally safe to vote for a Republican for state or local office. We believed that our rights to reproductive freedom, to obtain and use contraception, and to love whom we wished, were all guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights (as extended to the states under the 14th Amendment) and by Supreme Court precedent. Sure, Republicans made a lot of noise about things like fetal personhood, but they only managed to assault those rights around what we thought were the margins (e.g. the Hyde Amendment). Republicans elected officials could and did grandstand by enacting state laws that were (at the time) unenforceable or by, in the City of Spokane, looking the other way as The Church at Planned Parenthood harassed women seeking healthcare, Still, one could feel secure that the big question—our overall freedom on these issues—was secure and would remain so.

The Dobbs decision in 2022 stripped away that security (and Supreme Court precedent) like a wet bandaid. Republicans remain beholden to voters bent on taking us back to the “good old days” when women were second class citizens that weren’t trusted to manage their own reproductive health care. No Republican elected official in a legislative, executive, or judicial office will—if forced to vote or decide—will go against this reactionary minority of voters who wish to impose their sanctimonious will over the freedom of the majority. 

Your freedom is on your ballot. Vote for preservation of your rights to manage your life without government intrusion in its most private events. 

Below I have pasted an entry from Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse Substack on this issue that lays out this issue starkly. It is mostly focused on the Presidential race—but this issue is now a part of every down ballot race as well.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Things That Matter, Desperately

JOYCE VANCE [no relation to the Republican VP candidate]

JUL 23

Often, we use the language of games when we describe politics: match-ups and races, finish lines, Hail Mary passes, and front runners. But this time, the game is deadly serious, especially if you’re a woman, someone who loves or cares about a woman, or just someone who cares about women in general.

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s pick to be his vice president this go-round, is even more accommodating than Mike Pence was—hard to imagine. He’s said he would have blocked the certification of the Electoral College vote if it had been up to him on January 6, 2021. In addition to his willingness to abandon democracy, he’s completely comfortable sacrificing women’s rights. There is no doubt about where he stands on abortion. It’s so clear that he is essentially Trump’s guarantee to the most conservative parts of his base that he will support a national ban on abortion if reelected, no matter what comes out of his mouth in the meantime.

Vance’s position has long been that he’s “100% Pro-Life.” He scrubbed that off of his website recently, but you can still find it on the Way Back Machine. When he was on Face the Nation in May, Vance said that his view was the same as Trump’s, that abortion should be up to the states. But he conveniently hedged his bets, saying “the gross majority” of policy, whatever that means, would be set by the states. He also said, “I wanna save as many babies as possible,” and that he thought it was “totally reasonable to say that late-term abortions should not happen, with reasonable exceptions.” 

Even those recently adopted views would permit states to outright ban abortion and exclude exceptions that protect victims of rape and incest or the mother’s health. But it’s clear that these are Johnny-come-lately statements of convenience. In a debate while he was running for the Senate in 2022, Vance said that he was personally opposed to abortion rights and insinuated that a national ban on abortion would be welcome.

It’s reminiscent of the Supreme Court Justices who promised under oath at their confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade and women’s abortion rights were unchangeable law and then promptly overturned them. Do you believe what J.D. Vance said before he got the vice presidential gig or what he said before that? More importantly, what do the people who helped him land the vice presidential nomination with Trump believe he will do if he gets into office?

We all know where Vance stands. To confirm it, when Ohio’s Constitutional amendment codifying the right to abortion and contraception passed last November, Vance tweeted that it was a “gut punch.”

Now Vance is preparing to win that war, and we must not let that happen.

Donald Trump is the oldest presidential candidate in our history. That script he’s been using against Biden? It all applies to him. Unlike Biden, as a candidate, he hasn’t made important medical results like bloodwork or even his weight public. We still haven’t seen a report from a doctor with a valid medical license about his injuries during the shooting.

If Trump is elected, J.D. Vance is only a heartbeat away from the presidency. He’s the guarantor of support for a national abortion ban, and possibly more—Vance supports, or at least he still did publicly last year, the enforcement of the Comstock Act. As we discussed during the debate over the abortion drug mifepristone, Republicans have suggested enforcing the Comstock Act in an effort to prohibit the drug’s shipment in the mail, along with prohibiting any shipment of materials about abortion or equipment that could be used to perform one, even if it has dual purposes.

Back in April 2023, I wrote about the Act:

“In 1996 then-Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D-CO) tried to convince the House to take the Comstock Act off the books. They didn’t. But her floor speech has resonance today. She explained that the Act was named for a man named Anthony Comstock, who ‘was one of these people who decided only he knew what was virtuous and right, and somehow he managed to convince all sorts of people that this was correct.’ That sounds familiar.

She continued, ‘Anthony Comstock was a religious fanatic who spent his life in a personal crusade for moral purity—as defined, of course, by himself. This crusade resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a multitude of Americans whose only crime was to exercise their constitutional right of free speech in ways that offended Anthony Comstock. Women seemed to particularly offend Anthony Comstock, most particularly women who believed in the right to plan their families through the use of contraceptives, or in the right of women to engage in discussions and debate about matters involving sexuality, including contraception and abortion.’”

Whether it’s Anthony Comstock, Donald Trump, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, or J.D. Vance, women don’t need men to tell them what they can do. They just don’t.

It’s hard to stay focused on just one issue in the times we live in, but abortion is a big deal. It’s important in and of itself—it’s health care, it’s the right to determine your own future, it’s the ability to preserve fertility or choose when it’s the right time to have a family. But it’s also a marker of the larger issue of whether women are first-class citizens with the same rights as men. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance don’t think so.

Kamala Harris is not officially in yet, but as of tonight, enough delegates have committed to her for her to become the Democratic nominee. She campaigned in earnest today, telling Americans, “I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”

We know what Trump thinks about women. He tells us all the time. Whether it’s the way he treats his wives, the sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels, the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, or the grotesque way he’s talked about he own daughter Ivanka. Women are sexualized. And women are stupid in his view. He did that today with Kamala Harris, calling her “dumb as a rock.”

Today, it’s all fun and games, and we’re entitled to enjoy it, but we know what’s coming. So, get ready to vote. Democrats must make sure that neither Trump nor Vance has the chance to impose a national abortion ban. Democrats must win sufficient majorities in both houses of Congress if they intend to restore protections for abortion. Women and their allies need to vote like their lives depend on it this year, because quite literally, they do.

Remember the ad? Two young women are in a car, they’re racing to get out of state. “We’re almost there, you’re going to make it,” one says to the other, just as a police siren goes off behind them. A Trooper pulls them over. “Miss, I’m going to need you to get out of the vehicle,” he says in an Alabama accent, “and take a pregnancy test.” It seems far-fetched. But then, doesn’t everything about the rollback of women’s rights these days seem a little surreal? Take it seriously. Make it a reason you commit to vote and to help others understand the importance of voting in this election. Women’s rights to make their own decisions are on the line, and it matters desperately.

We’re in this together,

Joyce