Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Last Candidate Info Before Election

Here are the candidates that are farthest down-ballot ~ some of the most important offices this year ~ that is, the folks who'll represent Norristown in Harrisburg and Washington.

PA STATE SENATOR~17th District. You can find info and a statement from both candidates at vote411.org.

Daylin Leach (D) is the incumbent. He's been our state senator since 2009. Before that he served in the PA House of Representatives. His website is http://votedaylin.com.

Brian Gondek (R) is a small businessman and community volunteer. He has not held office before. His website is http://gondekforsenate.com
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PA STATE REPRESENTATIVE~70th District

Matt Bradford (D), incumbent since 2008. Before that, he served as an attorney. He doesn't seemed to have a campaign website or Facebook page, nor does he have any statement listed on Vote411. Try Googling his name to find info.

Chuck Springer (R) works in insurance and has been a PAL wrestling coach and kids football coach. His website is http://ChuckSpringer.com (though some of the pages didn't load correctly and were hard to read). He also listed bio info and a statement on vote411.org.
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US Congressman Brendan Boyle (D) of the 13th District is running unopposed. http://voteboyle.com/ lists where he stands on the issues.
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This likely will be my last Diary about candidates before election day. Very few people seem to be reading them and I've got better things to do. No one seems interested in issues and policies this time around, or even in checking whether what they've heard on TV or read on social media is anywhere near the truth. When I started voting a few decades ago, the only reliable source for information on candidates was the League of Women Voters information published by the Times Herald. Now we have the internet ~ in just a few minutes you can find out exactly where candidates stand on the issues, and check outlandish statements on social media against reliable news sources and unedited videos. But I haven't met a lot of voters willing to do that. Well, remember, an uneducated electorate gets what it deserves.


2 comments:

  1. I've heard that 9% of our population actually voted for Trump or Hillary in the primary. Amazing times

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here's a prime example of what I said in the last paragraph. You say "I've heard" and state a supposed statistic without giving a source. It took me less than a minute to find a source ~ an article in the New York Times, which you'd think would be reliable, but it was misleading. The headline implied all of America, but the figures only mean registered voters. It took me less than 15 minutes to find the original statistics and do the math myself. Clinton received 15,805,136 votes (according to http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_vote_count.html), Trump received 13,300,472. The most accurate number I could find for registered voters was from Census.gov (which of course, doesn't include new registrations): 142,166,000. So indeed, only 9% voted for Trump. Clinton's comes to 11%. But don't be misled. Every other candidate received a smaller percentage (Sanders was the largest at 8%). Only about 40% of registered voters cast a vote at all. Look stuff up, people.

    ReplyDelete