Annapolis Capital Punishment

CP looked at yesterday's Baltimore elections, and is bothered by the low turnout, and the fact that Democrats (almost all incumbents) swept the races with huge margins. In most races, they ran unopposed. This is not a good sign for our political vitality and speaks of the power of a machine, of business as usual, of one party politics and of incumbency of professional politicians. See today's Baltimore Sun: http://www.baltimoresun.com/

BUT WORST OF ALL WAS THE LOW VOTER TURNOUT. It is bad enough that most races were unopposed, but for whatever reasons voters find not to mark a ballot, and I am sure there are many (I was tired, traffic was bad, it was cold, my Sudoko was waiting, the kids had soccer, my favorite show was on......etc., etc., ), it just weakens the entire political process. Low turnout spells bad news for democracy and is just another sign of creeping fascism (of course election fraud as perpetrated in Florida is a much larger sign......).

I hope others have noted that while Republican opponents got seriously trounced (margins by percent of votes of: 88 to 12, 83 to 17, 91 to 9, 90 to 10, 89 to 11, 77 to 23, and 94 to 6 with ultra conservative and aggressive blogger Mark Newgent trailing the worst in that one), it was BILL BARRY THE GREEN CANDIDATE IN DISTRICT 4 that got the highest percentage of any of the losing candidates. He tallied 902 votes, or 27 percent of votes cast in a two way race against a Democrat incumbent.

SIMILARLY, AND AS IMPORTANT, A GREEN POLLED THE HIGHEST ACTUAL NUMBERS OF VOTES CAST IN ANY COUNCIL RACE AS WELL! Green Maria Alwine got 6,798 or 17% of votes cast in the biggest turnout of any council race, losing to Democrat Incumbent Stephanie Rawlings-Blake for City Council President. There was no Republican in that contest. Interestingly, that was almost 2000 votes more than the losing Republican received in the citywide race against Sheila Dixon for Mayor WITH NEARLY THE SAME AMOUNT OF VOTES CAST, or about 39,000 total. About 75% of the city's total population of 651,000 is of voting age. OUCH!!!!

THE MEANING OF THE VOTE COUNTS FOR THE GREEN PARTY IS CLEAR. They are organized, active and on the way up. And as always, they represent a threat to the Democrats much more so than to the Republicans.

WARD TWO VOTERS IN ANNAPOLIS----TAKE NOTE!! You get to vote for Alderman in a race with the three (shall I say it here?) major parties come December. A Green polled 42% of the votes in Ward One in the 1990's.