Mayor Dave posted:Besides, the Sriracha factory story only matters because of how aggressively Texas and Ted Cruz in particular were lobbying for the factory to move. If Gov. Perry comes to blue state TV and radio stations again with his ads encouraging businesses to leave the state, I hope this time the stations can find the guts to defend their communities and refuse him. I didn't think stations had any obligation to take ads if they think it's just going to piss off their audience. It is directed to people who own factories or laser consulting firms, or one of the minority of businesses that can be relocated. Everyone else works for these people and none of them want to be forced to give up Chicago for Dallas. Why even agree to run the ads, they're inflammatory as hell. Stewart and Lewis Black's response was lovely. gently caress You Texas was a segment that made me cheer, and as a Chicagoan I tend towards dismissal of NYC.
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Jun 2, 2014 00:55
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agarjogger posted:Stewart and Lewis Black's response was lovely. gently caress You Texas was a segment that made me cheer, and as a Chicagoan I tend towards dismissal of NYC. As a New Yorker we're rooting for the Blackhawks to win tonight so we can have the Stanley Cup we're dying for. We like to think of you guys as our strange distant family in the midwest, since you share a lot of our culture. In other news, following this thread is really bumming me out because I lived in CA two years, loved the Bay Area, was reassigned back to the East Coast and I'm starting to realize despite making a good amount of money my girlfriend and I will never be able to move back to California unless housing laws get sorted out. The long derail we had kind of illustrates that at the end of the day there's almost an interstate anti-immigration sense coming out of people in the tight housing areas. I'm not accusing anyone of explicitly thinking in those terms but the disdain of the rentier classes and the tech bubble imports inflating costs but not giving back to the community is making a lot of Californians apt to start discouraging people moving to the state. My area of expertise if my government job ends (seismic design/analysis and risk assessment) is one that California has always been the center of the universe for but I imagine in 10 years I'll never have enough cash to own a place and would be living hand to mouth renting. Unless I move to Fresno... I'm curious asking you guys, because as I see it development in San Francisco is really reaching saturation, LA has a lot of catching up to do with transit and other infrastructure to make building up work, and the interior cities having not nearly as much to offer, what solutions do you guys see for people who want to move to California, who want to be a part of a (better) community?
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Jun 2, 2014 01:41
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Right now, apparently 55% of the population owns their own home, while ~44% rents. However, only 12% of homeowners own their homes free and clear. The remainder are mortgaged; who knows what the conditions of their loans are. Source: http://www.dof.ca.gov/research/demographic/state_census_data_center/census_2010/documents/2010SF2_Profile_California_Race001.pdf - Page 6 Page 7 also has some interesting numbers on age group vs. ownership/rentership. edit: Oh god, this seems apropos of nothing now. Ignore or whatever.
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Jun 2, 2014 02:01
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Blindeye posted:I'm curious asking you guys, because as I see it development in San Francisco is really reaching saturation, LA has a lot of catching up to do with transit and other infrastructure to make building up work, and the interior cities having not nearly as much to offer, what solutions do you guys see for people who want to move to California, who want to be a part of a (better) community? Get used to renting or having a home in the sketchier neighborhoods unless you make shitloads of money. Fixing the problem would require a massive change in local politics and also cooperation between counties to better develop things such as more high density zoning/better mass transit funding. Also even though new construction is picking up in places like SF the reality is most of the projects have a decade window from start to finish: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2013/12/san_franciscos_housing_pipeline_breaks_the_50000_unit_m.html 
etalian fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 03:27
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etalian posted:Get used to renting or having a home in the sketchier neighborhoods unless you make shitloads of money. Also this doesn't even include the fact that the entire Bay Area has a housing growth problem. Cities like Mountain View are really exacerbating the problem. The SF Chron had a good article on that recently: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/Mountain-View-stuck-in-past-when-it-comes-to-5519893.php
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Jun 2, 2014 03:40
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FRINGE posted:Some rear end in a top hat literally just proposed a birth lottery in order to keep his unearned loot. Sorry, natetimm is some right-wing nutjob who was drawn into D&D to poo poo up a gun thread and then got trapped, like a moth stuck inside a lampshade. natetimm posted:CA takes a lot of unskilled labor to keep afloat and yes, I prefer the birth lottery system to one where people from out of state continually move in and drive the price up on everything, relegating anyone who makes less than 50k a year to "serf who rents in the desert" status. It's way better than the free market dick you're chugging down every chance you get. Which personality are we talking to now? Can you give them names? That way we can distinguish between the "Estate taxes? You must be a dirty commie!" personality and the "you neo-liberal free market shills!" one.
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Jun 2, 2014 03:55
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Blindeye posted:In other news, following this thread is really bumming me out because I lived in CA two years, loved the Bay Area, was reassigned back to the East Coast and I'm starting to realize despite making a good amount of money my girlfriend and I will never be able to move back to California unless housing laws get sorted out. The long derail we had kind of illustrates that at the end of the day there's almost an interstate anti-immigration sense coming out of people in the tight housing areas. See I think this is over-pessimistic. Yes, if you insist on living in SF or the area immediately around google/facebook it's crazy, but there are much more affordable areas of the Bay Area even now, parts of the East Bay for example.
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Jun 2, 2014 16:09
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Family Values posted:See I think this is over-pessimistic. Yes, if you insist on living in SF or the area immediately around google/facebook it's crazy, but there are much more affordable areas of the Bay Area even now, parts of the East Bay for example. Yeah I keep mentioning this. People are shocked, and rightfully so, at the cost of housing within the city of San Francisco, and there are some (very wealthy) communities on the peninsula and in Marin that come close to those prices as well. But if you avoid the ugly parts of Richmond, Oakland, and East Palo Alto, there are a lot of communities around the Bay Area that are a lot more affordable. And salaries are higher here. The city of SF has a minimum wage law effective Jan 1 2014 of $10.74 - which is not near enough to live in the city on, of course, but is representative of how compensation is generally higher at all levels of employment here. I have a good job at a software company, although as a technical writer I'm paid far less than software engineers; but my wife is an artist, so together our combined income is well under $100k/year (and we're 39, so well into our respective careers). We were still able to afford a house in a pleasant, reasonably safe neighborhood of Concord just a 10 minute walk from BART. The high cost of housing does make moving here from somewhere else tough, though. You need to afford the first/last/deposit or your down payment, which means saving up a lot more money to come here. If you have a job already lined up, it's worth negotiating for moving expenses. But even if you don't - it can be done, I know lots of people who have done it, and if you like it here, it's worth it.
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Jun 2, 2014 19:51
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Family Values posted:See I think this is over-pessimistic. Yes, if you insist on living in SF or the area immediately around google/facebook it's crazy, but there are much more affordable areas of the Bay Area even now, parts of the East Bay for example. I should say that I lived exclusively in the East Bay but outside El Cerrito down to Rockridge it gets sketchy fast. Even in Emeryville I was witness to a driveby. I am already priced out of those areas and Oakland, so unless Richmond or Fremont are where you're talking about and I commute over an hour each way I'm going to disagree. In the short time I was there Oakland prices exploded and Concord/Walnut Creek are going to be out of reach when I might get back. Serious rezoning in the East Bay needs to happen, and for example Berkeley will NIMBY the poo poo out of any attempt to densify. Concord might be affordable to some now but I doubt that will remain the case for long. Also I guess being a single income couple complicates matters (thanks long term unemployment discrimination!) Edit: vv If they did it was after I left in 2013. I was renting a 550 sf 1 bedroom and sharing it with my girlfriend for around 1450 a month and between that and sales taxes was having a tough time breaking even. I remember though looking at places in Walnut Creek for shits and giggles going "well...if I use every bit of money I saved and my retirement fund, I could maybe afford a down payment in ten years...if I don't get outbid by cash buyers." Blindeye fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 23:34
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Speaking of Berkeley, didn't they lift rent controls recently?
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Jun 2, 2014 23:49
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Leperflesh posted:The high cost of housing does make moving here from somewhere else tough, though. You need to afford the first/last/deposit or your down payment, which means saving up a lot more money to come here. If you have a job already lined up, it's worth negotiating for moving expenses. But even if you don't - it can be done, I know lots of people who have done it, and if you like it here, it's worth it. It's usually better rent IMO, there's no way of knowing if the relocation will work out and the high housing prices means you have to stay in the area a good amount of time to make buying a better financial deal.
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Jun 2, 2014 23:53
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Prices have come up very quickly since they hit bottom in ~2010, but I do not expect that rate to continue indefinitely. There's a lot of development going on right now and the thing that drove the price drop - massive amounts of foreclosures - is pretty much done. My house was foreclosed in 2009 for $425,341 and at the bottom was probably worth about $200k. Today it's probably around $310k or so, and I do not expect it to push up to that $425k for at least a couple more years, and it may never get that high. Or it might just stay where it's at, as the pent-up demand from the last several years is bled out. This is a 1150 square foot 3b2ba house with attached 2 car garage and a very typical front & back yard, so just a super-normal 1958 bay area house. A lot also depends on what happens with interest rates. They've been at historic lows for a long time now, and I think part of what is pushing sales really high is the perception among prospective homebuyers that they need to get in now, before rates start to maybe go up. If you see rates hit 5%+ on fixed 30s, maybe that will signal to the market that the bigtime buying opportunity is done, and sales could plateau. Who knows. I always used to say that there was no way my wife and I could ever afford a house here, and then 2008 happened and we suddenly found ourselves in a position to be able to buy. etalian posted:It's usually better rent IMO, there's no way of knowing if the relocation will work out and the high housing prices means you have to stay in the area a good amount of time to make buying a better financial deal. Absolutely. In that goon's case he was talking about moving back to the bay area, so presumably already knows he likes it here, but I would encourage people not to buy too quickly in any location until they're certain they're going to stay there for 8+ years. I post a lot in the BFC homebuying thread and that is our advice to everyone. Many of the reasons people think they should buy ("throwing away money on rent") are bullshit. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 23:58
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Blindeye posted:I should say that I lived exclusively in the East Bay but outside El Cerrito down to Rockridge it gets sketchy fast. Even in Emeryville I was witness to a driveby. I am already priced out of those areas and Oakland, so unless Richmond or Fremont are where you're talking about and I commute over an hour each way I'm going to disagree. In the short time I was there Oakland prices exploded and Concord/Walnut Creek are going to be out of reach when I might get back. Serious rezoning in the East Bay needs to happen, and for example Berkeley will NIMBY the poo poo out of any attempt to densify. Wait, are you implying that downtown Berkeley is too sketch to live in? Cause that's what is in between El Cerrito and Rockridge.
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Jun 3, 2014 00:00
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Trabisnikof posted:Wait, are you implying that downtown Berkeley is too sketch to live in? Cause that's what is in between El Cerrito and Rockridge. I think they're saying that El Cerrito down to Rockridge is non-sketch. It's still a fair bit of territory, though.
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Jun 3, 2014 00:05
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GrumpyDoctor posted:I think they're saying that El Cerrito down to Rockridge is non-sketch. It's still a fair bit of territory, though. Oh that makes a lot more sense in context too. On the totally unverified facts front, I heard that the probability of any one individual being shot in Oakland is about the same as the probability of a 9+ earthquake on the Hayward fault. So, pick your poison I guess.
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Jun 3, 2014 00:14
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That's dumb because shootings are almost never random. If you're not in a gang or having a domestic dispute with your gun-toting spouse, your odds of being shot are tiny. Whereas the odds of a major (defined as 6.7+) earthquake on the Hayward fault in the next 30 years is 31%. (I don't know of any probability calculation for a 9.0, those are vanishingly rare, but you can probably derive it from the 7.0 estimate plus a chart that shows standard deviations of earthquake strength probability, if you are good at math, which I am not.)
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Jun 3, 2014 00:20
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Leperflesh posted:That's dumb because shootings are almost never random. If you're not in a gang or having a domestic dispute with your gun-toting spouse, your odds of being shot are tiny. Yeah, no that's my general feeling about a lot of the obsession with crime stats and other metrics when looking at neighborhoods. loving drive/walk/bike down the street, and that will tell you a lot more about your general risk than looking at per capita statistics.
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Jun 3, 2014 00:23
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My "is this neighborhood too sketchy to live in" metric is based on a visual approximation of the frequency of corner liquor stores and check cashing places, plus whether or not every building has bars on all the windows on the first floor. You can get that from Google Street View, so when we were searching all over the bay area for housing back in 2009 that helped us eliminate some neighborhoods and reconsider some we hadn't at first thought would be OK.
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Jun 3, 2014 00:25
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Leperflesh posted:That's dumb because shootings are almost never random. If you're not in a gang or having a domestic dispute with your gun-toting spouse, your odds of being shot are tiny. I guess I should clarify a couple of things. I lived in the East Bay for two years, loved it, and the weather on the bay side of the hills is like magic for my girlfriend's health, she never felt better anywhere else. If work dries up in DC my background/certificates (even my professional license is in CA) are all geared for work with companies that are based mostly in Oakland, SF, LA, or Seattle. Could I find work elsewhere? Probably, but it wouldn't be as fulfilling since mostly giant engineering mega companies are the only offices with seismic work outside of the West Coast (okay, maybe Utah, but no way am I going there). The shooting thing isn't so much of a direct problem as an indirect problem. You can get mugged, your car can get broken into, and women traveling alone have far different experiences walking alone in say Richmond than I would. She was cat-called in a number of places I'd have thought were fine by walking around, and playing softball in Emeryville/Rockridge we had so many shootings that half the softball league quit out of fear they'd lose employees to stray shots. The one I witnessed was 11 shots pumped into a teenager, who somehow survived. It was so many gunshots we thought it had to have been firecrackers because of how many went off so fast, then we saw the choppers and police swarm across the street... I know the seismic risk is a big deal and I am very well aware of how lacking East Bay housing is for Earthquakes. Whatever gets built in the next 25 years will not replace the number of apartments and houses that will be utterly wiped out in the expected Hayward fault quake. I've mentioned this before but it's going to turn the housing crisis from acute to insane, and I remember of any 5 apartments I looked at when I first when hunting there only 1 would be retrofitted or a newish design that was relatively safe. Blindeye fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 00:31
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Yeah the earthquake danger is significant, and as a seismic engineer you're probably in a better position to understand the risk than most people. I've got earthquake insurance but last week I got my agent to send me some quotes for updated policies, because I realized that my existing policy would not cover damage caused by a fire caused by an earthquake... and neither would my homeowner's policy. So a significant quake could cause a gas leak or a fire that destroys my home and I could have no insurance coverage for that, uhghhh. What frightens me is how many people I've chatted with who have no earthquake insurance whatsoever. Some don't even understand that their homeowner's/renter's policy excludes earthquake damage, and those that do typically think that even a basic policy is "too expensive." Mine is $641 a year currently. I mean come on, many people pay several times that much for their car insurance, and cars are way more replaceable and cheaper than houses. Granted an upgraded policy will probably cost a bit more, but still. Wouldn't you pay less than $1000 a year to insure against an earthquake, knowing that there's a 63% probability of a significantly damaging quake in the Bay Area by 2036? Anyway yeah, even if FEMA steps in to help everyone out, it'll take years and years to rebuild all the structures that will be rendered uninhabitable by The Big One, and in the meantime rents are going to be ruinous. Fortunately I can work remotely so if I had to, I could move to pretty much anywhere and live there while I wait for my insurance company to find a contractor to repair or rebuild for me, perhaps for years if need be. But a lot of people will not be in that position and it's gonna be ugly.
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Jun 3, 2014 00:46
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Basically what you'd get are two kinds of damage principally: damage from seismic induced fires (which in most places with combustibles and hazardous chemicals you assume fires get initiated unless you've hardened your gas lines/installed seismic shutoff switches, etc), and actual direct damage from earthquakes. Single family homes if they're well-built have a pretty OK chance of surviving an earthquake, as do tall buildings (say 15 stories or higher) in a lot of cases. It's the multi-family apartment buildings or commercial buildings with soft stories or that are 3-8 stories tall that get clobbered. Also anything masonry you can write off if they're not retrofitted. Drive around the East Bay and look out from the train and all you'll see for miles as far as apartments are concerned are soft stories or those mid-rise buildings. San Francisco took 25 loving years to pass a soft-story ordinance and THEY ALREADY LOST THOUSANDS OF SOFT STORY BUILDINGS IN LOMA PRIETA! Other Bay Area cities have dragged their feet even further and don't even have laws requiring unretrofitted soft-stories be disclosed to buyers/renters (or they're not enforced like Berkeley during the first few years of the ordinance). Here's a flavor of how many buildings are at risk in Berkeley alone: http://www.dailycal.org/2011/10/27/earthquake-prone-residential-buildings-in-berkeley/ That's only soft story vulnerabilities, not including fire risks, crappy construction, or just the probabilistic chance of a gross failure, or liquefaction all along the entire rim of the Bay swallowing everything up. It will take trillions of dollars to get the Bay Area up to modern codes, which isn't happening. If the Christchurch experience is any indication, expect losing large amounts of your usable commercial and living space and hundreds of billions in costs. I saw a big presentation on the challenges of rebuilding there and how they recovered, it's been years now. They straight up bought land and forbade new construction there for good, turning it to parkland. They said businesses and people didn't leave but rather lived two-up nowadays and found efficiencies rather than leaving outright, which in the Bay area with a hot housing market and people dogpiling apartments seems less likely to work. They also stressed how their downtown business district was still a ghost town, undeveloped, unclaimed. They are going to see if putting government offices there will spur a revival they're so desperate to get the city back to normal. For people renting, by the way, I found earthquake insurance didn't work out for me, as the cost per year plus deductible minus all the items it wouldn't cover wasn't worth the cost over living there two years so your mileage my vary, since if the earthquake occurred the maximum claim I could make would barely be more than the cost over 2 years. Blindeye fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 01:06
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Leperflesh posted:My "is this neighborhood too sketchy to live in" metric is based on a visual approximation of the frequency of corner liquor stores and check cashing places, plus whether or not every building has bars on all the windows on the first floor. You can get that from Google Street View, so when we were searching all over the bay area for housing back in 2009 that helped us eliminate some neighborhoods and reconsider some we hadn't at first thought would be OK. This doesn't really work for the East Bay though, because tons of the petty crime travels outside of those neighborhoods. Our friend lives at the edge of Rockridge and by all appearances in a very nice upper middle class neighborhood. In the few years living there, she's been mugged on her corner, her neighbor's house was robbed in a way that made it clear they'd been watching her activity schedule, and a guy was shot outside her house after refusing to give his cell phone to a mugger. There are car break ins all the time. For the amount of rent she pays, she could easily live in the Outer Sunset and not have to deal with anywhere close to that amount of bullshit. E: I almost feel like it's a worse situation than my friends who live on West Grand, because at least in a neighborhood like theirs you know what to expect just from looking around. Papercut fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 01:50
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Leperflesh posted:Absolutely. In that goon's case he was talking about moving back to the bay area, so presumably already knows he likes it here, but I would encourage people not to buy too quickly in any location until they're certain they're going to stay there for 8+ years. I post a lot in the BFC homebuying thread and that is our advice to everyone. Many of the reasons people think they should buy ("throwing away money on rent") are bullshit. Also renting for a year or two makes it easier to find a neighborhood that matches your criteria much better. Relocation is a big enough before you even have to make big decisions like a buying a house at the new location. For the earthquake chat places like SOMA and the Financial district would get wiped out assuming Godzilla doesn't arrive first. Other areas like the Mission at least have higher quality ground. Another fun fact is the black areas on the map are so dangerous since it's actually landfill that was tossed in the bay after the famous 1906 quake: 
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Jun 3, 2014 01:52
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If you are paranoid about earthquake safety then the age of the building matters more. I work in earthquake engineering and I would rather be in a modern building on landfill than in an old building in the mission. The SOMA high rise or Mission Bay condo might be a more exciting ride but it is a lot less likely to kill you.
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Jun 3, 2014 02:07
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I'm all about the single-story wood frame house. But I'll still be waiting on my FEMA check like all the other shmucks.
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Jun 3, 2014 02:11
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withak posted:If you are paranoid about earthquake safety then the age of the building matters more. I work in earthquake engineering and I would rather be in a modern building on landfill than in an old building in the mission. You and me both about new buildings. I did a deep foundation for something at Alameda Point (non-engineering folks might know it as the Alameda Naval Base or where the Mythbusters blow poo poo up) where the ground is that mucky crap backfill from the Navy Base days and it took 150 feet until you got anything approaching solid to found the building on. But I suppose that's the cost of living in paradise.
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Jun 3, 2014 02:30
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Leperflesh posted:That's dumb because shootings are almost never random. If you're not in a gang or having a domestic dispute with your gun-toting spouse, your odds of being shot are tiny. Fortunately, the Hayward fault isn't long enough to produce anything over a 7.5 Magnitude  (unless of course it links up with the Rodger Creek fault which isn't proven...). But yes it will still take out a lot of buildings. It's definitely worth noting that the fire damage is really what does the most damage during an earthquake. My earthquake engineering professor at Cal told us a story that there was fire caused by Loma Prieta that came dangerous close to reaching a critical area that could have taken out a lot of SF but they managed to stop it shortly before then.The soft story registry in Berkeley is pretty good but there are a bit flaws. My apartment is technically on there but has been seismically retrofitted; however, one section of the building is above part of the parking lot so it's still listed as a soft story. This shows what sort of expected accelerations that Berkeley would experience for a return period of 475 (10% probably of exceedance in 50 years) which is a typical design criteria on the west coast.  Basically a building's natural frequency is usually (roughly) estimated as 1/(# of Stories). 2-3 story building is pretty vulnerable but 1 story is going to be fine. Assuming it doesn't burn down from something nearby  . But yeah, new buildings in the past 30 years or so are fine. It's the unreinforced masonry buildings that are hosed, which is sadly way too many.Financial District will generally be OK because all the high rises are on piles so if the hydraulic fill liquefies, it'll just 'slosh' past them like stilts. It's the smaller < 5 stories or so buildings founded on mat foundations that will be hosed.  fellow earthquakies. I'm a Geotechnical Engineer but I do liquefaction triggering assessments and hazard calculations.
Xaris fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 02:30
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^^ High five buddy! Don't forget too that Hayward faulting in the midst of the East Bay will have a huge velocity pulse that isn't as common in most cities hit by quakes and will wreck poo poo especially well. Also As a building takes damage its fundamental frequency lowers so its period will increase and it goes up the spectra there (depending on duration of the shaking, etc). There's just so many factors, the soil frequency of response, the building load eccentricity, the location the rupture starts. Christchurch had two earthquakes, but the deadly one was just a 5.8 in the right place, with the right frequency content. At least it's not the Pacific Northwest, aka Tohoku 2: Electric Boogaloo. Edit: Oh, we use the 2% probability of Exceedance in 50 years now for new designs, every other performance goal is normalized to that as a baseline. VV Oregon is doing what it can to upgrade their infrastructure, especially water. Christchurch is in a floodplain so I'm not surprised they got a bad flood. We must really be scaring the rest of the Californians in this thread with our doom and gloom chat aren't we? Blindeye fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 03:13
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Ah, good to know. Yeah. The cascadia subduction zone can really wreck poo poo sand Oregon is woefully unprepared unlike California. I had an assignment in Christchurch working with CDSM stabilization and it was really quite sad. They made a lot of progress but the whole downtown is still quarantined off. I'll upload some pictures if you're interested. Shortly after I left, they had a 100 year flood that just caused massive slope failures due to rapid pore pressure increase and it further wrecked poo poo and a lot of houses. ChCh just can't catch a break 
Xaris fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 03:17
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Not to distract from the Bay Area, but has anything interesting gone down recently in Southern California/the LA area? I don't hear much politics talk outta my old HS friends and my family's too new-agey for (ugh) politics.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:28
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But seriously, where the gently caress do I find information on the primary? I'm new to the area, so the internet is no good since I don't know what to look for and I haven't made any politically-minded friends here yet.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:39
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Shbobdb posted:But seriously, where the gently caress do I find information on the primary? I'm new to the area, so the internet is no good since I don't know what to look for and I haven't made any politically-minded friends here yet. This site is all you need to know about the next governor of California 2014. But seriously, you should probably check out your local county's election offices. I know you said you're in Oakland, so I can't directly point you anywhere but (presumably) the Alameda County's Registrar of Voters website. I'm in Santa Clara County, and am currently reviewing the mailed sample ballot myself, so I can't help you with statewide offices at the moment, although I am, as always, rather torn with respect to the Peace and Freedom Party. In principle I agree with their platform, but there's plenty of reason to believe that they're far more interested in appealing to voters crassly rather than through a genuine engagement with the issues (c.f. their nomination of Roseanne for president in 2012 and Cindy Sheehan for governor this year). Stewart Alexander's stance, following Roseanne's nomination, spoke volumes to me, even if I might (personally) not agree with him 100%.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:50
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Shbobdb posted:But seriously, where the gently caress do I find information on the primary? I'm new to the area, so the internet is no good since I don't know what to look for and I haven't made any politically-minded friends here yet. If you register to vote you should get a voting guide in the mail that has all the candidates. Also the state has a really simple to use vote by mail program.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:50
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etalian posted:Also the state has a really simple to use vote by mail program. Except it requires paying the postage yourself  I need to find a place to drop it off
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Jun 3, 2014 04:56
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Xaris posted:Except it requires paying the postage yourself Yeah I hope you registered by May 27. Otherwise you cannot vote, as your registration would be received too late. I'm lucky to live right next to my polling place, so I can just stroll over in the morning, and then hop on my bike to work. I'd be surprised if I won't be the youngest person to vote there by 25 years though Anyway, it seems to me that your D&D-approved best options for governor are Sheehan, Brown, or Rodriguez. The rest appear to largely be Republicans or (crypto-)conservatives. I'm personally leaning towards thinking that Rodriguez is probably the best choice there (in contrast to the usual Green Party closed-mindedness), given that Brown will likely sail to the generals. ComradeCosmobot fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 04:57
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Yeah I hope you registered by May 27. Otherwise you cannot vote, as your registration would be received too late. I did. I've had them filled out sitting on my counter for nearly three weeks, I just keep forgetting to buy stamps and it's the principle of the matter. It should really be free but I just looked and my polling place isn't too far so I'll just drop them off there tomorrow.
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Jun 3, 2014 05:02
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Xaris posted:I did. I've had them filled out sitting on my counter for nearly three weeks, I just keep forgetting to buy stamps and it's the principle of the matter. It should really be free but I just looked and my polling place isn't too far so I'll just drop them off there tomorrow. No, that won't work I believe. The forms themselves had to be received by the registrar by the
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Jun 3, 2014 05:06
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Yeah, to register. I've had the ballot for three weeks quote:You may drop off your voted Vote-by-Mail Ballot at any of the following locations (your ballot must be sealed inside the yellow return envelope):
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Jun 3, 2014 05:14
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I'm voting Donnelly because I want to watch the ensuing meltdown 
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Jun 3, 2014 05:32
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Also, please remember that the state GOP is in an existential battle for survival:"George Skelton posted:Does the state GOP begin the lengthy road back to recovery? Or does it fall into the long sleep? If you're feeling particularly hilarious, vote for Donnelly in the primary. There is no better way to ensure Democratic retention of the reins of government, and what could be better than voting for the kind of guy who moved his company out of state because he didn't like the regulations?
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Jun 3, 2014 05:34
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