Hayseeds No. 172

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Sweeney 19-Points Ahead of Gillibrand. In probably one of the most competitive races in the country, where both sides are pouring in massive amounts of resources to mobilize their bases, and get swing voters to vote for them it, it looks like Gillibrand is in trouble. The funny thing is that the campaign's private polling shows something quite different, though the reality is we are still lagging behind that of the Sweeney camp.

It's a tough district to win, being so big and so heavily Republican. Kirsten might be a hard sell to some hard core Republicans who would use her pretty face and the fact that she's a women against herself. On the other hand, this is the year that if we are ever going to win the district it will happen now. I think it's a mistake to discount the race this early on, as Sweeney could certainly stumble and people could change their minds about Kiristen.

Fred Dicker has a rather negative article on Gillibrand, suggesting that she's a Silver Spoon and out of touch with the average voter—and that's why she can't win. P'Link

Full Face e-Ballot Machines Most Unreliable in Nation. Apparently mixing full face ballots with touch screen voting is problematic, probably far worst then many of the critics of these electronic machine ever really expected. Roughly 1% of all votes cast on these machines are incorrect, meaning thousands of votes could be miscast in a state with 10 million registered voters.

That's a real problem, but it's easy to see how there could be technical problems with such massive touch screens as they start to age and wear out, not to mention people simply getting confused and accidentially pushing the wrong button when it comes time to vote. With the full-face ballot requirement, it's starting to make more and more sense to simply go with optical scan, where the voter puts the ballot into a scanner and preserves the orginal ballot in a locked box next to the scanner. P'Link

Spitzer Continues to Decline All Debates and Refuses to Talk to Reporters. It seems like our next governor is keeping it low these days, knowing that he's in a comfortable enough of a place to easily win election to the governorship. He has avoided the Upstate Issues debate most recently, and also a chance to chat with reporters.

It's kind of disappointing for a man who is so witty and a man of the people to be hiding from the cameras. You can understand politically where he's coming from, but it's a terrible mistake not to talk about the issues effecting the state, and working to influence them even before he becomes governor. P'Link

That Terrible Greyhound Bus Crash. For those of you living under a rock, there was a really nasty bus rollover accident on Monday night on the Adirondack Northway. While I didn't know anybody on that bus, it shows how lucky a lot of people are—as many people I know up at college only road a Greyhound bus to Plattsburgh State a day or two before.

It's particularly tragic as it looks like the bus blew out a front tire, greatly crippling the steering, and the driver did all in his power to control the bus and slow it, before coming to a crash that killed himself. P'Link

Call Boxes Coming Back to Northway. It looks like the emergency call boxes on the most remote part of the Northway that died sometime around 2000 when a service contract ran out are finally being replaced after half a decade with no quick way to get emergency services, except to either flag down another driver who could drive you to the next hamlet to get help or wait for the twice daily police patrols of the Adirondack Northway. P'Link

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Spitzer Continues To Have a Well Financed Campaign. What else could you expect when your Eastern Upstate Headqaurters is a bank? At any rate, Spitzer's volunteers and paid staff have lots of money for campaign literature that we are able to give out left and right. There is a lot of Spitzer signs down in Albany, but we got to get some more up here in this part of the North Country. Hopefully I can do something to change that. P'Link

Gillibrand Gets More People Cash, Less PAC Cash. Our next Congresswomen from the 20th Congressional District seems to have a lot of support from people in her district, far more then Sweeney who is only slightly ahead in the fundraising game, with most of his money coming from big corporation's PACs. P'Link

Cuomo Gets Dirty. It looks like Andy has taken off his kid gloves and will be taking a page out of Mark Green's playbook and is showing the downside of his opponent for governor. P'Link

Schumer's Semi-Endorsement of Spitzer. While we all know that our US Senators are smart enough not to get stuck in the muck of the Democratic primary, Schumer sure had some nice things to say about the governor. P'Link

Faso's Little Plane Ride. As we at NYC noted a few weeks back, it looks like Fatso isn't much better off, when it comes to taking private plane rides reimbursed at first class rate as per lobbying rules. No suprises here, as such pratices are so common and probably so disgusting that they shouldn't really be newsworthy. P'Link