I've been ballot-qualified for over 45 days, 12 days longer than this Maine candidate, with more than 34x the followers, much more content to twitter, and with at least as good of odds to win as Mark.
Where is my candidate designation?
So we clearly aren't going for chronological order. Huh. 😐
You know what's super weird #mepolitics? The two GOP challengers, both total long shots, have gotten their tags.
The Independents in our federal races (who qualified before anyone), not.
I am a constituent of Susan's. Ever since I have moved here I am astonished at how incredibly effective she is at harnessing people's hope and her words like a damn magician.
Though she is a consistent conservative vote, she is able to focus all eyes on her.
Then your family and community will look at you different.
Your behavior will be questioned, and even if you has zero responsibility, many will blame you for being a tease, wanting it, being irresponsible for choosing what should be a totally innocuous setting.
In this hypo traditional campaigning requires around $1+ million per year to get and/or keep a house seat (plus all the other energy you have to expend to keep the peanut gallery PACs happy).
Let's assume they're at it 5 days/week and take a couple weeks off per year.
Too many really lovely people hoping for their partner, child, parent, etc to be the person they could be if that partner, child, parent, etc if they only changed, which of course they have no desire and/or resources to do.
I've been asked this a lot - what is the benefit of ranked choice voting?
If you feel like politics keeps pushing far left or far right as candidates differentiate, RCV lets you pick the moderate with the back-up of "not the other one".
Maybe you think of yourself as an independent, moderate, etc, and really don't love either party (but probably like one party less) - you can select me as your first choice, and still have the back up of another candidate if not enough people agree with you. #mepolitics
In this race, folks who like Bruce probably don't like Jared, folks who prefer Jared probably aren't keen on Bruce.
A lot of folks would like (or find less annoying) someone who really isn't a party. With RCV, you can do that! It removes the risk of vote-splitting.