Election Day is November 8th, 2022

Election Day is on November 8th, 2022!

https://mnnicethevote.com/

I hope you all voted by August 9th for the Primaries; now it is time for the General Election! Do you know what is on your ballot? Do you know how to find out? Did you even remember that there is an election coming up?

Well, there are a lot of elections coming up! Pulling straight from Wikipedia: “During this midterm election year, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. Thirty-nine state and territorial gubernatorial and numerous other state and local elections will also be contested. This will be the first election affected by the redistricting that will follow the 2020 census” (2022 United States elections).

In Minnesota, it’s very easy to vote. The Minnesota Secretary of State website has an Elections & Voting page; on there, you can register to vote, learn about election day voting, learn about other ways to vote, and learn about what is on your ballot.

These other ways to vote are imperative - in Minnesota, you can vote early with an absentee ballot starting 46 days before Election Day (which was September 23rd). You can vote early by mail, or you can vote early in person (either at your city office or county office, depending on where you live); and if you are in the military or living abroad, you’re covered as well! Voting is easy! So get out there and vote!

But before you vote, look at what is on your ballot. Click on “view your sample ballot” and put in the information that it asks for, and it’ll show you who is running in your precinct. Take the time to study who is running and what their platforms are about!

Let’s take a look at who is running where I live. If you’d like me to take a look at your area as well, please shoot me a message.

The political party abbreviations that will be used are the following:

Federal Offices

U.S. Representative - District 5

DFL
Ilhan Omar (Incumbent)

State Offices

State Senator - District 46

DFL
Ron Latz (Incumbent)

Unopposed

State Representative - District 46A

Unopposed

Governor & Lt Governor

Secretary of State

DFL
Steve Simon (Incumbent)

State Auditor

DFL
Julie Blaha (Incumbent)

GLC
Will Finn

Attorney General

DFL
Keith Ellison (Incumbent)

County Offices

County Commissioner -  District 3
Ashley Boldin
Marion Greene (Incumbent)

County Sheriff
Joseph Banks
Dawanna Witt

County Attorney
Mary Moriarty
Martha Holton Dimick

County Park Commissioner District 3
Erin Kolb
Unopposed

Saint Louis Park Public School District

Special Election for School Board Member (ISD #283)
Virginia Mancini
Martha Hernández Martinez

Special Election for School Board Member (ISD #283)
Linda Trummer
Sarah Davis

Judicial Offices

All are incumbents, all are unopposed. I’m not going to bother.

Who am I voting for?

Once again, for all the partisan races, I will be voting for the DFL candidates. Anybody from the Republican Party is instantly disqualified from my consideration on the basis of being members of the Republican Party and are therefore accepting of and even complicit in the destruction of freedoms, the curtailing of civil rights, and the other host of issues that the GOP is guilty of. Third-party candidates are disqualified from consideration at the state and federal level until we stop using the First Past The Post system (which we really need to abandon). I will skip over the unopposed races because they are unopposed. Therefore, that leaves us with:

County Commissioner -  District 3: Commissioner Marion Greene
Marion Greene is the incumbent, and she has done well as County Commissioner. Her list of issues and accomplishments speaks for itself; our platforms and outlooks align well, and I have met her in real life - she is a great person. Ashley Boldin, however, only has one issue on her website (well, one and a half issues); and while I am very supportive of that same issue, it is not enough to go on. I think I found her LinkedIn (though I may have found the wrong person), her personal Twitter, and her campaign Twitter, and I can tell that she’s a data person who supports medical professionals. I’m going to stick with Marion.

County Sheriff: Major Dawanna Witt
I’m just going to copy and paste what I said for the Primaries:
For Hennepin County Sheriff, I’m voting for Major Dawanna Witt. Aside from an impressive set of endorsements, Maj. Witt “recently received the National Black History Month in Law Enforcement Award from the Police Studies Institute at St. Elizabeth University in New Jersey” (Minnesota Spokesman Recorder). She is experienced, she is already the commander of the detention and court services bureau for HCSO, and she grew up in Hennepin County. On top of that, her platform is to provide resources and support to those who could benefit from basic life skills needed to become productive members of society and provide substance abuse support, mental health support, and obtaining employment.
Joseph Banks, while having law enforcement experience, is the CEO/president of Banks Securities Inc., which assists in criminal expungement resources; he also co-hosts a podcast called “Let’s Talk About It,” works as a licensed bail bondsman, and “is co-founder of two nonprofits—Twin Cities Recovery Project Inc., designed to support pathways to recovery, and Black Butterfly, which aims to assist young women of color experiencing the criminal justice system to stabilize and reconnect them with the community and become productive members of society” (Minnesota Spokesman Recorder). However, his website only talks about his police experience and lists his platform in broad terms.

County Attorney: Professor Mary Moriarty
During the primaries, we had seven candidates, and now we have two. I’m sticking with Mary Moriarty, and for the same reasons as before: her stances on voluntary restorative justice opportunities, immigration, a public health approach to substance abuse, and making improvements to the probation system (honestly, all of her platform stances) really spoke to me, she has experience and the credentials, and she has great endorsements. From what I can tell, Martha Holton Dimick is very "Law-and-Order" and “prosecution before people”; in fact, I invite you all to read what Naomi Kritzer wrote during the primaries; she gets into far more detail than I do. I’m going to vote for Mary Moriarty.

Special Election for School Board Member (ISD #283): Directors Virginia Mancini & Sarah Davis
Virginia Mancini and Sarah Davis are already on the school board, having been appointed to their positions after the resignations of former chair Mary Tomback and former member Laura McClendon. They both made it through the School Board Appointment Process, they both have websites to lay out their platforms (Mancini and Davis), they have excellent endorsements, and their motivations appear to align with mine.
Though I found somebody named Martha Hernández Martinez when I did a search, I am not certain that I found the right person (I actually found two people, but I think that I found the right one). Unfortunately, Martha Hernández Martinez does not seem to have much of a web presence when it comes to her aspirations to the school board. As for Linda Trummer, while she also doesn’t have a website either, there was enough information about her to lead me to this “letter to the editor” she penned, encouraging people to vote against the referendum back during the Primaries. That does not endear me to her.

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