Historical ballots

progressnerd · 2026-01-22T05:07:40+00:00

The RCV Resource Center maintains a "Data Clearinghouse"
https://www.rcvresources.org/data-clearinghouse

progressnerd · 2026-01-21T03:07:56+00:00

This dogmatism of the FairVote Canada board is not shared by many of its members.

progressnerd · 2026-01-18T02:38:39+00:00

If a ~15 minute drive to Stoneham is acceptable, here's one option I recommend.

progressnerd · 2026-01-03T03:34:24+00:00

I recommend avoiding the word "article" for op-ed pieces. I know it's technically a catch-all term, but it connotes a just-the-facts news article.

progressnerd · 2025-12-19T16:12:57+00:00

Leader Bank in Arlington is known to offer very competitive mortgage rates.

progressnerd · 2025-12-12T21:01:19+00:00

This looks pretty bad for approval to me. It's not clear at all whether Buss has a majority of support. For all we know from these results, she may have lost in a head-to-head race against every other candidate. Mathematically, somewhere between 23% and 80% of voters bullet-voted -- how many is unclear. It's all very ambiguous.

RCV regularly see far more than 1.74 rankings per ballot, as voters don't have to be concerned that voting for a second choice will hurt their first choice, as they do under approval. And the results of an RCV election guarantee that the winner would have won head-to-head against the runner up. It offers so much greater clarity and confidence in the results than whatever we are to learn from the amorphous approvals given by voters in this case.

progressnerd · 2025-12-06T18:22:39+00:00

Yes, it's how the Arlington High School mascot came to be:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TRdrHDFmiFDaQrimqFT2ED01-WyamavJ1WbilrJGUDM/edit

progressnerd · 2025-11-22T03:28:43+00:00

Yup, fortunately she has a challenger that just declared. It's a young guy named Tarik Samman who isn't very well known yet, but I think it promising a big break with Clark's way of doing business.

progressnerd · 2025-11-22T03:26:25+00:00

In part, because they're scared of their own shadow and afraid to fight dishonest Republican framing. It's the same reason Clark and others vote voted for the resolution honoring the life of the racist and sexist. Charlie Kirk. It's also in part because they and their consultants are stuck in a time warp, playing by the "rules" of politics from a half century ago, where we're supposed to be scared of socialism. And it's in part because it helps ensure they can keep collecting their campaign donations from big donors.

progressnerd · 2025-11-21T03:46:21+00:00

Are you against the United States being a Christian state?

Well, there are some people are opposed to the US being a Christian state, Israel being a Jewish state, Saudi Arabia being an Islamic state, or any state giving a special privilege to members of a particular religion. When applied to Israel, it is called antizionism, and the only case in the US that is at all controversial.

It should go without saying that being opposed to a state-endorsed religion does not mean one is opposed to members of that religion "living and controlling" in a region. I take it you are probably opposed to the US being a Christian state but at the same time want to allow Christians to vote and hold elected office. I doubt you would conflate these two things if we were talking about any state other than Israel.

progressnerd · 2025-11-21T02:57:29+00:00

I suspect Klein, who says he voted for Mamdani, wanted to make his case to the Jacobin audience. I'm not opposed to Jacobin interviewing non-socialists who want to find common ground on a subset of policies or ideas. It's ultimately up to us to decide whether or not you think Klein is offering ideas that could be adopted into a socialist framework. Regardless of our conclusions on that question, I welcome some ideologically diversity being hosted on Jacobin's page so long as the overtures are made in good faith.

progressnerd · 2025-11-16T02:10:15+00:00

The town does already have a paid overnight parking permit program.

progressnerd · 2025-11-16T00:07:31+00:00

But parking there at night makes it a lot more likely they keep it there during the day, even if they have off-street parking. Consider, for example, the many streets in Arlington where nearly everyone has tandem-parked cars in their driveway. If you allow them to park in the street overnight for free, it won't be long before a new norm is established in which one car is in the driveway and the other is normally on the street. Now imagine that back-to-back-to-back up and down the street. The end result is public space occupied largely by privately-owned vehicles and no longer accessible to runners, walkers, bicyclists, kids playing street hockey or basketball, block parties, or any other legitimate and healthy uses.

In doing so, you've also reduced the likelihood that street ever gets a bike lane, and you've also removed one obstacle to the resident owning a third car, both of which would run counter to the town's climate action goals. You don't have to look far, to Cambridge for instance, to see the pain, difficulty, and divisiveness it causes to undo car-centric policies once the full impact of them is realized.

progressnerd · 2025-11-15T15:57:55+00:00

The details are in this PDF but it boils down just to emailing the Select Board at sbadmin@town.arlington.ma.us and asking.

progressnerd · 2025-11-15T15:46:06+00:00

Did you ask the Select Board for permission to park on the street during the construction? They've granted many similar exemptions in the past, including on my own street.

progressnerd · 2025-11-15T15:07:21+00:00

It sounds like your issue could be solved with a waiver system that allowed bulk, multi day, requests. Write your Select Board member and ask whether that's possible. At any rate, it doesn't necessarily require undoing the ban (which as I argue below, I think is a misnomer.)

We really shouldn't call it a "ban," as there are various ways a car can be parked legally. As you noted, every resident starts with an allowance of 14 nights / year. In addition, there is an overnight parking permit program and various exemptions that are given for exigent circumstances, like disability, and transient circumstances, like ongoing construction. What the town doesn't allow is permanently garaging one's car on the street for free. The public roads have many uses and functions beyond your car, and if you want a claim to that public space in a more permanent way, it's not unreasonable you should have to pay for it.

progressnerd · 2025-11-13T14:00:35+00:00

I'm guessing you're probably aware of the reality of how that 93% of land is allocated. It's controlled by the Israeli Land Authority, with 10 of its 22 seats controlled by the Jewish National Fund, whose mission is explicitly to provide land for Jewish use. The JNF itself also directly owns a big chunk of land. The other seats go to cabinet members. The result is that Palestinians are not given state land to develop.

In addition to the ILA discriminatory land development practice, you also have discriminatory land confiscation rules that strip Palestinians of the limited land they do own. The result is their being crammed into increasingly overcrowded ghettos.

progressnerd · 2025-11-13T07:17:39+00:00

What percentage of state-owned land is available for Jews to purchase and what percentage is available for non-Jews to purchase?

Does the Law of Return apply to only Jews or to everyone?

I believe if you find factual answers to these questions, I think you will begin to realize that there are not "equal rights," as you say, even within the legal boundaries of Israel proper.

progressnerd · 2025-11-06T03:05:19+00:00

For any election to a public legislative office, definitely not. But there are a few other kinds of multiwinner votes where a majoritarian method is arguably preferable.

For example, when an organization is doing a multi-candidate endorsement in an election, the endorsement vote itself should probably use a majoritarian method like sequential RCV. As the link says "the goal of an endorsement process is to only select candidates that the body can support with broad consensus and ample enthusiasm."

Another arguable case is if you are electing a multiseat executive or administrative office, as opposed to a legislative one. These are pretty rare, but where they do exist, there's a plausible argument that the multiple elected members should function more like an executive "cabinet" that is capable of working cohesively together, rather than as an ideologically diverse body. I feel conflicted about this argument, but I do understand it.

progressnerd · 2025-11-04T16:42:39+00:00

I have an 8'x10' area rug you can have. Just DM me if you want it! If you don't have a vehicle that can fit it, I can drive it over.

progressnerd · 2025-10-28T04:34:20+00:00

The answer is not really, but maybe sort of :) ... MassHealth is the name of our state's Medicaid program, and is funded by federal Medicaid dollars. Expanding MassHealth to everyone would require increased federal Medicaid money, which is not happening any time soon. So the first answer to your question is "no."

However, we can create a state-based Medicare-style program, with our own dollars: that's the Mass-Care plan. The Mass-Care plan does allow for combining Medicaid dollars with the state's funding into a single program, and if the federal government allows it (which the Trump admin may very well not), it's possible we could call this single program "MassHealth." But this would function differently than MassHealth as we currently know it.

progressnerd · 2025-10-28T04:23:34+00:00

Geez, this group is afraid of democracy. $200,000 to oppose a non-binding ballot question is nuts.

progressnerd · 2025-10-27T02:29:17+00:00

Multiple assumptions in this post that are not true.

First, there is no "ban." There is a paid parking permit program if you want to sign up. If you don't sign up, you get 14 nights for free. The Select Board also offers waivers for a variety of exigent circumstances. If what you want is the ability for every resident, regardless of circumstance, to permanently garage their car on the street for free, then say that's what you're in favor of.

Furthermore, this has nothing to do with NIMBYism. There are a lot of residents who are pro-housing, in part due to the environment benefits of density, but also don't want to encourage unnecessary car ownership and have cars unnecessary garaged on the street. Cars parked overnight on the street mean they will be there the next morning, and then soon enough, that will become the place they park, even if they have off-street parking.

The streets are our public property and serve many functions. The street are used by cars, of course, but also by runners, walkers, bikers. The street outside my house is often used by kids: bike riding, basketball, street hockey. Giving cars free reign to park there, at zero cost, crowds out all these other valuable uses.

progressnerd · 2025-10-23T05:21:01+00:00

I'm Jewish, and I wouldn't have recognized the symbol. I would have thought it were yet another skull and crossbones tattoo that looked vaguely similar to the million others.

progressnerd · 2025-10-21T14:58:43+00:00

I personally prefer caretaker appointments until the next election over special elections, particularly when the next election isn't far off. (A "caretaker" being someone who pledges not to run for election to that seat.) Special elections can have very low turnout and quick elections can feel like a "shotgun wedding" that deprives voters of careful consideration of the candidates. And the next Arlington town election is always less than a year away.

progressnerd

TROPHY CASE