Election Result: It Will Be OK

Introduction

This post is not about politics. As I’ve explained before in these pages, I almost never discuss politics, with anybody. It’s pointless. Either you sit around agreeing with one another, in which case the dialogue inevitably drifts toward one-upmanship around who’s more knowledgeable, or you disagree, in which case you feel attacked, your brain goes into limbic override, and you lament even knowing such an ignoramus, much less having to talk to one.

This post is about how to survive this week’s election, regardless of whom you hoped would win. It’s a plea to locate your better mindset and hang on to it for dear life. (If you are not living in the United States, your elections and overall life situation may vary considerably from mine, in which case this post may not have much value to you … but I suppose you could read it anyway if you have Americans in your life.)

Why now?

I am sitting down to write this right now, on the afternoon of Election Day, because I don’t yet have the foggiest idea how the election is going. I am not the type to be glued to the news, riding a roller coaster of emotion as this or that state topples to this or that candidate. I never doomscroll, and especially not today. Thus, this is the perfect time, while my mind is still clear, to try to make some points about the survivability of any outcome, before I run the real risk of having my brain completely saturated in cortisol, and trying to think through the dense fog—actually, smog—which will make self-soothing very difficult later.

Since I am posting this essay ahead of the election returns, you and I will have something topical to read that dates from the Before Times, when it was still possible to take a deep breath and try to reassure ourselves that life will continue to be okay. Naturally, if my preferred candidate wins, and I don’t need to reread this, that would be wonderful. Otherwise, at least I will have something to cling to: the knowledge that a day ago, a week ago, or whenever ago, it was still possible to keep my chin up. And it still is.

What is at stake?

It’s tempting to believe that this election is a way to assess the state of America’s soul. If our strong, honest, virtuous candidate wins, the feeling goes, then we can conclude that our country is in good shape, that we’re still a good people, that the United States still deserves to be a world leader. On the other hand, if the evil, wicked, soulless candidate wins, it’s because America has fallen like Rome, and our people have lost their way, and we might as well be thrown to the wolves. And yet in reality, this is such a close race, it will be decided by tiny fractions of a percent of votes in this or that state, and the bizarre electoral college system, and possibly even by hanging chads or whatever the 2024 equivalent of that is. Whatever happens today (or however long this election takes to be decided), no conclusion can really be drawn about Americans as a whole, unless there’s some massive wave of epiphany that fundamentally alters millions of us overnight. We’ll be the same people next week as we were last week.

To summarize: our national character, I am arguing, is not at stake. Another thing that isn’t at stake is our fundamental quality of life and our liberty in this country. I gather that I may have just pissed you off by asserting this, but I will stand by it, flying in the face of the giant campaigning machines that have been beating us over the head with the fact that nothing less than democracy in America hangs in the balance of this election. I think that’s overstated. Whatever ideals this country was built on, however the Constitution does or doesn’t protect us, our government has a lot of complicated machinery in it, with a bias towards gridlock. There are checks and balances, and the capacity for thunderous disagreements and long, hard, protracted fights before any change gets made, good or bad. Whether the two-party system is lame, or doomed, or fatally flawed, these two sides will not give up easily and are very good at stopping each other from gaining too much ground. Sure, we have seen very important changes in the last eight years, but they were not tectonic. The essence of our experience in this country will not change overnight.

You may beg to differ, you may call me a fool, all of that is fine (and is the reason I so seldom even approach the periphery of politics on this blog). But I think to ignore the differences between the U.S. and, say, Russia or North Korea or China is to be absurdly ungrateful for the strength and resilience of our country.

Crushing leaves

At one point during this century (I won’t be more specific because this is a non-partisan essay), a presidential election went the way I didn’t want it to, and I felt despondent. For the first time in my voting life, the outcome didn’t seem like it could really even be true. I went out for a late afternoon bike ride—my go-to activity for working through stress—and as I pedaled up Monterey Ave, I happened to run over a perfectly dry and crispy leaf. As I’ve blogged before, I love crushing leaves:

Make fun of me if you want—I just love this activity. This is the perfect time of year for it: the sidewalk and street are littered with leaves and on a warm afternoon they’re perfectly crisp and ready for crunching. The sound is almost identical to a cat eating a potato chip, which I’ve been lucky enough to witness. The wind blows the leaves into big piles I can ride through on my bike. I can even feel the crunching, as light as it is. My kids and I dance all over the sidewalk, vying for the perfect leaf. The kids fight occasionally, like two surfers claiming the same wave. Then there is a kind of larger leaf that isn’t crunchable, but rattles along the sidewalk when kicked, like a big weird crustacean.

Out of nowhere, I had the realization that there was absolutely nothing our new president could do to deprive me of this simple pleasure. The U.S. government just doesn’t have that kind of power. (It is true that during China’s “Great Leap Forward” all kinds of dramatic things happened—for example, something like a billion sparrows were slaughtered—but at the end of the day America is still a hog-tied democracy, thank goodness.)

It was a lovely fall day and an abundance of leaves lined the shoulder of the road, and I began steering for them, crushing one after another, getting inordinate joy from the simplicity of this basic act that I was able to do both before and after the election. As my ride continued I began to catalog all the other pleasures available to me: good, clean air that I gulped greedily as I pounded the pedals; smooth roads twisting gracefully through the hills of Tilden Park; robust health; sunshine; a view of the Bay; a pretty sunset; the pleasure of descending swiftly toward home; the satisfaction of having a home to return to. None of this would be taken away just because my candidate lost.

Fun

So: where did that description of crushing leaves come from? It’s a blog post I did ages ago called, “In Defense of Fun.” Why does fun need to be defended? Because we get distracted, and maybe we get guilty, and maybe we’re too depressed to indulge in it, which is a shame. My own appreciation of fun was rekindled by my kids, and that’s what brought about that post. Today I looked back to that post in advance of possible heartbreak tomorrow morning (or whenever I face the music and learn the outcome of this election), to remind myself that it’s okay—in fact, it’s necessary—to seize our capacity to appreciate what we still have, whatever that is, and to enjoy it. We’re not required to be depressed and sullen and spend the next four years crying in our beer.

I’m not saying the solution to political turmoil is to just blow it off and have fun. I’m just taking advantage of having included a list, in my “Defense of Fun” post fifteen years ago, of my top 20 ways to have fun. I went through that list just now to determine how many of these activities will no longer be possible if this election goes the wrong way. Here is the list:

Surprise, surprise: none of these things will suddenly become impossible. Neither candidate promised, “If I am elected, America will no longer have to face the nightmare of people fixing their bikes, snapping photos, drinking beer, and people-watching. My administration will ban the crushing of leaves along with all BS pointless conversations among friends.”

Bigger picture

To be crystal clear: the point here isn’t fun per se. If my “in defense of” post had instead been about soulful connection with family, or the deep richness of decades-long friendships, or the satisfaction we get from improving our minds, or on basically anything that we should be glad for in our lives, we could look at that list instead. The point is, our post-election lives will only be miserable if we let them—if we decide this outcome precludes happiness, whether or not it actually changes the basic facts of our day-to-day lives (which it mostly doesn’t and won’t). Our connection with friends and family is only jeopardized if we blather on angrily or wretchedly about politics and they disagree with us. The United States of America tomorrow will be the same one it was yesterday, with the same dry leaves, the same slanting orange afternoon sun, the same smooth, twisty roads, and the same home to return to; your cat will still nuzzle her snout into the crook of your elbow and/or your dog will still whack your leg repeatedly as he wags his tail. Certainly there will be gradual policy changes based on having one political administration in place instead of another; the winners will have impacts on the country and the world during the time voters have given them. But you don’t need to decide in advance to be miserable about it.

Stay tuned

Keep an eye on albertnet, because I promise next week I’ll return to lighthearted, non-didactic, hopefully humorous prattle instead of this tedious, serious stuff. Maybe I’ll write about A.I…

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Election Follies II Part II - The Spawning

Introduction

Right off the bat, I love sequels: not the ones Hollywood cranks out, but the opportunities I sometimes get, with this blog, to piggyback on a previous topic. If you even remotely enjoyed my last post, or enjoyed hating it, my second installment of Prop 7, One Year Later should grab you even more forcefully. Perhaps it’ll even shake you around, like a dog with a rag doll!

In this post I explore in some detail the complete and total clusterfuck Prop 7 would create, if it were actually approved by Congress.

First, a correction

In a response to the survey I sent around about Prop 7, one respondent wrote, “Hawaii and Arizona don't observe daylight savings time, so I didn't think Congress would care if California opted out of it.” I commented in my post, “Ah, this is a confused voter (or abstainer). Prop 7 isn’t about staying on standard time—it’s about staying on DST year-round.”

Well, I misconstrued the respondent’s meaning. He replied (via email) that by “it” he meant “opting out of the Uniform Time Act of 1966,” not “opting out of DST.” He did understand that Prop 7 was about year-round DST, and his point is that if Congress already lets two states choose not to conform to the Uniform Time Act, they should tolerate California opting out as well (even if it’s a different flavor of opting out).

Can technology help?

This same respondent opined that modern technology platforms such as Google Calendar and smartphones should make it feasible to handle the complexity of three concurrent flavors of time observance—those being a) the status quo; b) never observing DST; and c) observing DST year-round. He described his exceedingly complicated workday routine and how it’s exacerbated by his kids’ byzantine schedules, but how it’s all manageable because he and his wife can rely their electronic calendars.

I have to disagree with this albertnet reader. You might imagine that my dissent is based on the fact of not everybody using smartphones or calendar software. Actually, that doesn’t bother me so much … if these outliers complain, we can just tell them to get with the program. (I know, terrible pun—I couldn’t resist.) It’s also possible to fault technology in general where DST is concerned. For example, my modern car clock has a setting for automatically adjusting to DST but it quite simply doesn’t work. Meanwhile, my microwave oven has a setting to automatically switch to DST, but it couldn’t work because there’s no way to program the oven with the date. But this is also just static. I have a much bigger issue with my friend’s assertion. The fact is, where deviance from the Uniform Time Act is concerned, computer calendars are absolutely no help.

These electronic tools work great for a complicated family schedule because everyone is in the same time zone, so whatever tweaks are made to DST will affect all family members the same. But interstate business, when DST outliers are involved, is another story entirely. As I wrote in my first Prop 7 post, “Today, Monday, was rough. At work, an 11:00 a.m. conference call threw people into a tailspin because the recurring appointment had been set up by somebody in the Arizona time zone, where DST is not observed. For those outside Arizona, the call automatically jumped forward by an hour on our electronic calendars.”

To make this clearer: at the beginning of March, before DST started, the 11:00 a.m. PST call was at noon MST (or to be more precise, noon Arizona time because Arizona is given its own time zone in Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar). A week later when DST kicked in for CA, AZ hadn’t changed, so the call was still at noon Arizona time. But since CA was now synced with AZ (because PDT is the same as MST), the call suddenly moved to noon for the Californians. This presented conflicts with other noon calls already set up with other non-Arizonians. Despite everybody’s groovy electronic calendar technology, these humans have to bicker about this situation twice a year … and that’s all because one state is doing one type of Uniform Time Act exception.

If states could switch to year-round DST…

If California were allowed to switch to year-round DST, of course that would set precedent for other states to do the same. Suppose New Mexico copied Arizona and stopped observing DST, while Colorado stayed as-is, and then Wyoming went to year-round DST to be like the cool kids in California. Clocks in this case would cease to reliably align with geography. The weekly call for the Mountain/Desert Sales Region that covers these states would get unbelievably screwed up twice a year when the time changed, as you shall see.

Let’s say the calendar event was created by the Regional Director who works in Colorado. And let’s say it’s a 2:00 p.m. call: on November 1, this would be 2:00 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time (MDT), which equates to 1:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time (MST) in New Mexico (due south of Colorado, in case your sense of geography is worse than The Donald’s) and 2:00 p.m. MDT in Wyoming (due north). So that’s your status quo. But a week later, on November 8 when CO falls back, all hell breaks loose. For the CO folks, nothing changes except the call goes from 2:00 p.m. MDT to 2:00 p.m. MST; their calendars aren’t really affected. But the call moves from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. for the NM folks (because NM is now synced with CO) so the NM folks would have to reschedule their other 2:00 calls. On top of that, this same call would become a 3:00 p.m. Wyoming call (because they’d still be on MDT, so they’re now an hour ahead of CA). So Wyoming would also have to move their other calls to accommodate this!

How is this simpler than everybody changing their clocks twice a year? It’s a complete debacle! You’ve got a call that, depending on the state and the time of year, can take place at 1 p.m., 2 p.m., or 3 p.m., despite all these states being at basically the same longitude!

And that’s just one state opting out of DST and one state going to year-round DST. Imagine if even just a handful of other states started exercising their freedom to deviate from the Uniform Time Act in this way. Electronic calendars notwithstanding, millions of Americans would be totally confused. Time zones would become so variable, and so disconnected from geography, people would go nuts.

Slippery slope?

Now, you might accuse me of a slippery slope fallacy—that is, of overstating the downstream consequences of California getting its way. But if you think about it, it’s highly likely other states would adopt year-round DST if California was doing it. Imagine Washington state, with all the tech companies headquartered there (e.g., Microsoft, Amazon, SAP Concur). Surely they’re on conference calls with Silicon Valley companies all the time, and would get tired of the rigmarole every time the clocks changed. Supposing Washington state followed California’s lead, what do you think Oregon would do, sandwiched as it is between the two? It would probably fall in line and adopt year-round DST. With the entire west coast on year-round DST, other states with west coast vendors, customers, and partners—like New York and Virginia—might be tempted, too.

Many states wouldn’t, though. Montana isn’t exactly a hive of interstate corporate activity, and if they went to year-round DST, the sun wouldn’t rise in their northernmost city until 9:21 a.m. at the end of December. It could be that northern states in general would tend to frown on year-round DST due to such impractically late mornings. Southern states would probably stay away from year-round DST too, because they have such hot weather. (Arizona’s earlier sunrise gives its denizens a chance to exercise before it gets hotter than balls out, and their earlier sunset means they don’t have to run their air conditioning so late.) If anything, with this new shift away from the Uniform Time Act, southern states might take the opportunity to copy Arizona and give up DST completely.

With all this in mind it’s not hard to imagine a hopelessly unmanageable situation with mass confusion every March and November, if Congress decided to allow states to observe year-round DST. I highly doubt the authors of CA Prop 7 ever considered any of this. Hopefully Congress has, and will hold their ground when California comes around asking to do their own thing.

Who cares?

If you’re still reading this, I’d guess you’re in the minority of people who will bother to ponder such stuff. As I was trying to discuss this with my wife (and already approaching the outer limits of her attention), our daughter chimed in, “Why do we have to change the clocks at all?!” I replied, “Well, if that’s not just a rhetorical question, I’m happy to answer it.” Before she could even reply, my wife cut in: “No, no, she didn’t mean it!” My wife might as well have added, “For God’s sake spare her … she’s just a child!” My daughter was quick to pile on: “Please don’t explain. I really don’t want to know.” (If you do want to know, click here and search the page for “Should we have DST?”)

Prop 7, especially given that it passed, is a great example of the limitations of democracy. Most voters don’t want to wade very deep into complicated matters of policy, but they still want to have their say. They demand simple answers, but sometimes simple answers just don’t exist.

Consider this: seven out of ten Americans want to stop changing their clocks, according to an Associated Press poll, as described here. The problem is, four in ten want to get rid of DST, and three in ten want to adopt it year-round. Factoring in the three out of ten who are fine with the status quo (i.e., changing the clocks twice a year), putting this matter to a simple vote creates, essentially, a three-way tie. (Handing victory to the slightly larger group, the four in ten who oppose DST completely, would disappoint six in ten Americans … hardly a good solution.)

In the case of Prop 7, the Federal government needs to ignore the California voters and do what’s right for the country. I know that sounds brash, but I’m serious. Imagine if our government decided that states should decide everything for themselves. Texas, for example, could decide airport security was a pain in the ass, and that they didn’t need metal detectors. I can envision a Texan politician arguing, “Why shouldn’t an American carry a gun on a plane? How better to stop terrorists?!” Voters in Texas would love this because they’re tired of standing in lines at airports, taking off their wristwatches and belts and shoes and so forth, and might vote for the change as breezily as Californians voted for Prop 7. If Congress honored the wishes of these voters, you’d have armed Texans flying everywhere, and the burden of disarming them would fall to airports around the world, who would need metal detectors at the egress points of each terminal. Why doesn’t this happen? Because, so far, the lawmakers in Washington have the good sense to maintain the FAA as a nationwide body applying the same rules in every state (and Texas hasn’t thought to propose such a thing … that I’m aware of, anyway).

I’m optimistic, then, that Congress is thinking harder about DST (or will, when the time comes) than the voters in California did, and the simple-minded knobs that introduced Prop 7. If Americans across all fifty states were to agree that changing the clocks twice a year wasn’t worth doing, then Congress could come to some consensus about the best way forward: we could all either abandon DST nationwide, or all adopt it year-round. Until and unless that happens, I sincerely hope Washington tells California, “Go away, kid … ya bother me.”

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Election Follies II - California Prop 7, One Year Later

Introduction

Well, yesterday’s election was sure dull. My city and county didn’t have anything on the ballot so it was a non-event. But that’s how I like it … I detest politics. I’m not one to discuss such matters, nor—usually—to write about them. But I did take an interest, a year ago, in California’s Proposition 7, which was titled “CONFORMS CALIFORNIA DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME TO FEDERAL LAW. ALLOWS LEGISLATURE TO CHANGE DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME PERIOD.”

All the summary stuff in that proposal suggested only that we wouldn’t have to change the clocks twice a year, and the brief summary was really vague about exactly what was being proposed. You have to be one of those really punctilious  readers, who go to the actual text of the proposition, to discover the real purpose, which was “to provide for the year-round application of daylight saving time” (with an important caveat, “if federal law authorizes the state”—a very big “if”). You can read the full text here.

My take on Prop 7

In my previous Prop 7 blog post, I thoroughly dismantled every argument in support of this proposal; considered one legitimate argument for permanent DST that the Prop 7 proponents didn’t mention; explained what’s wrong with permanent DST; pondered how Prop 7 managed to pass (my best guess being that it’s related to Prop 64 from the previous election, which legalized marijuana in California); and explained why this absurd and delusional bit of legislation cannot possibly ever affect anything in the real world.

So Prop 7 passed … now what?

Well, a year has passed, and all of us Californians just turned back the clocks, as usual. So far, Prop 7 hasn’t done a thing—just like I predicted. The only forward motion, as detailed here, is that a California Representative now promises that in January, 2020 he “will introduce an Assembly Joint Resolution urging Congress to authorize states to practice permanent daylight saving time.” Um … that’s 15 months after Prop 7 passed. What the hell has this guy been doing for the past year? Preparing his case? I’ll concede it will be an uphill battle, especially if it’s just this one guy as opposed to a giant task force.

I decided to survey my bike team friends about this (via our group email list). I wanted to see whether they remember this proposition at all; what they remembered; whether they remember the outcome (i.e., passed or not); and what they would expect to have happened by now. Finally, I’ve asked them if they were aware of what this California Representative was looking to do, and how they felt about that. Not surprisingly, the results were interesting, and the (often cheeky) comments amusing.

Who remembers Prop 7?

Of 19 respondents, five had no recollection of Prop 7. Ten recalled that it dealt with California’s approach to Daylight Saving Time (though the title of my survey must’ve given them a good hint). Four respondents (including myself)  “remember perfectly well exactly what it was all about.”

I guess I’m not surprised to be in the minority of people who have kept tabs on this. My wife and teenaged kids profess to be totally bored by any topic related to Daylight Saving Time. I can’t understand this … after all, how our society observes DST affects our daily lives. It determines whether I’m trying to sneak in a bike ride before the workday starts, or eke one out with my remaining energy at the end of the day. It determines whether or not our morning commute, or our children’s, takes place in the dark. Beyond these quotidian matters, I find DST intrinsically fascinating (as I detailed in a non-Prop-7 DST post many years ago). But then, as my kids are fond of pointing out, I’m obviously a crazy mutant from another planet.

I guess I also shouldn’t be surprised that half my respondents had no recollection of whether or not Prop 7 passed. Maybe some of them didn’t pay attention because that outcome is irrelevant, given California’s inability to tell Congress what to do.

Who accurately recalls what Prop 7 aimed for?

Of my 19 respondents, none took the bait on the first multiple-choice response, “Brings CA back into compliance with federal law around DST” even though this bears striking resemblance to the title of the proposition. Well done, friends! I also didn’t fool anybody with “Rolls back the DST extension created during the second Bush administration,” a false response contrived based on what I heard from a couple of confused voters a year ago. However, no fewer than nine respondents thought that Prop 7 sought to allow California to consider opting out of DST entirely. That’s kind of almost the opposite of its real purpose, which only six respondents correctly recalled. (Only one major nation has tried year-round DST: Russia. After four years they admitted their mistake and went back to normal.)

Bringing up the rear, four respondents chose “None of the above,” and unfortunately I forgot to provide a comment section for them to write in what they thought Prop 7 was trying to do. That’s a shame, though I expect at least one comment would have been something like “Hell if I know!”

Given that Prop 7 did pass, what do folks expect to happen?

Nobody clicked on my first multiple-choice response, “I'm wondering why I just changed the clocks back ... wasn't Prop 7 supposed to make this unnecessary?” I think this outcome nicely showcases the widespread cynicism we all have about whether voting really matters and/or whether our governments can actually bring about change.

Four respondents chose “I'm wondering whether anything has happened in terms of pushing legislation through Congress to deliver the promise of Prop 7.” That’s a fair question and I’m surprised more people didn’t choose this response.

Nobody chose “I'm wondering why there is nothing on the ballot today to take the next step and vote on exactly what California will ask Congress to do.” I’m a bit surprised by this. The original proposition, if you didn’t read it carefully, insinuated that all we were doing with Prop 7 was abolishing the clock-changing nonsense, and we’d worry about the fine details later.

Six respondents (including me) chose “I grasped immediately, a year ago, that Prop 7 could never actually deliver any change, because Congress has no incentive to let California be out of whack with the rest of the country for four months a year.” Yeah, exactly. It’s one thing to be a leader in something like a smoking ban, a soft drink tax, or mandatory composting—these are laws California can enforce within our own borders without anyone else having a say. But pretending we can just overturn the federal law around DST makes barely more sense than passing a law declaring, “Disadvantaged Californians may now steal one car or truck apiece from our neighbors in Nevada, Oregon, or Arizona with impunity.”

Disappointingly, not a single respondent chose “Oh, crap, I assumed Prop 7 was in full effect, and I didn't roll my clocks back last weekend!”

That leaves nine more responses. One survey recipient declined to answer this one. (Probably he or she had fallen asleep, as a consequence of a totally befouled circadian rhythm due to the time change.) Two respondents declined to select any of my responses because they didn’t remember Prop 7 that well … fair enough. One respondent apparently thought this test was open-book and wrote, “I realized after reading a short article on the subject that it will take additional action through the state legislature to put it into effect.” That’s cheating! I was trying to get a read on what people felt would be appropriate. I guess with Google, nobody bothers to ponder anything anymore—they just go straight for the answer.

One respondent wrote, “Hawaii and Arizona don't observe daylight savings time, so I didn't think Congress would care if California opted out of it.” Ah, this is a confused voter (or abstainer). Prop 7 isn’t about staying on standard time—it’s about staying on DST. That’s what’s so annoying to me: the way it was written was very confusing (probably deliberately so) which is why I suspect so many Californians didn’t realize what they were actually voting on.

Other responses were pretty funny:

• “I am totally out of it, I go where I’m told, tell me when to wake up and I will.”
•  “I’m so glad I moved to a state that doesn’t have a gazillion silly measures on every ballot.” I believe this would have come from either an Oregonian or a Texan (based on where my post-California friends live). So, fair point—but  Oregon and Texas have their own sillinesses, eh?
• “I advocate eliminating all DST & all time zones globally & using GMT everywhere & 24 hr clocks. Here in CA we’d arise at 2200 and retire at 1300.” Yeah, that would be pretty cool, and would completely eliminate the problem of jet lag!
• “Every season should be, ‘Fall Back’. I love ‘Fall Back’. I hate ‘Spring Forward’. I’m in favor of having ‘Fall Back’ every six months or so.” Great idea! We’d just slip further and further out of whack with the rest of the world. Just think … eight years in, we’d be on the same time as England, and the sun would rise at like 3pm. Daylight would cease to have any meaning in our lives. Tourists here would be so disoriented, our tourism industry could fleece them more efficiently than ever!

Did people realize California would now pursue year-round DST?

I would love to know what all the California voters, particularly the majority of voters who supported Prop 7, expected to happen. Possibly like half of them thought we’d go to Standard time year-round. We’ll have to settle for what my survey respondents had to say.

Two of them were both aware that a lawmaker would use Prop 7 to push for year-round DST and were glad that California voters are having their wishes carried out. Three respondents weren’t aware of this outcome but are glad to hear voters are being served. This attitude presupposes that these voters actually knew what they were voting for. I guess these five are less cynical than I.

One respondent was aware that Prop 7’s passage would lead to the year-round DST effort and doubts this is what California voters wanted. Hear, hear.

Five respondents (including me) chose “No, and frankly I couldn't care less because obviously Congress will nix this with a quickness.”

Again, the most interesting responses were “Other” with a comment:

• “No, and I have no idea what ‘most California voters want.’” Great point. Hell, probably a lot of California voters don’t know what California voters (i.e., they themselves) want.
• “Not interested, other than wondering what the promoters of this prop think they stand to gain. What’s their angle?” Great question! I have puzzled over this myself. They can’t actually believe that changing the clocks is life-threatening, can they?
• “Just be sure to put signs up on your northern border to remind people crossing over that you all are out of whack. Of course, you already were whacky, just more so if this happens.” I would love to design this sign. I’m guessing this is the Oregonian, because—what about our eastern borders? Or are Nevadans and Arizonians just as wacky as us? (Now, if you take me to task for “as us” vs. “as we,” I’m going to nitpick about “whacky” vs. “wacky.” Let’s jest be mellow and colloquial, okay?)
• “Huh?” Yeah, no kidding.
• “No they won’t take my suggestion either.” Um … what exactly is your suggestion? I’d love to hear it.
• “I have no idea. This seems like a trivial matter compared with the problem of humans paving over the planet.” Wow … great point. And I’d say it applies to the majority of ballot measures, innit?

To be continued…

Check back every few years … I’ll continue to monitor the slow, wasting death of this totally pointless and doomed legislation. 

But wait, there’s more!

If you just can’t get enough of this topic, click here.

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Election Follies - A Proposition to Change Daylight Saving Time

Introduction

It’s common, even typical, to be outraged after Election Day. But don’t worry, I’m not going to get all political on you. Discussing party politics is about as enjoyable as a botched colonoscopy. Either you agree with your confabulator, in which case the chat is pointless and boring, or you don’t, in which case he’s an idiot and you start to hate him.

That being said, on the recent California ballot there was one Proposition (a non-partisan one, I hasten to add) that was unspeakably moronic and had me gnashing my terrible teeth, roaring my terrible roar, and rending my garments—even before (gasp!) it passed by a wide margin. In this post I will explain what makes the argument for Proposition 7 so stupid; what a reasonable argument could have looked like; my conjecture about how it managed to pass; and why it will never come to anything beyond a waste of time for the California Legislature.

Why should we care? Because the victory of this Proposition suggests that maybe democracy isn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe we’re too stupid to vote and would be better off with a benign dictator.

What is Proposition 7?

Here is the title of Proposition 7 (the full text of which you can read online here): “Conforms California Daylight Saving Time to Federal Law. Allows Legislature to Change Daylight Saving Time Period. Legislative Statute.” Right off the bat, before the first word of the Proposition proper, we’re already being mislead.

“Conforms California Saving Time To Federal Law.” This is exactly the opposite of what Prop 7 seeks to do. California already conforms to federal law. Prop 7 seeks to pave the way for an exemption.

“Allows Legislature to Change Daylight Saving Time Period.” No it doesn’t. Only the federal government can allow this. Prop 7 merely allows the Legislature to ask the federal government to change its laws. And this Proposition is not trying to change the period, per se; it’s trying to do away with the concept of period entirely, by having the same time year round.

Later in the Proposition, the “Argument in Favor” says, “A YES vote on Proposition 7 allows California to consider making Daylight Saving Time or Standard Time our year-round time.” Again, this is not the intent of Prop 7. States can already choose to be on Standard Time year-round (as Arizona and Hawaii do). Prop 7 seeks to adopt Daylight Saving Time year-round. Why don’t the authors just state this outright? Who knows. Maybe they cynically hoped that confusion would help their chances.

The arguments for Prop 7

Whether or not permanent Daylight Savings is a good idea (more on this question later), the arguments provided by its proponents are complete bullshit. Let’s look at them.

“University medical studies in 2012 found that the risk of heart attacks increases by 10% in the two days following a time change.” What university? How were these studies conducted? Why should anybody take this utterly ridiculous assertion at face value?

“In 2016, further research revealed that stroke risks increase 8% when we change our clocks. For cancer patients the stroke risk increases 25% and for people over age 65 stroke risk goes up 20%.” Again, what research, by whom? Published where? Why not tack on some more groundless assertions? Like: “For people with more than two vowels in their names, constipation went up 79% in the 18 hours following the time change.” The fact that like 60% of Californians seemed to buy this crap makes me want to move.

If changing clocks presented this significant a health hazard, people who travel on business would be dropping like flies. When I fly to the East Coast, I’m changing my watch by three hours when I get there, and changing it again a few days later. That’s way more disruptive than changing my clock by one hour twice a year.

Meanwhile, if humans are so delicately tuned that changing the clocks presents significant health threats, what might be the effects of California being an hour ahead of the rest of the Pacific time zone for four months out of the year? Well, guess what: I just did a university study that found the risk of heart attacks will increase by 15% whenever the rest of our time zone changes its clocks and we don’t! For people who routinely attend conference calls, that risk increases by 30%! And when athletes from Washington and Oregon compete against those from California, concussion risk will more than double!

“Changing our clocks twice a year increases our use of electricity 4% in many parts of the world, increases the amount of fuel we use in our cars, and comes with a cost of $434 million.” Okay, whoa whoa whoa. How does changing clocks increase our use of electricity 4% “in many parts of the world?” I spin the hands back on my clock, and the electricity going to my home increases in, like, China?

Look, Prop 7 assholes, the amount of fuel I use in my car varies only with the distance I have to drive and when I need to get where I’m going. This doesn’t change with DST.

And where does this weirdly specific $434 million figure come from? Wouldn’t any extra cost be at least marginally different when we spring forward vs. falling back? The Prop 7 authors don’t differentiate between springing forward and falling back, but they should. I am not alone in enjoying falling back. We get an extra hour of sleep, for one thing. Meanwhile, for a few days after this time change, when my body feels like it’s an hour later than the clock says, I have an easier time falling asleep at night, which is a real boon. And in the morning, when my circadian rhythms get me up before my alarm? That’s glorious! I’m up and around, I’m getting shit done—it’s like a better me! Contrast this to typical mornings when you’re snoozing your alarm again and again and feeling weak and worthless. I always find it a shame when I get used to the fall time change.

“Since 2000, 14 countries have stopped changing their clocks. And now 68% of all the countries don't do it.” Okay, first of all, “stopped changing their clocks” doesn’t necessarily mean they went to full-time DST as this proposition aims to do. In many cases it means they stopped observing DST altogether. So it doesn’t even matter if the authors of Prop 7 pulled these numbers, too, out of their asses. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting which countries observe DST, isn’t it? I mean, should we blindly mimic whichever behaviors are the most widely adopted? Here’s a map (from Wikipedia) showing which countries observe DST:

Virtually the entire developed world observes DST only part of the year. Most of the countries abstaining are in the third world—hardly an ideal role model. The main exception is Russia, which tried out full-time DST from 2011 to 2014 before abandoning it, based on the people not liking it. Now they don’t observe DST at all (i.e., they do the opposite of what Prop 7 seeks to do).

“Opponents of Proposition 7 can't dispute the scientific and economic facts showing that the changing of clocks twice a year is hazardous to our health and our economy.” What do you mean we “can’t”? I just did!

A legitimate argument for permanent DST

Oddly, there is at least one reasonable argument for switching to DST full-time: lowering violent crime. As cited here, “A study by the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration found that crime was consistently less during periods of Daylight Saving Time than during comparable standard time periods. Data showed violent crime down 10 to 13 percent. It is clear that for most crimes where darkness is a factor, such as muggings, there are many more incidents after dusk than before dawn, so light in the evening is most welcome.”

At least this factoid says who did the study. Not that it’s clear this study is legit; when I googled it, all I found were three different sources all trotting out the same three sentences you just read, verbatim, with no citation given. (Plagiarism increases 25% whenever we change our clocks!)

But at least the notion kind of makes sense. You’d expect a mugger to be a night owl, wouldn’t you? A lot more potential victims would be up and around at, say, 9 p.m. than 6 a.m. Violent crime just doesn’t seem like something a morning person would do.

So why didn’t the writers of Prop 7 advance this argument, which at least passes the sanity test? Beats me. Perhaps it didn’t occur to them … which begs the question, why would they want permanent DST to begin with? Another mystery.

What’s wrong with permanent DST?

Okay, I’ll grant you that the assortment of lousy justifications the Prop 7 folks gave for permanent DST doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad idea. If a dumb kid touted Hawaii as a good vacation spot because you get to watch movies on the flight to Honolulu, you might not be swayed by his argument—but that doesn’t mean Hawaii isn’t lovely. So, could permanent DST be a fine idea, whether it prevents heart attacks or not?

Well, I’d prefer permanent DST to opting out of DST altogether. If we didn’t do DST at all, the sun would rise at 4:46 a.m. in mid-June in the Bay Area. That isn’t doing anybody any good (except cyclists who love to get in 80 miles before 9 a.m., but who cares about them?). On the flip side, having the sun set at 8:35 p.m. in late June is highly useful.

But what would we gain by adopting permanent DST? Well, the sun wouldn’t set until 6 p.m. instead of 5 on December 31. Yeah, that’s not bad, but consider how late the sun would rise. For two months—from early December to early February—my kids would be biking to school before sunrise. That means they’d have to be responsible about keeping their bike lights charged up—and what teenager was ever on top of details like that? Sounds like an accident in the making. When Russia tried out permanent DST, the late sunrise was the biggest complaint.

Now, in asking “what would we gain,” it’s crucial to be clear about who “we” means: if Prop 7 passed, and the federal government decided to follow suit and allow California to adopt full-time DST, we’d get our later sunset, sure—but we’d also have to endure a huge lot of hassle being out of sync with the rest of the Pacific time zone. I have written about this type of problem before, in my first Daylight Saving Time post:

Today, Monday, was rough. At work, an 11:00 a.m. conference call threw people into a tailspin because the recurring appointment had been set up in the e-mail/calendar program by somebody in the Arizona time zone, where DST is not observed. For those outside Arizona, the call automatically jumped forward by an hour on our electronic calendars. For example, in San Francisco, Pacific Standard Time switched to Pacific Daylight Time so the call was bumped to noon; even past iterations of the call show up in our calendar software as having been at noon. To the person who set up the call, everything seemed normal, but we had to decide whether to move the call or not. After a dozen instant messages among colleagues across three time zones, we compromised on rescheduling today’s call for 11:30 a.m. PDT. We do this little dance twice a year.

I think opting out of DST makes more sense for Arizona than full-time DST does for California, for two reasons. First of all, Arizona is hotter than blazes, so having a really early sunrise gives people a chance to get outdoors for some exercise when the weather is nice, before starting their workday. (I used to travel to Arizona on business quite a bit, and loved me some early morning hikes.) Second, in terms of interstate business, Arizona just isn’t as important as California so their stubbornness doesn’t affect as many people. I know that sounds harsh, but it is what it is.

How did this absurd Proposition pass?

I’ve talked to a number of friends about Prop 7 to try to figure out how it passed, and they all fall into one of three categories: 1) they were completely against it; 2) they didn’t understand it and didn’t try very hard to; or 3) they ignored it and didn’t vote one way or the other.

One friend thought Prop 7 backed out Dubya’s extension of the DST period. Another thought it simply did away with changing the clocks, but never considered what downstream implications this would have. But you know what? The positions my friends took are not the point. My friends do not comprise a representative cross-section of California voters. For that, I’d need to go to traffic school or something (and I don’t need to, my recent flap with a traffic cop notwithstanding).

I will never know what, if anything, went through the minds of the millions of Californians who voted YES on Prop 7. My best guess is that this outcome resulted indirectly from a previous initiative from the last election: Proposition 64, which legalized weed in this state.

Will Prop 7 have any effect?

Okay, so regardless of whether or not Prop 7 makes any sense, it’s the political equivalent of pissing into the wind anyway—it will never have any effect on voters’ lives.

How can I so confidently assert this? Well, think about it. Only Congress can change the federal law that prohibits states from adopting permanent DST. And who is in Congress? Well, it’s representatives and senators from all 50 states. Sure, California has a lot of representatives—53 out of 435 (about 12% of the total), but we only represent two votes in the Senate. Whatever benefits we might think we’d get from full-time DST, it would be a hassle for 49 other states. What possible incentive would the vast majority of non-Californians have to change the federal law and allow California to be a pain in everyone’s ass? Zero incentive. So what’s the plan here … we just ask really nicely?

Okay, fine, Prop 7 gave the California Legislature the authority to pursue permanent DST … but who cares? Whatever effort is made now will be a complete waste of time and energy. I truly hope the Legislature lets this die on the vine.

Epilogue - one year later

As detailed in this follow-up post, a year after this passed nothing has changed. Nor will it. As I said, Prop 7 was a total waste of everyone’s time...

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

My Brief Foray into Politics

Introduction

This post does not concern, nor reveal, my political views.  As I stated in my very first albertnet post, politics is a topic I avoid.  Why?  First of all, I don’t have enough readers to risk alienating half of them.  Second, politics is boring.  I firmly believe that most political dialogue between non-professionals is pointless.  Either you disagree with the other person and will never come to agreement, or the two of you already agree, in which case the dialogue is just reiterating each other’s opinions (or splitting hairs, which doesn’t generally change anybody’s vote).  I’ve personally never met an undecided voter.  I acknowledge they exist but this amazes me.

This post tells the story of my brief foray into politics, a couple decades ago, as a Precinct Captain during a Presidential election.  This was when I was a student.  My college career happened to span two such elections, with a different party winning each time.  I reckon I can safely tell my story without you figuring out which side I support(ed).

(I thought this would be a recycled “from the archives” essay, but discovered that most of my original version emphasized the wrong things.  The fun, human details that stand out in memory were largely missing from the original essay.  So I’m recycling some stuff here, but dredging up the more interesting details from memory.  Here’s a teaser:  a girl was involved.) 

My brief foray into politics

It all started with a knock at the door from some guy handing out political paraphernalia.  He represented the candidate I supported, so—being bored, idealistic, and bereft of the “refusal skills” they tried to teach us in junior high health class—I coughed up my name and phone number as a potential volunteer.  A week later, the phone awakened me from a late slumber.  The caller was a girl and asked for me by name.  I’d only moved to town a couple months before and didn’t know a lot of people, so this seemed too good to be true.  Her name was Charlie.  If you don’t think that’s a sexy name for a college girl, maybe that’s only because you haven’t heard her voice.  If she’s not running a political campaign today, she might be making a great living as a deejay or voice actor.  She “reminded” me (actually, I’d been ignorant) about the big rally the next day.

I decided to go.  Not because I’m a natural-born volunteer, which I am not, and not because I was a politically wild-eyed college kid, and not because I was looking for something that would “look good on my résumé” (having the good sense even then to leave out this kind of thing).  After two decades of reflection, I’m able to admit that my main motivation for attending was to meet Charlie and see if she was as attractive in person as she’d sounded on the phone.

The student pavilion was absolutely mobbed.  After much trumpeting, ballyhooing, and a few introductory speeches, a big boss asked each volunteer to state his or her name, organization, and reason for attending.  This threatened to take forever; the first few students gave long tirades about their beliefs, etc.  Fortunately, a lot of others (perhaps sensing the growing danger of death-by-blather) gave very brief intros like, “My name is Joe Blow and I’m hung over” or “Her name is Jane Doe and she’s shy.”

When it came to my turn I said, “I’m Dana Albert and I’m here because I disagree with almost everything [Candidate X] stands for.”  This was met with cheering and laughing and I was on the verge of thinking I had a talent for politics until somebody said, “Wait—almost everything?”  I feared I might be pilloried but there was just more laughing.  Everybody seemed pretty punch-drunk, which may well be normal at such gatherings.

Then we got down to the strategy for Election Day.  Each precinct would have a Precinct Captain who would lead a team of “walkers” to blanket the region, knocking on doors to hand out paraphernalia and remind people to vote.  Every door in every precinct would be hit three times.  This sounded like a whole lot of work and I considered slipping out and running for my life.  Once you’ve demonstrated a willingness to do volunteer slave labor, I reasoned, you’re marked for life.

On the other hand, I theorized that being a Precinct Captain instead of just a foot soldier might involve some interesting work and a lot less walking.  Who knows, maybe I was a bit punch-drunk myself, because I bit the bullet and volunteered for Captain.  Just like that, my apartment became the headquarters for Precinct 34-11.

The Precinct Captains gathered at one end of the pavilion to head up the walker recruiting process.  The volunteer pool was surprisingly small, to my dismay.  What’s worse, the other Captains actually knew how to recruit:  “Yo, free beers for anyone in my precinct!” and  “Coffee and doughnuts over here!” Being broke, I wasn’t about to pony anything up, so I scanned the room for anybody who looked like he could be cajoled, via mere words, into joining my team.  My eyes happened to settle on a singularly attractive young woman, and I was so stunned when she returned my gaze that I just froze, cowering inwardly.  Only the fear of being rude kept me from instantly averting my eyes.  I probably looked like a scared little puppy dog who’s made a mess on the rug that his master is soon to discover.  But to my surprise, the girl didn’t scorn me; in fact, she walked over.  And astonishingly, she turned out to be Charlie herself!

Actually, this only seemed astonishing at the time, and if you happened to read my original account you’d have thought I was a master of dramatic irony (i.e., the literary technique where the reader figures things out that the hapless narrator does not).  But actually, I was just clueless.  Only now, in retrospect, do I realize that Charlie came over not because I was looking at her, but because I’d stood up and stated my name a few minutes before, so she knew who I was; i.e., she realized I was the hapless last-minute recruit she’d telephoned the previous day, who had now recklessly named himself a Precinct Captain despite lacking the knowledge and volunteer base to cover a precinct.  My puppy-dog look had only increased her pity.  Surely this is why she—a higher-up party operative—agreed to be one of my walkers, for at least part of my shift.

Unfortunately, it would take a lot more than one volunteer to blanket my precinct three times over.  I wasn’t the only understaffed Captain; one of the big bosses announced, “It looks like we're really short on volunteers, so the best thing you can do is call up your friends and get them to help you.”  I thought about raising my hand and saying, “What if I don’t have any friends?”  This would have been taken as a joke, and yet the reality was, the friendships I had made were still too new and shaky to withstand this kind of burden.

And so, later that afternoon, I went around to all the apartments in my complex with my signs and posters to beg for support.  Only one neighbor agreed to help, and he wouldn’t commit to a specific time, which made him as good as worthless.  Going into Election Day, I had to kiss goodbye my dream of assembling a crack team of precinct-walking superstars, ruling over them with friendly yet absolute authority, earning their respect as a fearless leader, and then kicking back all day and watching the votes roll in.  But things weren’t all bad; after all, I was Precinct Captain over one of the most beautiful girls on campus.

I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. on Election Day.  The first task of our crew was hanging last-minute campaign signs all over town.  It was hard to see the point of this; perhaps the idea was to put on a show of great effort in order to guilt lazy voters into actually making it to the polls.  Then it was time for the first door-to-door shift.  Charlie had her real job to do until 3:30 p.m., but I was able to coax the party bosses into assigning me a couple of professional walkers who had come all the way from Washington, DC.  Despite 34-11 being a notoriously large precinct, every door was knocked on by 11 a.m. and I did only 45 minutes of walking myself.

I spent the early afternoon calling in the poll results and handling a few other clerical matters.  I was dreading the second walking shift because I had no volunteers and would have to do the whole precinct myself.  But check this out:  the neighbor I’d recruited not only showed up, but brought his brother!  The three of us covered the second wave in good time, so that when Charlie showed up at 3:30 I was already back at HQ and probably looked like I knew what I was doing.

I had to walk a lot during the final shift, by which time people seemed pretty sick of seeing us.  Going door-to-door was actually kind of fun; seeing college kids at home is kind of like seeing animals in the wild.  A lot of them seemed to be napping, and it wasn’t uncommon for pot smoke to billow out as the door opened.  I knocked on one door, heard a lot of shrieking and scuffling, and eventually it opened a crack and a girl giggled, “None of us are dressed!”  At another place the tenant, who’d been sprawling on a couch half asleep, roused himself to start arguing with me.  I explained that I didn’t have time to discuss the election, at which point his girlfriend took up the job.  They were really going at it as I left.

At 8:15 I headed over to the mandatory meeting of all the Precinct Captains.  I guess if our candidate had triumphed this would have been a big party, and there was certainly enough alcohol laid in for that purpose.  But our guy lost.  The state of the headquarters (somebody’s house) reflected the wreckage of the campaign:  all kinds of flyers and other paraphernalia, now completely useless, littered the floor; posters were beginning to curl and slide down the walls; charts of the periodic precinct checks displayed the carnage numerically.  I imagined being one of the bosses recording these numbers, the cause being slowly tortured to death before their very eyes. 

I went into the living room, where everybody was gathered around watching our candidate’s concession speech.  I don’t think advance polling was much of a thing back then, so this loss hadn’t been predicted.  Still, I was surprised at how nobody seemed braced for this eventuality.  It was like somebody had died … everyone was so depressed.

Maybe nobody wanted to be the first to leave, because we all hung around for a good while, some people drinking pretty heavily.  Maybe all the guys were waiting for a chance to hit on Charlie, which to be honest was the main reason I myself stuck around.  It did seem a bit crass to be pursuing such a selfish personal ambition under the circumstances, but then, defying my hormones to pursue extended mourning wouldn’t change anything anyway.  Life goes on, right? 

I nursed a single beer for so long it became warm in my hand, and I must have zoned out for a good while.  When I did my next casual scan of the room to see what Charlie was up to, I was startled to discover two things.  One, almost everybody seemed to have vanished, as though they’d been quietly dismissed or spontaneously bailed en masse.  Two, Charlie was totally making out with some guy!

Dammit!  This disappointment oddly mirrored that of the election itself.  In both cases, I hadn’t really had my hopes up but was nonetheless shocked to see them so suddenly dashed.  And who was the lucky guy?  I didn’t recognize him as one of the leaders, and he wasn’t particularly good looking or even well-dressed.  What was his secret?  Confidence, probably.  Yeah, even with (or especially with) his face mashed into Charlie’s, he exuded charisma.  Well, good for him.  Hell, he’d probably been working on Charlie for the whole damn election … who was I to think I could swoop in at the end, coordinate some pointless door-to-door campaign activity on Election Day, and sweep this gorgeous and important young woman off her feet?

Adding insult to injury, I now had to figure how to make a graceful exit.  Sneaking away seemed cowardly and antisocial.  But I couldn’t just tap Charlie on the shoulder to bid her farewell.  What would I say?  “Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to say goodbye and thanks for … everything.”  And what would I say to the guy?  Offer him my congratulations?  It was all just so awkward. 

But then all the empty beer cans and bottles littering the place gave me an idea.  I was seated at a table and kind of slumped over it for a spell.  Then I let out a little groan and slowly pitched myself out of my chair, slipping down off the table and sprawling out on the floor.  To complete the illusion of being passed out drunk, I let my beer bottle slip from my hand and roll a short way across the floor.  I remained as still as possible, eyes slitted.

Charlie’s new boyfriend chuckled and said, “Looks like somebody’s overdone it.”  He and Charlie walked over and helped me to my feet.  I staggered and slurred as they walked me—my arms around their shoulders—to the door.  “You gonna be okay, buddy?” the guy asked, showing off to Charlie as the cool big brother figure.  Well played, sir! 

I did my best impression of a drunk foolishly assuring them I was fine, and tottered away into the night.  As the door closed behind me, I even started singing in an off-key, maudlin way.  As I contemplated Charlie and her guy resuming their make-out session—and escalating it, now that they had their privacy—I continued singing, all the way down the block, until some guy yelled to shut up.  Forgetting for the moment that I wasn’t actually drunk, I shouted back some mild, halfhearted obscenities.  Then I headed home, exhausted and dejected.

Did I learn anything from my brief foray into politics?  Not really … just something I’d already guessed, which is that no political effort, however humble or lofty, small or large, grassroots or massively funded, will ever exclude personal ambition of one sort or another.  There’s nothing wrong with this, of course.  Somebody’s got to do that work, and I can’t begrudge those folks their well-earned rewards.

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Glutted by Campaign Signs

Introduction

I think a lot of people are relieved to have the election over. Personally, I won’t miss all the campaign signs stuck in people’s yards. I’m not exactly against this practice—in fact, I had a sign in my own yard this year—but I’m not exactly for it, either.

Why campaign signs are a problem

First of all, I never quite understood the point of these signs. How, exactly, do they promote the candidate or ballot proposition? My kids asked me this question and I had trouble answering. (When I can’t explain something to my kids, that’s often a sign that it doesn’t actually make sense.)

Sure, there’s name recognition. But how principled is that? I remember seeing Chevy’s win “Best Mexican restaurant in SF” in a local newspaper, which shows only that a lot of voters who don’t eat Mexican food just wrote down whatever name popped into their heads. Is this really how we want to elect candidates for local office? Shouldn’t we be voting based on ideology and competence, not mere recognition?

I can’t very well tell my kids that the signs work the same way Coca-Cola billboards do, because then my kids would challenge me on the sign in our own yard. I’ve taught my kids, by example and through lectures, to boycott any product that advertises heavily. Why? Well, I hate ads. I find them obtrusive, and worse. When I drink a Coke, I think about how little the product costs to make, and yet how much the Coca-Cola company spends on advertising (close to $3 billion a year). That means that most of what I spent on my Coke is going toward ads to sell more of it, not just to skinny cyclists like me who need it, but also to sedentary kids who don’t. So I’m helping pay for a public health problem.

Getting back to campaign signs: my wife has pointed out that the willingness of homeowners to put these signs out shows that the candidate is well-connected and well-regarded in the community. A fair point. On the other hand, signs cost money, so the rampant signage in local campaigns starts to look like the greater arms race of the national elections, where the best-financed candidates often have an unfair advantage.

Some of the signs have slogans or very, very brief arguments on them. This makes some sense; the phrase “Endorsed by Sierra Club” does, I think, say something meaningful about a candidate. But other times these brief arguments are just blather. It’s hard to be articulate on a sign people see only in passing. It’s the same way with t-shirts and bumper stickers. “Obama 2012” is a simple enough message on a bumper sticker (though it’s a bit redundant when stuck on a Prius in Albany). Similarly, “I’m With Stupid” is easy to read on a person’s t-shirt, but we often miss the longer message on her husband’s shirt (usually something like, “The statement on my wife’s shirt is meant ironically, as a subtle dig at the hackneyed and vapid messaging of tourist trap souvenir merchandise. She actually respects my intelligence”).

Another problem I have with campaign signs is that they might influence voters in ways the candidate didn’t expect. What if the house and yard, not to mention the homeowners themselves, unknowingly reflect badly on the candidate? For example, my lawn is dead, and has three jack-o-lanterns rotting in it. Is that what my candidate would have chosen for a backdrop?

It’s not just the lawn either. My car, parked right out front, is a big gas-guzzler by Albany standards, and is usually covered with guano splotches from the birds roosting in our trees. Worst of all, I often play loud music while working on my bike in the driveway. What does it say about a candidate when you walk by his supporter’s house, see the candidate’s name on the sign out front, and then hear some rocker yelling “Love is a four-letter word never spoken here!”? I doubt my candidate knows about, or would approve, this message.

You might think I’m just joking around, and of course I am, but I’m also serious. What if a candidate gets a sign in somebody’s yard, and then that somebody also posts a sign supporting a ballot proposition which the candidate opposes? (An example would be a candidate endorsed by the Sierra Club whose sign shares a lawn with a sign supporting Proposition A1, which the Sierra Club didn’t support and, some say, should have actively opposed.) Such a juxtaposition could get awkward if the candidate notices it, or detrimental to his cause if he doesn’t.

My final issue with campaign signs is that they tend to beget more signs. No sooner did our candidate’s sign go up then two other candidates, one of whom I’d never met, asked if they, too, could put signs in our yard. Well, given that they’re running against my candidate, might not this cause a conflict in some cases? Sure, voters get to choose three candidates for City Council, but what if two, or all three, of these candidates disagree with one another? How many messaging collisions can one lawn stand?

Meanwhile, the more signs one candidate has, the more the others have to have, and pretty soon there are signs everywhere. Not just on the main streets, but throughout the neighborhoods. On Election Day I went out for a bike ride and was hoping to put worldly cares behind me, but there were dozens of signs at the Marin Circle fountain, signs on Spruce Street, signs on Wildcat Canyon Road, and—I kid you not—a guy biking up Claremont Ave with a big campaign sign attached to his bike frame. (Was the sign on his bike full time, or did he attach it and hit the road to try to capture the elusive but important cyclist vote?)

It seemed I couldn’t escape. When I passed Marin Circle again on my way home, a dozen or so volunteers were standing there waving signs around. A harmless spectacle, but a bit over the top. I thought of telling them, “If you were dressed up like alligators or bears or something, I’d vote for your candidate.” To me, the election itself is very important but all these signs are just a distraction.

The alternative to campaign signs

I can begin to understand the difficulty of trying to campaign for local office. I don’t think these candidates get any TV time (though I can’t confirm this, lacking TV service in my home). The candidates do have highly informative websites, and our local online newspaper did a few features on the candidates’ positions (like this one). But realistically, we’re Californians—we almost don’t have time for instant gratification—and we can’t be expected to do any research. I think we can be counted on to read the brief statement in the voter guide, but that’s really too little, too late.

I guess that’s why signs are so popular: voters don’t have to seek them out, and they match our attention spans. But as I’ve said, they don’t tell us nearly enough. So what’s the solution?

Believe it or not, I have one, and I think it’ll work. My proposal is a simple matter of retooling the template for the voter guide statement, to give these statements the extra oomph they need.

I got my idea from the statements of support and opposition for the ballot propositions. It’s a nice debate, in literary form. I love the idea of a campaign hinging on the quality of the prose that the candidate can create. (Actually, in a perfect world, these statements would be in sonnet form, with copious footnotes, to showcase the candidate’s intellectual mettle.) You get one shot at convincing the voters … don’t blow it.

So, instead of a general paragraph from the candidate that simply states what kinds of issues he or she is interested in and what he or she supports, the first section of the candidate statement would be an essay answering a basic question: what is your dream legislation? In other words, if you could push through any new law you wanted, what would it be? The answer to this question would get to the core of each candidate’s values.

Here’s an example:  “My dream legislation would be this:  automakers selling to this market would be required to install special switches in car horns that would cause the airbag to deploy if the horn is held down for more than two seconds.”

Here’s another:  “I would push through an annual ‘Composting Holiday.’  One day a year, residents would be allowed to throw their compost in the garbage pail like they used to, guilt-free.  This would raise awareness for composting while giving everybody a much-needed break.”

And:  “To make bicycling safer for everyone, riding with headphones would be against the law, punishable by having the police officer smash your MP3 player with his nightstick while you watch.”

A final example:  “I would introduce a ‘Teen Texting Tariff.’  Cell-provider accounting relays would count every cell phone text message sent by every teenager.  Each text would ‘cost’ one minute of community service.  Twice per year, teenagers would report for their work detail, which would consist of something like cleaning up a park or building a community garden.  These would be phone-free events where teens could commiserate, non-virtually, while giving back to the community they have so abused by being rude, pithed, glazed-over phone-zombies 24x7.”

The other change to the voter guide statements would be the introduction of formalized attacks, like the attack ads that are so successful in the national elections.  I know this sounds a bit nutty, but consider for a moment that an attack ad says as much about the attacker as it does about his target. 

For example, during the very first election I was old enough to vote in, I remember George H.W. Bush calling Michael Dukakis a “tax-and-spend liberal.”  I was puzzled, thinking, “That’s so weird.  Bush says that like it’s a bad thing.”

Attack ads might be tricky for Albany city council candidates, since their ideologies don’t actually vary that much. It’s not like in this last go-round we had a candidate saying, “I just moved here from Houston, where things are done right, and I’m gonna turn this backwards town around!” But I’m sure there are ways for our best and brightest to find fault. Since I don’t have any dirt on our actual candidates from this last election, I’ll provide examples of how they might have attacked me, had I been running against them.

For starters: “Albert can’t even get his kids to school on time. I often see him racing down the sidewalk with his daughter on his bike, after the bell has rung, and she’s begging him to go faster. If he can’t manage this simple task on his own kid’s behalf, how is he going to be effective in government?”

Or: “Sources close to Albert have told me that he often flips through his wife’s ‘Victoria’s Secret’ and ‘Anthropologie’ catalogs, even though there’s nothing in them that he could possibly buy. I think we all know what he’s looking at, and it’s not the sizing charts!”

Perhaps: “Sources close to Albert have told me he sometimes throws used tea bags right into the trash can. And yet he claims to support composting!”

A final example: “Albert is completely out of touch with this community. While everybody else was celebrating the Giants’ victory in the World Series, he was barely aware of it. I mentioned it to him and he said, ‘Um, yeah, that was great. We beat the Houston Oilers, right?’”

So there you have it. If I had to sum up my strategy in a blurb that would fit on a campaign sign, I guess I’d put it this way: “The pen is mightier than the sign.” But you won’t find that message in anybody’s yard in 2014.

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