Voting, 2020

Choices, choices....

When I posted on this topic a lifetime ago in 2016, I made two predictions: that Trump would not be elected (wrong), and that he would be a disaster from a climate point of view if he were (too, too right). Facing the 2020 election, I repeat these assertions, though I would change one thing: Trump has shown himself not to be an undirected force where the climate is concerned, but an active and highly successful agent in retarding or even reversing progress on the environment. The situation in 2016 was already dire, the lost years may have made it irretrievably so. The only positive note is that awareness of the climate catastrophe has grown--being unable to breathe focuses the attention wonderfully.

Voting for Biden/Harris requires no thought (and if you think otherwise, please do reach out to me), but there's more to be decided than just that. Our House Rep is up for reelection (yes, I'll take the Dem over the Republican, who lists his occupation as "Cashier," though honestly I don't know what I'd do if the situation were reversed), as is our state assemblyman (or will we vote for an assemblywoman?). But mostly what's at stake here is control of the schools and of the town (give Chance a chance!): local politics, thus, so not of interest to my mostly non-local readership.

That's all I will say this time 'round about voting for people. But California has a proposition system, so I need to vote on ideas, too. Figuring that out is time-consuming: it's easy enough to react to a proposal, but propositions as stated on the ballot may be very different from those same propositions in effect. Research is required, so research I did, spending many an hour (OK, maybe two) inside the Lincoln/Douglas debate for each one. In the end (and I did not check this until the end), my preferences tallied exactly with those of the California Democratic party's. Except for one thing: they offer no recommendation for Prop 24 and I do.

Prop 24 concerns itself with an issue near to my heart: consumer privacy laws. This is an especially important matter here in California, which, in the absence of federal leadership, is the strongest US force supporting privacy rights. Does 24 move us closer to a new regime in which each individual's data is recognized as uniquely sensitive, uniquely valuable, and uniquely deserving of the protections of law? The answer is yes and no, which is why neither the Dems nor even that most opinionated of online organizations, the EFF, support or oppose it. So why do I urge you, my probably non-eligible reader, to vote NO on 24? Three reasons:

1. The single most impactful change we could make to the existing California Consumer Protection Act is to make opt out the default selection for data collection permissions. Prop 24 doesn't change the current standard, which means that most of us will continue to be opted in, and the rest of us will eventually give up on opting out as data collection schemes find new ways to make it increasingly laborious to do so.
2. Prop 24 would end the CCPA's protection of biometric data. That would be a terrible mistake: in the age of facial recognition and Fitbits, biometric data needs more protections and a broader definition of what is included in that rubric, not less.
   
3. Prop 24 does not allow consumers to sue businesses for privacy violations, instead inviting a to-be data protection agency to guard our interests. But the struggles of similar agencies in Europe do not give me a lot of hope for this approach, or not, at any rate, as a standalone means of enforcement. We need to be able to sue the bastards because only then will they behave. Maybe.

One final comment: your vote doesn't count unless it's counted. Voting fraud by individuals is negligible, but I'm not as sanguine about vote counting. No, this is not the start of another conspiracy theory, but rather a recognition that there's a lot of work to be done tallying votes, that humans make mistakes, and that it's an easy enough thing to check the status of your ballot, so do so. Then, come November, check the results!

UPDATE: How'd it turn out? Well, I got my ballot in...

But not everything went as I wished it:

California is my home, but even more so, Marin.