New York note: Flip your ballot!

Just 20 Seconds on Unifying People pic.twitter.com/JfBVqccNkv

— John C. Liu (@LiuNewYork) October 29, 2018

All Pastrami to the Oppressed People! This deeply Queensian picture is so happy.

Hi New York City residents! Don't forget to vote tomorrow, and don't forget to turn your ballot over and vote on the the revision proposals to the New York City Charter, and vote yes on all of them:

1. Campaign finance limits for city elections (reducing the maximum contribution in top citywide races from $5200 to $2000) and increase in the matching funds provided by the city (from $6 for every dollar in matchable contributions to $8), which is supposed to be a step toward complete public financing while, in the meantime, encouraging more small donors.
2. A commission to develop a participatory budgeting process, bringing citizens into the decision-making process. A lot of city councilpersons are doing a modest and perhaps mostly theatrical experimental version of this already—my Helen Rosenthal being one of them, staging events outside the subway stop at 72nd and Broadway where passersby are invited to put ideas into the suggestion box—and it's hoped that the commission will come up with something more formalized and effective than that.
3. Term limits for the unpaid and unelected members of the city's 59 community boards, who are appointed to two-year terms by city council members and borough presidents and give mainly advice on land use and zoning. These will be staggered so that when some members leave the institutional memory won't be wiped out, and indeed old members will be continue to be involved if they want and permitted be reappointed after some specific period out of office; the idea isn't to get rid of them but to bring in new, younger, blood.

There's only one race I really want to call attention to, the state senate contest in the 11th District, Queens (Bayside) where Tony Avella, the last holdout of the old "Independent Democratic Caucus", continues to fight the progressive candidate who defeated him in the September primary, on Independence Party and Women's Equality Party lines (the Women's Equality Party is a paper organization invented by Governor Cuomo in 2014 without, as far as I know, the benefit of any women), possibly with the intention of throwing the thing to the Republicans. Liu is a real Democrat and a good one. Across the board, just think Democrats Democrats Democrats.

And look especially at the state legislatures, which is where my tweep Dick Nixon (possibly the best, and most generous, of these parody things on the whole platform) thinks the biggest story is. What Republicans did to us over the past 20-odd years looks like it may be about to repeat in single cycle:

The real Democrat success will be at state level and that will continue to be undersold.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) November 5, 2018