Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

U.S. House, Virginia, 2020

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Seal of the U.S. House of Representatives
Seal of the U.S. House

All seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are up for election every two years. There are 435 seats, representing each of the fifty states in rough proportion to their population as recorded in the most recent national census. There are an additional six non-voting delegate seats representing U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.

The Democratic Party currently holds a 232-198 majority over the Republican Party in the House. One seat is held by a Libertarian (who was originally elected as a Republican) and four seats are vacant. Virginia has eleven seats in the House, with seven held by Democrats and four held by Republicans.

Tenth District

In the race to represent Virginia’s Tenth District in the United States House of Representatives, incumbent Representative Jennifer Wexton (D-VA 10th) is seeking reelection and is challenged by Aliscia Andrews (R).

The Tenth District encompasses Clarke County, Frederick County, Loudoun County, the cities of Manassas and Winchester, and parts of Fairfax and Prince William counties.

Read more . . .

Virginia Statewide Ballot Issues, 2020

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Seal of Virginia
Seal of Virginia

Article XII, Section 1, of the Constitution of Virginia establishes a process for amending the commonwealth’s constitution.

The state Senate or the House of Delegates proposes amendments and, after having been passed through both houses, they are then presented to the voters for approval. Once approved by the voters, the state constitution is amended as specified, and that change can only be reversed by repeating the amendment process.

Citizens of Virginia will be voting on two constitutional amendments in this year’s November election, each of which would change or add text to the Constitution of Virginia.

Question 1: Redistricting Commission

In the United States, apportionment between the states in the U.S. House of Representatives is (roughly) proportional to each state’s population as determined in the decennial census. Each state is responsible for establishing the boundaries of its House districts in a process called “redistricting.” States must also draw the boundaries for their state legislative districts.

Read more . . .

Loudoun County Bond Referendums, 2020

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Seal of Loudoun County
Seal of Loudoun County

Article VII, Section 10, of the Constitution of Virginia requires local governments to obtain voter approval to issue bonds. Voters in Loudoun County, Virginia, will be asked to consider four bond referendums on this year’s ballot.

Bonds are debt. When they are sold, the issuing government receives an influx of cash from the purchasers. But, like a bank loan, that money must be repaid over time with interest.

Like any other loan, bonds should be used only when necessary. Most projects should be funded directly from the general fund (i.e., from the “money in the bank”). Only when some specific project is very important, but too large to fund directly, should we turn to using bonds for financing.

School Projects

Voters in Loudoun County, Virginia, will be asked in a referendum to authorize the county to issue up to $123,755,000 in general obligation bonds for school projects. These would be used for the Douglass School renewal, other facility renewals and alterations, improvements to school security, and “other public school facilities.”

Much of what I have to say about this will sound familiar to my readers. There are school bonds on almost every ballot, and I almost always have the same thing to say about them.

Read more . . .

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In 2016, I proposed a system of scoring political candidates (and especially presidential candidates) according to their level of support for the specific provisions of the Bill of Rights. Later that year, I rated the presidential candidates on the Virginia ballot. Now it’s time to do it with the 2020 candidates on Virginia’s presidential ballot.

The details of the scoring methodology are not repeated here. If you are interested in a more detailed treatment of the score components, you can refer back to that original post. You can also take a look below the chart for some notes that explain some of the scores, especially those that are based on assumptions rather than explicit statements by the candidates.

As I noted on the original post, the only good/acceptable score is an A+ (100%). Because presidents are sworn to protect and defend the constitution, they must comply with every single one of its provisions. Scores of A and B (80-99%) are bad. Scores of C and D (60-79%) are really bad. Scores of F (0-59%) are really, really bad.

Read more . . .

Trump Nominates Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court

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Amy Coney Barrett

President Donald Trump (R) will nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court. Barrett is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Barrett would replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died earlier this month of complications from pancreatic cancer. Ginsburg was part of the court’s ‘progressive wing’ and an advocate of the living constitution school of jurisprudence. Barrett is a ‘conservative’ jurist of either the originalist or textualist school. If confirmed, she would likely shift the ideological balance of the court from centrist or narrowly conservative to a more solid conservative majority.

Barrett worked as a law clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. She has taught at the George Washington University School of Law and the Notre Dame Law School. At Notre Dame, she has won numerous awards and her scholarship has focused primarily on constitutional law. Barrett was nominated to the U.S. Count of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate with a bipartisan 55-43 vote.

Republican leaders claimed in 2016 that it was inappropriate to act on a Supreme Court nomination in a presidential election year, but they have since reversed their positions, citing either the treatment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh by Democrats during his confirmation hearings, or the alignment of the presidency and majority party in the Senate (a nuance that, curiously, was never mentioned in 2016). It appears very likely that the Senate will take up Barrett’s nomination and hold a vote before the November election.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.