2/ My own work consists in just a slice of the above: the local politics of criminal justice are often overlooked, & hard to decipher given a reluctance to address policy.
Hence months of preparation to draw out what's happening, laid out in this thread:
In my assessment, FIVE counties are *doubly* high-stakes criminal justice hotspots next week: they have both a DA race *and* a sheriff race that features real stakes for mass incarceration & criminal justice reform.
These counties are in: GA, OH, AZ, SC, and MI.
Brief thread.
1/ Maricopa County, AZ, undoubtedly tops the list here. Because it's huge. & because it matters.
seriously! the Onion's joke here is about a man caring about an Illinois Supreme Court election... & one of my favorite pieces to work on this year was this essential @KyleCBarry agenda-setter on... the Illinois Supreme Court!
the Onion also names check @injusticewatch's amazing guide to Cook County judicial elections, which yes if you live in the county you should actually be aware of & share!
Also this fascinating @henryredrobin article on the debates on the unfairness of the criminal legal system via the DA election of a small Wisconsin county, a very rare county with a contested DA race in the entire state. wisconsinexaminer.com/2020/08/13/sha…
Turnout rate in 2016, as of 14 days from ED:
—12% of registered Dems, 10% of registered Republicans, 7% of others
Turnout rate in 2020, as of 15 days from ED:
—31% of registered Dems, 19% of registered Republicans, 18% of others
Colorado has in-person options that Republicans who want to avoid mail-in voting will use. But it’s also a universal mail-in state so you’d expect many more to vote that way than elsewhere—and indeed you see a same rush to vote among them too. But Dems’ urgency off chart.
To sum up... I don’t know what to make of all of this, other than to say that the patterns bear little resemblance to past cycles, so we’re all just waiting.