Hello there, and welcome to this very special Trash Report, which is all about elections! Listen, if shit goes south on election day and our constitutional rights to things like a free press are dissolved, then there will be no more cool newspapers like this one, so if you’re reading this in print, keep your copy—it could be a collector’s item some day!

It’s been such a wild and crazy election year, and what good is enduring trauma if we can’t laugh about it together? If the American electoral system and the discourse surrounding it are lemons, then please consider this column your complimentary lemonade.

National Trash

The race for our new King or Queen of Democracy is on the top of all our minds. Donald Trump recently stated that he would not run for president again in four years if he loses this time. Of course, Trump also says that he’s 6’4” and that he won’t sign a national abortion ban and that he loves his son, Don Jr. The man’s a liar.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have brought sunshine and rainbows into the Democratic ticket that had been sagging under Biden. It’s been great! Remember how depressed we were in late June? Man, what a dark time. Now, instead of being depressed about the likelihood of a Biden loss, we can be depressed about an otherwise promising ticket that won’t call for an end to Israel’s campaign that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. I already used the lemonade metaphor, so let’s just say that sometimes life gives you yesterday’s coffee grounds, and you can use them to make iced coffee, because isn’t that how cold-brew is made, maybe?

One thing Harris and Walz have going for them is that not only are they more human-seeming than Trump, they’re also much less buzzard-seeming than RFK Jr. The latest WTF story about him is that he’d allegedly been having a “personal relationship” with New York magazine writer Olivia Nuzzi who is both 39 years his junior and not his wife. Part of me wonders if his campaign leaked this story because they want people to think about him getting handsy with a living human woman instead of some decaying animal carcass he found on a New England highway. Honestly, not a bad strategy.

State Trash

Here in Oregon, this year we get to vote on whether each state resident could receive a universal basic income of $1,600 per year. The idea is intriguing! Very pandemic-chic, very Andrew Yang-coded. But hey, anyone else remember that there was just a whole-ass month-long teacher’s strike to increase funding, only to find out that there is simply no money, their hands are tied, and now kids miss school because it’s 100 degrees in September and there’s not enough AC to go around? So HOW in THE ABSOLUTE FUCK are we finding a way to raise money to give us back the money instead of simply getting money to institutions that need it?

Over in North Carolina, their Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson (R) has been leaving comments on porn sites referring to himself as a “black NAZI” and voicing (typing?) support for bringing back slavery. As of this writing, Robinson has shown no interest in stepping out of the race. Now, North Carolina is a swing state, and this down-ballot disaster could keep more Rs at home, or get more D support overall, which could have national ramifications. This is me making iced tea out of a bunch of random weeds I found in my yard, btw.

In other news out of the American South, Kentucky Democratic governor Andy Beshear recently signed a bill to ban conversion therapy of LGBTQ+ children in the state. Red states can get overlooked by coastal elites like ~ahem~ us; it’s important to lift up their victories and remember that doing what’s right isn’t limited by what color Nate Silver makes our state in his little maps. An interesting thing I learned from this story is that proponents of conversion therapy call it “affirmation therapy,” and that’s bullshit. When I hear the words “affirmation therapy,” I envision sitting with a mental health professional who tells me I’m smart and pretty for 60 minutes per week, and then I start wanting it.

Local Trash

It’s great that registering and voting in Oregon are comically easy. The “motor voter” system in fact worked so zealously that 1,561 noncitizens were also registered, which sounds bad until you realize that there are 3 million correctly registered voters in the state; that is a relatively small number of errors! And besides, only five of those registered noncitizens voted, and experts agree that their votes didn’t influence the outcome of any race in the last four years. Sorry to disappoint anyone, but this system works.

Also, this year will be the first time that we get to use ranked choice voting for our mayoral and city council races here in Portland. I’m sure we’ll do fine with it. Or, maybe it’ll be like that week in early COVID when we all of a sudden had to pump our own gas and everybody went temporarily bananapants. Either way: exciting!

I hope that you are receiving whatever level of access to election news that is best for your mental health. I’m not, of course… but I want better for you.

Hopefully,