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Of course you know who is running for president, and probably Congress, too. But what about your State Senate race? Do you know what your choices are? Probably not. I've seen about eight different candidate signs for City Council within a mile of my house, but who knows which of them will actually appear on my ballot. Here's where to go to get a sample ballot for your address. Don't be surprised when you get into the booth, know the candidates beforehand. All you need is your sample ballot, Google and a Providence Journal password (use dailykos@dailykos.com/dailykos if you don't want to register). Also remember to flip your ballot over and vote on the 14 referenda up for consideration. If you lost the guide you got in the mail, here's the web version on the issues. Take some time and go through everything before you head out tomorrow. And! If you're not registered to vote, you can still register at your polling place (use the first link above to find your location) and cast a vote for president only. It's worth it. Excited yet? I am!

I'm not going to tell you guys who to vote for, but please allow me to weigh the merits of various candidates in Rhode Island. I'm almost positive that there aren't going to be any close races among the high profile offices. For instance, I think Kerry will probably win for President, so you can vote for David Ortiz with a clear conscience. Don't vote for Nader, though, he still deserves to be punished for 2000. Congress (Dist 1): Patrick Kennedy vs. Dave Rogahs. Rogers is a former S.E.A.L., and he's toned down the crazy this time (he ran in '02, too). Also, major props for swimming in the upper bay. That's hardcore. Patrick Kennedy hasn't shoved any airport workers lately, so that's a plus for him. The major negative for Dave Rogers is that commercial with the Don (our governor) where we find out that Rogers is a protectah who will work hahdah for uzz. Bonus points for PK for turning the original Rogers ad around ("Dave Rogers is all wet") That was clever. Rogers had a nice ad with Lincoln Chafee, but I haven't seen that one in a while. I love Linc. Congress (Dist 2): A four-way! Jim Langevin vs. Chuck Barton vs. Ed Morabito vs. Donald Hayes (sorted in descending chance of winning, from "lock" to "never in a bajillion years"). James Langevin, our current Congressperson, is the guy in the wheelchair. He's a good guy, and votes how I'd like most of the time. Barton is a Rhode Island Republican, so you can vote for him without feeling icky. Of course sending a Republican to the House is an endorsement of a certain former bug exterminator. Ed Morabito, who you all should be voting for (haha, I lied above), kicks ass. Last month he released this press release after the deportation of a Syrian pizza maker: Read more about him here. I love candidates like this. You know, honest. The last guy in this race, I swear to God, wants to repeal the 21st Amendment. That's the one that ended Prohibition. As the ProJo points out, even when we did dry up the booze, RI never really stood for that. Still, if you think drugs and alcohol are the root of most evil, Mr. Hayes is your man. So there's your candidates for US House. I think you have enough information here to make a good decision, but as always Google is your friend. More races later!

My favorite Republican is in the news again for being a thorn in President Bush's side. The only Republican senator to vote against the Iraq war resolution, he's finally announced who he'll (probably) vote for on November 2nd. Surprisingly, it's going to be George Bush. But that's H.W., not Dubya. My former mayor was in the New York Times this week, too, fueling ever more speculation about Chafee pulling a Jeffords and leaving the GOP. It's only going to get more interesting as 2006 draws near. MORE: Remember when Dick Cheney said "Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session" last night? Someone on Kos looked up who presided over the Senate every Tuesday for the past four years, and it turns out Cheney was only acting president twice. John Edwards, meanwhile, managed to preside over the Senate twice, too! Who was the King of Tuesday Senate Presidenting? None other than Linc Chafee, nine times.

Remember the giant gorilla from a while back? He's got a new friend, as Lloyd Morse's bid to be mayor takes another laughter-inducing turn. To accompany the new Bulldogzilla, this sign: And we're still over a month away from election day! Stay tuned, this can only get better (or worse, depending on your perspective).

You may have had an inkling of this already, but here's the official stat: the Providence metro area is the 45th most Democratic county in America. I don't know what this means, exactly, since parts of the metro area are actually in two different counties (three if you count Massachusetts). But then, we don't do counties in the Biggest Little, unless it's ficticious and overrun by Connecticutians and New Yorkers in the summertime. Just thought you'd like to know that. The RI [GOP] Politics listserv people would surely get a kick out of it. Link via Kevin Drum.

Congratulations to J. Patrick O'Neill for taking out former speaker and all-around cad John Harwood. Oh, how sweet it is. The reformation of RI politics continues. Also, Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey easily fended off Garry Reilly (and the big scary evil baby-eating unions) by a three-to-one margin. Have Cranston voters created a monster? Keep your eyes on 2006... At least some of Ed Achorn's friends won't have to move now. Also, in Warwick, my friend Lucy Mota-Costa grabbed the last spot in the school board race, and Stephen Lamarre gave seven-time mayoral candidate Timothy Rassano a proper spanking (my prediction of 500 votes city-wide for this race was off by, oh, an order of magnitude. Of course, that means my one vote accounted for 2% of the total turnout!) Wasn't this fun?!

It's Primary Day! I'm off to vote and join the Green Party for about 3 minutes. Polls are open late, so make time to get there today. You can find your polling place here. I'm going to kick back tonight and celebrate democracy with a Sam Adams (Brewer. Patriot.) and hopefully watch the political careers of John Harwood and Garry Reilly come to a quick end. You guys have to make it happen, though. Get to it! UPDATE: I just came from voting in a booth for the first time in my life. I don't know what happened to the old booths with the curtains I remember from when I was a kid, but I liked those better than the plastic stand I stood at to connect my arrows. After marking your ballot you have to feed it into a machine that reminds me a little too much of a paper shredder. Still, this beats absentee voting any day. Also, I think I am going to lodge a complaint because of voter intimidation. Every single poll worker gave me crap for not rooting for the Yankees. Luckily I know my rights and stood firm for democracy and the Red Sox Nation. At least I got to rub it in that the Evil Empire took an embarrassing 13-run shellacking yesterday. It was early, of course, but my vote in the Green Party primary was the only Green vote cast. I am predicting 500 votes city-wide. I bet Cranston is jumping, though...

You probably didn't notice, but election day is next Tuesday. Well, the primary election, at least. You'll want to read David Grenier's post about why primary voting is so important. We like to focus on the presidential race, but in many cases local officials have a greater impact on your daily life. Rhode Island's primary is this coming Tuesday, September 14th. The most intriguing local race to watch on that day will be to see whether the Great Union Disaffiliation will be successful in ousting Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey. There's really no excuse for a Cranston resident not to vote on that one. Another primary race that bears watching is Pawtucket's 59th RI House district, where J. Patrick O'Neill is looking to unseat former speaker John Harwood. Mr. O'Neill left a comment for everyone here. Closer to (my) home, a non-partisan primary for Warwick school committee will be held next Tuesday. This means that no matter which party primary* you choose to vote in you can still vote for school committee. There are seven candidates for two spots, so the top four vote getters will square off in November. I mention this mostly because the mother of one of my friends from high school is running. I'll vouch for Lucille Mota-Costa being exactly the kind of school committee member we need. She's always been concerned with quality education for as long as I've known her, and she doesn't put up with any crap. If you're voting in Warwick, I heartily urge you to check off her name. Here's a list of the other candidates. If DG's post didn't convince you of the importance of primary voting, think about this: your vote counts even more because primaries have lower turnout. In 2002, the statewide turnout for the primary races was under 23%. In the Republican primary in Cranston, only 1,879 out of 36,092 eligible voters (5.2%) went to the polls. You can check your town here. As for the technical stuff: you have to be already registered in the district/town/ward that you want to vote it. It's too late to register for the primaries (still time for the general election, though!!) To vote in a Republican primary you must be a registered Republican or an unaffiliated voter. Registered Democrats and unaffiliated voters can vote in a Democratic primary, and registered Greens and UVs can vote in the Green primary. I'll remind everyone again, of course, but pencil in some time next Tuesday to get your vote on. To paraphrase the Bush twins, it's, like, important and stuff. *I called the Warwick Board of Canvassers to confirm this, and I was told that there wasn't really any contested primaries going on, since the guy challenging Jim Langevin had withdrawn (I can't find any confirmation of this, though). I asked about the Green Party mayoral primary, and "oh yeah, there's that one, too."

Lately, the most frequent searches leading people to A Cry for Help have been about the Cranston mayoral race, and almost 3-1 looking for info on Garry Reilly. I don't have any dirt on him, unfortunately, and anyway Steve Laffey will probably be glad to tell you all about Mr. Reilly. I'm sure we'll be talking about this a lot more in the next month (much to the chagrin of about 3/4ths of you guys). Also, on the local political scene, quite a few people are seeking out John Harwood's challengers in the Pawtucket House race. One guy, though, got a little confused, possibly with current events becoming jumbled in his head. Instead of trying to find out about Harwood's Democratic challenger Patrick O'Neill, I saw a search for [Swift Boat Veteran Against Kerry] "John O'Neill Pawtucket." (Though, if you want a local's reaction to the Swift Boat mud slingers, Bob Kerr writes about it today) And then in suburban Warwick, of all places, there's going to be a mayoral primary in the Green Party! Click the link for a blurb on the two candidates, each of whom sound promising. Boy, how often are you picking between two good choices rather than the better of two bad? It's heartening to see those interested in local politics being steered this way. So welcome, citizens of Cranston, Pawtucket, Warwick, Newport, Providence, Bristol, Westerly, and so on (let's get those Google rankings up now, shall we?)

A couple choice quotes from today's ProJo about the aforementioned casino debate. Narragansett Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas: "The people really want to vote on this issue, and to deny the people the right to vote on this issue that has been in the forefront for 14 years would be the crime of the millennium. It would just be unfathomable." Nineteen men hijack airplanes, murder 3,000 people and cause billions of dollars in damage, and yet not allowing people to vote on an unconstitutional referendum would be the crime of the millenium? Yikes. Supreme Court opinion: "If we were to sit idly by while an unconstitutional question was submitted to the voters, only to later issue a binding decision declaring the Casino Act and the referendum question void, chaos might well ensue." The great casino riots of 2004? Oh, if only people got that riled up about elections. So now that this is dead, we should only have another couple days or so of this ridiculousness. Then we can go back to debating inflatable gorillas...

Is it dead yet? Rhode Island has been grappling with the issue of whether to allow Harrah's and the Narragansett Indians to build a resort style casino in the state. This has been going on, in various incarnations, for years, but this year was especially notable. The Narragansett Indians, fresh off of an ugly confrontation with the RI State Police over cheap cigarettes, renewed their push to get a Foxwoods of their own in West Warwick (central RI). The state legislature is strongly behind the casino, but Governor Carcieri is strongly opposed. This set up a nice little debate, with no shortage of overheated rhetoric, between the Narragansetts, the lege and the governor. In Rhode Island, any new expansion of gambling in the state has to be approved by the voters in a statewide referendum. This was the year that the question was finally going to go on the ballot, after lawmakers rammed it through, then overrode the Gov's veto. Carcieri then went to court to question whether or not Harrah's ownership of the casino would be constitutional (in RI, the constitution says that only the state may run "lotteries"). All the while, pro-Casino folks demand that "the people should decide" in a vote. Today, in what may be the final story (this year, at least) of the Casino saga, some activist judges did what the Republicans wanted them to (heehee, sorry, couldn't resist) and removed the question from the ballot as it was deemed unconstitutional. Phew. I didn't want a casino in RI. There's a ton of arguments on both sides, which I won't go into for fear of a too-long post, but no way did I want to see Harrah's moving next door. Unfortunately, this is not over, and there'll probably be some movement next January on amending the constitution. Some people wanted to have the vote so that the whole project could be rejected once and for all, but I was much less optomistic about the results of the election. But at least, for the time being, RI is saved from a multi-million dollar campaign and an all around bad deal. Connecticut should thank us as our working poor and convention visitors will continue to funnel tons of money to their state. I wish I had been following this story more closely here, so that you wouldn't have to just read this jumbled and simplistic post, but thems the breaks. Sorry. Cliffs Notes: no Casino in RI... for now.

The ProJo arrived today with the largest headline I've seen since probably the Iraq war began. What was so important? Buddy Cianci won't be getting out of jail just yet! The Mayor's appeal was denied, so Providence will continue on without its most colorful character of the last quarter century. What's a Rhode Islander, to whom wacky politics is seemingly as necessary as air, to do? Why, turn their attention to RI's third largest city, Cranston! Our cast of characters: Media Whore Mayor Steve Laffey, Republican Challenger Garry Reilly, Ape-man Lloyd Morse, and the Crossing Guards. Sounds like a sitcom, no? So a while back I wrote about how the Public Service Unions were attempting to flood the Republican primary election with Democrats to vote against Mayor Laffey (oh, by the way, if you want to vote in the any RI primary, you have 3 days to get registered and unaffiliated, call your board of canvassers). Em and I watched a debate between Laffey and his challenger, Garry Reilly. It was pretty sad, actually. Reilly's contention is that Laffey is embarrassing the GOP and being rather unproductive with his proclivity to go to court with all sorts of city employees. This is a perfectly reasonable position, but politically Reilly just can't compete. The mayor is very media savvy and charismatic to boot. Reilly should probably just adopt "If you hate Laffey, vote for me" as his campaign slogan and take his chances. It would probably make for a closer race. What's even more fun, though, is that the winner in September's primary will go on to face Independent candidate Lloyd Morse. Mr. Morse threw his hat into the ring after a run in with the mayor over a sign placed in Morse's backyard overlooking a busy street. Well, it wasn't exactly a sign, it was more like a giant inflatable gorilla holding a sign. When told he couldn't advertise from his back yard, he acquiesced and took the sign down. The gorilla stayed, and was eventually joined by an inflatable Godzilla, after Laffey got on his case. Now Morse is running for mayor with the slogan "You'll go Ape over my ideas!" So while Buddy remains in New Jersey, at least there's no dearth of political entertainment here in the Biggest Little.