The reason that voting has become a time-eating challenge is because of the tsunami of lies and half-truths that are designed to mislead voters. I have learned that none of the candidates can be trusted.

For that reason, I started each day by deleting all the campaign ads that arrived in my e-mail box without opening them.

I didn’t keep count of the hours spent reading and researching every candidate and all the Measures Submitted to Voters, but I do know that I spent more time making my decisions on this election than I have ever done before.

The first thing I did that probably cut the number of hours in half was to go through the “Contra Costa County Voter Information Guide with Sample Ballot” and cross out every Republican candidate before I started to do research. In previous elections, I gave every candidate a fair chance to gain my trust.

No more, because I think the GOP has become the Deplorable Party of Trump and cannot to be trusted.

The Trump’s GOP has become the FUD Party: spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt through conspiracy theories, lies, and misinformation. I have this theory that the Political Party that lies the most is the one with the most to hide.

For sure, candidates from both parties lie, half-lie, and mislead, but the Republican Party does more of it than most Democrats and many of the FUD candidates are so outrageous in their lies, it boggles the mind.

The second thing I did was to make sure I didn’t read any of the host of paper flyers landing in my regular mailbox because the time it takes to find out if there is anything honest in those flyers is not worth it. Republican flyers outnumbered Democratic flyers by a huge margin and most of those were for Marshall Tuck who is a known fake Democratic endorsed by the Republican Party.

That’s why I used Vote Smart, The League of Women Voters, Voters Edge, Open Secrets, and a few other sites, but only when I couldn’t find the info I wanted from the ones listed as links in this sentence.

Eventually I found enough information to make an educated guess — except for the four candidates running for the Los Medanos Community Healthcare District where you were supposed to vote for three of the four listed. I didn’t find anything about who those four candidates were and I wasn’t willing to keep hunting so I wrote in: God, Jesus Christ, and St. Patrick. I do not care if many think God and Jesus are the same. I just wanted three different names and there are billions of people on this planet that do not think Jesus is God. They think Jesus was a very important and influential teacher.

The Judicial page was a challenge because every name came with a YES or NO vote. There was no competition. All of these judges were appointed to their positions and it was up to us voters to decide if they should keep the job or the governor of California would have to appoint someone else to fill those positions.

It was frustrating to search for the judicial history of the ten appointed judges listed and I almost gave up and voted NO for all ten. But then I found enough information to make a decision and voted NO for 4 and YES for 6.

Marshall Tuck is a FAKE Democrat

Republicans are now running fake Democrats in California because in many counties it is almost impossible for a Republican to get elected.  The easiest fake Democrat to NOT vote for was Marshall Tuck who is running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction (his second attempt to fool voters. He failed in 2014. This time his major supporters, all known conservative billionaires, are donating tons of money to his campaign to outspend the real Democrat).

It’s easy to identify the Fake Democrat when the Republican Party endorses him and all of his major contributors are Alt-Right billionaires that donate large sums of money to conservative causes and candidates.

The other candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction is Tony K. Thurmond and the Democratic Party endorsed him along with the teachers unions.

The Fake Democrat Marshall Tuck was and still is supported by the publicly funded, corporate charter school industry.  I was a public school teacher in California for thirty years and I voted for Thurmond. I want all of the corporate charter schools closed. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction should represent the best interests of the public schools where almost 90-percent of the 6.5 million K-12 students attend — not the publicly funded, private sector, corporate charter school industry. These charter schools are not public schools because they do not answer to a publicly elected school board. Charter schools answer to a highly paid CEO and charter schools are not transparent in how they spend their money and operate like real public schools are.

It was a relief to walk into the post office and slip my mail-in-ballot through the slot.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat veteran with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

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