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Republican state Sen. Bruce Thompson, Democratic state. Rep. William Boddie and Libertarian Emily Anderson, a digital print operator at a publishing company, are running to replace Butler.

With the start of early voting approaching, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke to Thompson and Anderson. A spokeswoman for Boddie said he was unavailable to talk with the AJC.

In a previous interview, Boddie said he wanted to restore trust in the agency, improve its technology and expand its historical role by providing more support for working parents and gig workers, who are typically not covered by the states unemployment insurance fund.

Thompson, who frequently cites his military and business experience, said he differs with his rivals on how to manage the department, but not on the need for change.

I think whether you are a Democrat or Republican that you agree that during the pandemic, the (Labor Department) failed the citizens of Georgia, he said. We can agree there needs to be a significant improvement.

That improvement will be partly about processes and potentially about the 1,134-person staff, said Thompson, who said he started, ran and eventually sold a number of companies, including Coverstar Automatic Covers, which sells covers for swimming pools, The Thompson Group Insurance and Bruce Thompson State Farm insurance company.

Despite contentious races at the top of the ballot for governor and the U.S. Senate and his own robust conservatism, Thompson said he doesnt think the office needs to be partisan. And despite his harsh criticism of the agencys past performance, he said he believes he can work with staffers.

Well do an assessment, he said. We plan to challenge them, but I want to be a cultivation agency, highlighting people and helping them.

Anderson, the Libertarian candidate, said she thinks the agency is understaffed.

I went to a career center years ago and I only went because I couldnt get anyone on the phone, she said. It was just compounded by the pandemic.

She said if elected, she would ask department staffers for ideas because they know the system best.

Where can we cut red tape? Where can it be streamlined to get you your benefits quicker? she said.

Many of the changes needed at the Labor Department require legislative support or federal help, such as funds for better technology and a longer period for payment of benefits, but the commissioner can lobby for assistance and promote fair treatment for those who need assistance, said Ray Khalfani, an analyst with the left-of-center Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.

The North Star for governance should start with the mission to expand duration, access and benefit levels, he said.

Because the Legislature has shifted workforce development to the Technical College System of Georgia, the Labor Department has seen its budget cut from $114.4 million during the past fiscal year to $51.6 million, officials said. Accounting for much of that cut was the narrowing of the agencys responsibilities, making its main mission the vetting of applications for jobless benefits and making sure that valid claims get paid.

In the years after the 2008-09 recession, that task wasnt so demanding. But then came the pandemic.

Much of the economy was at least temporarily shut down, and hundreds of thousands of Georgians were tossed out of work. The number of claims in an average week went from less than 5,700 to more than 215,000 for the next three months. It stayed in six figures until July 2020. While the federal government passed a series of emergency measures, it was left to the states to execute the new programs.

The Georgia Labor Department, with about half the employees it had during the previous recession, was overwhelmed.

Legislators, journalists and social media feeds were flooded with complaints from frustrated and scared workers waiting for benefit payments even as officials struggled to screen out thousands of fraudulent claims.

Another wave of layoffs may be on the horizon. While the weekly claims for jobless benefits are nearly as low as pre-pandemic, the economic outlook has grown murky with the Federal Reserve raising interest rates in an effort to stifle inflation by slowing the economy.

The candidates are slated to appear in an Atlanta Press Club debate on Oct. 18.

Read more:
Labor commissioner's race: Down-ballot and up in the air - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Happiness is the death of morality, the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant famously declared. Kants insight is a valuable one: if we decide to act morally only when it makes us happy (what Kant called a hypothetical imperative), then authentic moral actionaction that is not merely self-interest in disguisewill be as rare as an icicle in summer. Thats why Kant calls us to locate morality exclusively within the realm of duty (what he calls the categorical imperative): do what is right without exception independently of your happiness.

Thats one solution to the problem of the relationship between being good and being happy. But what a dragespecially to the secular minds increasingly uncloseted hedonism: Do something that doesnt make me happy? Deny my right to self-care? Are you kidding me? Yet if duty cant justify and motivate moral action, whats the alternative? Perhaps you could choose to be an honest cynic like the character Thrasymachus in Platos Republic: appear to be good when other people are looking, but otherwise do whatever you want if you think you can get away with it. However, even if this option accurately describes many individuals default practice of morality, openly embracing cynicism is indistinguishable from endorsing a Hobbesian war of all against all: with morality divorced from an objective duty to be good, each individual and group has carte blanche to exploit weakness, which ultimately leads to those with the most power, and the least reservations about using that power, dominating othersuntil an even more ruthless alternative arrives. (Look to the cartels in northern Mexico, or the drug gangs dominating inner cities in the United States, to observe what this theory looks like in practice.)

There thus appears to be a dilemma at the heart of morality: On the one hand, a morality of dutydoing good independently of what you desiremay provide individual and social stability, but it comes at the cost of not being able to do what you really want to do, that is, what makes you happy. On the other hand, having license to do whatever you desire, may, like Pinocchios Pleasure Island, make you feel happy, perhaps even intensely so; but that comes at the price of individual degradation and, ultimately, societal collapse. It seems, then, that we, individually and collectively, are forced to make an impossible decision: Should I do my duty? Or should I be happy? Should we live according to a moral law? Or should we let people do what they want?

What if it was your duty to be happy? What if it was in your self-interest to be selfless?

Classical liberal and libertarian political philosophy thinks it has found a way to thread the needle on this predicament. Based on a conception of autonomy, the solution takes the following form: I get to do whatever I want to do provided I respect your right to do the same. The we in this model is reduced to the procedural: the only thing that binds us is a system of laws that prevent people from violating each others autonomy. Meanwhile, everyones free to do what they want, when they want, and with whom they want to do it, provided there is consent.

This splitting of the difference between being good and being happy by saying all that being good means is not interfering with others pursuit of happiness is a tempting compromise. But it begs rather than answers a fundamental question: What should I do to make myself happy? The liberal/libertarian answer, is, Do whatever you desire to do (provided you permit others to do the same). But then comes the next question: But what should I desire? To which liberalism/libertarianism self-assuredly responds, You should desire whatever you desire to desire! And it is here where the liberal/libertarian dream begins mutating into a nightmare, where the illusion that happiness means the endless feeding of insatiable idiosyncratic cravings fades into the realization that the most obvious thing in life might actually be the most mysterious: What makes mewhat makes ustruly happy?

The liberal/libertarian point of view grants each of us the power to create our own answer to this question, but with two catches: First, you must accept that, whatever definition of happiness you choose, it is entirely subjective, which is another way of saying it is devoid of objective truth. Your definition of happiness is thus yours; but it is also a fancy, a whim, the grasping of a moral phantom in the darkness of equally absurd possible preferences. Second, and consequently, you cant tell anyone, not even your own children past the age of reason, that your definition of happiness is good because that would mean that you think that they should define happiness the same way you doshould here meaning obligated to believe because its truewhich is tantamount to violating their autonomy. This liberal/libertarian compromise on the relationship between morality and happiness thus dictates that a free choice to live on the streets injecting fentanyl into your veins is just as good as a free choice to work as a lifesaving, Narcan-administering EMT; the choice to turn whole urban districts into open-air drug markets is just as good as the choice to build parks and install new playground equipment. Its all just preference. And in the land where preference is king, theres no complaining about what others, individually or collectively, choose to do with their autonomy so long as no one physically assaults you or violates a contract youve signed. This is the price of the live and let live compromise: when the definition of happiness is radically individualized (and thus utterly relativized) and morality is reduced to consent, you gain the right to define the meaning of life and live it out how you chose; however, you lose the right to believe your choice, or anyone elses choice, is anything other than arbitrary and, therefore, objectively meaningless.

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There is, however, a fourth option for how to relate being good with being happy. What if it was your duty to be happy? What if it was in your self-interest to be selfless? What if you could align your deepest desires with the goal of becoming an objectively good person, meaning that what you want most in lifeby definition, what makes you happiestis one and the same as what morally you should do?

This, in a nutshell, is the Catholic vision of morality, and one of its greatest recent promulgators is the late Fr. Servais Pinckaers, OP (1925-2008). Fr. Pinckaersafter whom Bishop Barron named the Servais Pinckaers Fellowship in Catholic Ethicsis well known within Catholic circles for his brilliant, Vatican IIinspired work synthesizing the different strands of moral theologynatural law, Scripture, the Church Fathers, Thomism, the manualist tradition, the Magisterium, and spiritualityinto a vibrant, cohesive whole. However, Fr. Pinckaerss insights into the nature of morality and moral freedom hold great wisdom for non-Catholics as well. He writes in his book Morality: The Catholic View, From our birth, we have received moral freedom as a talent to be developed, as a seed containing the knowledge of truth and the inclination towards goodness and happiness, an inclination diversified according to what the Ancients called the semina virtutum, the seeds of virtue. This moral freedom, Fr. Pinckaers explains, is not a freedom of indifference, meaning a freedom whose only purpose is to show obedience to external commands and to fulfill subjective desires. Rather, this freedom is what he calls a freedom for excellence, which is the freedom to grow in virtue and thereby conform your lifeyour whole being: body, mind, soul, desires, emotionsto what is objectively good and, therefore, the only source of authentic happiness. As he explains,

Freedom for excellence engenders a moral science that directly takes up the question of happiness and the absolute good. It is a science that regards the question of happiness as decisive for the integral ordering of ones life and the formation of ones character. This science is organized according to the principal virtues that strengthen freedom and refine human action . . . [and] is brought to completion in the study of laws in its educational role, a role that firmly brings together wisdom and love, and even constraint, which is sometimes necessary in the struggle against evil.

To be sure, there is much to unpack here, a lifetimes worth. As a central part of my work for the Word on Fire Institute, I intend to explain and advocate for Fr. Pinckaers view of morality, which is synonymous with the comprehensive Catholic view. In other words, to be continued.

Yet it is enough to say now that the choice between being happy and being good is ultimately a false one. As Fr. Pinckaers shows, we need not choose between the two. The trick is to see that, if duty means doing good no matter what, and what is truly good is living according to Gods will, and Gods will is that each of us freely become wholly and permanently happy, then it is our duty to freely become wholly and permanently happyno matter what. Much more than a set of rules, in other words, Catholic morality is a recipe for joy.

See original here:
Be Good or Be Happy: Evergreen Insight from Fr. Servais Pinckaers, OP - Word on Fire

Chris Roark, croark@cherryroad.com

The Ellis County Elections Office has released times and locations for early voting and Election Day, which is set for Nov. 8.

The main site for early voting will be The Cowboy Church of Ellis County, the Ranch House Room, at 2374 W. US Highway 287 Bypass in Waxahachie.

Other early voting locations are the Ellis County Sub-Courthouse, 207 S. Sonoma Trail in Ennis; the Midlothian Conference Center, 1 Community Circle Drive in Midlothian; the Palmer ISD Annex Building, 303 Bulldog Way in Palmer; the Red Oak Municipal Center, 200 Lakeview Parkway in Red Oak; and the Ferris Public Library, 301 E. 10th St. in Ferris.

Early voting times are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 24-28; 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 29; 1-7 p.m. Oct. 30 and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 31 to Nov. 4.

The Ellis County Elections Office will not be an early voting site.

There will be 31 voting elections for Election Day, and polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

On the ballot are several key elections from the state level down to the local level.

Among the key contested races is the governors race where incumbent Republican Greg Abbott will face Democrat Beto ORourke, along with Libertarian Mark Tippetts and Green Party candidate Delilah Barrios.

Incumbent Republican Dan Patrick will face Democrat Mike Collier and Libertarian Shanna Steele for lieutenant governor.

In the race for attorney general incumbent Republican Ken Paxton will face Democrat Rochelle Mercedes Garza and Libertarian Mark Ash.

There will be two contested state senate races locally. In District 2, incumbent Republican Bob Hall will face Democrat Prince S. Giadolor. In District 12 incumbent Republican Brian Birdwell will face Libertarian Jeremy Schroppel.

At the county level incumbent Republican Dan Cox will face Democrat Sharon Levingston in the Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3 race. Republican Louis Ponder will face Democrat Robert E. Shelton in the Justice of the Peace, Precinct 4 race.

The cities of Ennis and Milford will have propositions on the ballot, and Glenn Heights will have an election for five seats on the City Council.

Red Oak ISD and Ferris ISD will have propositions on the ballot, and Avalon ISD will have a trustee election.

Tuesday is the last day to register to vote. The last day for the elections office to receive a regular or FPCA ballot by mail application is Oct. 28.

For more information go to co.ellis.tx.us/elections or facebook.com/elliscountyelections, email elections@co.ellis.tx.us or call 972-825-5195. The elections office is located at 204 E. Jefferson St. in Waxahachie.

Below are the Election Day voting locations:

First Baptist Church-Avalon, 206 Giles St., Avalon

First United Methodist-Bardwell, 104 Pecan St., Bardwell

Bristol United Methodist, 104 Church St., Bristol

Ellis County Sub-Courthouse, 207 S. Sonoma Trail, Ennis

Ennis Welcome Center, 201 NW. Main St., Ennis

Faith Assembly of God Church, 1810 W. Bladridge St., Ennis

Ferris Public Library, 301 E. 10th St., Ferris

Forreston Baptist Fellowship Hall, 211 Seventh St., Forreston

Harvest of Praise, 2603 S. Hampton Road, Glenn Heights

Mt. Gilead Baptist Church, 106 Harris St., Italy

First Baptist Church-Maypearl, 5744 FM 66, Maypearl

Midlothian Church of Christ, 1627 N. Highway 67, Midlothian

Midlothian Conference Center, 1 Community Circle Drive, Midlothian

Midlothian Peak Community Church, 751 W. FM 875, Midlothian

Stonegate Church, 4025 E. US 287, Midlothian

The Shepherds House, 3221 Mockingbird Lane, Midlothian

Milford Senior Citizen Center, 109 S. Main St., Milford

Grace Church of Ovilla, 519 Westmoreland Road, Ovilla

Ovilla City Hall, 105 S. Cockrell Hill Road, Ovilla

Palmer ISD Annex Building, 303 Bulldog Way, Palmer

Eastridge Baptist Church, 732 E. Ovilla Road, Red Oak

Red Oak Municipal Center, 200 Lakeview Parkway, Red Oak

Grace Covenant Church, 212 N. Main St., Red Oak

The Cowboy Church of Ellis County, 2374 W. Highway 287 Bypass, Waxahachie

Ellis County Womans Building, 407 W. Jefferson St., Waxahachie

Farley Street Baptist Church, 1116 Brown St., Waxahachie

First United Methodist-Waxahachie, 505 W. Marvin Ave., Waxahachie

Park Meadows Baptist Church, 3350 N. Highway 77, Waxahachie

Salvation Army of Ellis County, 620 Farley St., Waxahachie

Southlake Baptist Church, 2378 S. Highway 77, Waxahachie

The Avenue Baptist Church, 1761, N. Highway 77, Waxahachie

Read more:
When and where to vote during early voting, Election Day in Ellis County - Waxahachie Daily Light

The disarray and likely collapse of Vladimir Putin's effort to mobilize 300,000 conscripts to fight in Ukraine suggests that his iron grip on power could someday soon be broken as quickly and surprisingly as the czar's grip was broken in 1917 and the grip of Soviet totalitarianism was broken in 1990. But with what consequences?

A hundred years of Russian experiences with overthrowing autocracy suggest only another turn in a depressing cycle. Americans tried but failed to arrest that cycle when U.S. troops actually invaded to support anti-Bolshevik White Russians in the 1920s and when free-market evangelists in the 1990sput their dirty fingers into the Russian economy,only to wind up getting burned.

In "The Unconquerable World:Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People,"Jonathan Schell remindedus that revolutionary Bolsheviks were surprised that the imperial regime fell quickly and with little bloodshed. Between 1989 and 1991, most Russians and Westerners were equally surprised by the speed with which the supposedly impregnable Soviet Union lost its grip on Eastern Europe and on Russia itself, vanishing almost as if in a puff of smoke. The reason is that autocracies that are run mostly on fear on domestic terror drain their people of the spontaneous energy and comity, or love, that can sustain a healthy society. So those societies fail. And if their public's fear is displaced by contempt, they unravel.

Huge upheavals in technology, economics, communications, migrations and demographics over these past hundred years have exposed the bankruptcy of fear as a social glue and have weakened the grip of old-style authoritarianism. But the new technologies and other arrangements have also intensified top-down surveillance, indoctrination and control in increasingly subtle and even seductive ways in the hands of rulers in Hungary, Singapore, Turkey and other countries whose elites are more imaginative than Czar Nicholas II or Joseph Stalin and their legatees. (See William Dobson's "The Dictator's Learning Curve.")

Putin, who spent his childhood under Stalin and his formative years in the KGB, is almost a throwback to the old authoritarianism, and has not seemed to master the new authoritarianism's greater subtlety and intimacy.Watch this three-minutevideo of Putin entering the Kremlin,which I posted here in Salon with anotherwarning about hima few months ago. Notice the cartoonish postures of his guards and the obsequious deference of the nomenklatura, receiving him in ways that suggest that Putin's curse may truly be Russia's. For better or worse, Russian civil society has never had anything like America's libertarian-individualist strain or its civic-republican ethos.

But are those differences really to the West's advantage? Right now, American libertarian individualism and civic-republican cooperation are undergoing disturbing, funhouse-mirror distortions at the hands of Donald Trump, a professedadmirer of Putin's "genius."Trumpism carries dangers that are metastasizing not only in America but also in Marine Le Pen's France, Giorgia Meloni'sItaly and elsewhere in Western Europe.

The irony is that whilePutin's vulgar authoritarianism may be weakening in Russia, with unpredictable consequences, a new authoritarianism is rising among tens of millions of citizens in Western democracies who demand to be lied to and recruited by myths as simplistic as Putin's, myths that tell them whom to scapegoat for their stress and dispossession and whom to follow to "fix it."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

The demagoguery of Trump and his Fox News heralds is more a symptom of this spreading virus than the main cause of our crisis. That cause is partly conspiratorial and malevolent, but often it's just mindless: Americans (and other Westerners) have been increasingly stressed and dispossessed in recent decades by the frantic financialization and consumerization of civil society. It's groping and goosing us 24/7, bypassing our minds and hearts on its way to our lower viscera and our wallets by titillating us, intimidating us, tracking us, indebting us and leaving us enmeshed in a spider's web of commercial come-ons and pressures.

Unlike Putin, Donald Trump is both a product and an accelerant of that social malady. Putin has his oligarchs and his rubber-stamp parliament, but he hasn't mastered the new autocrats' learning curve, which may be transforming the West even as he clings to the weakest elements of Russia's old authoritarianism: a society running on fear more than on love.

Read more

about Vladimir Putin, Russia and Ukraine

View post:
Putin really could fall but will that help the West as much as we think? - Salon

Libertarian Jeff Maurer hopes to make election history in Indiana, and he can do that in November, by being elected Secretary of State since his party has never won a statewide office here.

Libertarian Jeff Maurer said after seeing the hurt the nation experienced in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, it became important to him that something be done to restore and rebuild trust in the election process.

But Maurer says he also aims to make voters feel more confident in the election process at a time when public trust is at risk.

He announced his candidacy August 2021 but officially threw his hat in the ring for secretary of state after winning his partys nomination in March.

Maurer moved to Carmel in 2013 for a better quality of life, after being exhausted by corrupt politics, big government and high taxes in New York.

The Libertarin Party believes all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose, according to the partys website.

Maurer serves as a development officer for Students of Liberty, a student organization focused on championing free markets and free speech around the world. He sits on his communitys Economic Development Commission and Home Place Advisor Board. He joined his local volunteer fire department at 16 and served as a firefighter and officer for more than 12 years.

He is currently enlisted in the Indiana Air National Guard. In fact, all three contenders for secretary of state have served in the armed forces, although Republican Diego Morales veteran status has been under scrutiny.

Maurer also owns a small VR tech companyone reason he would like, if elected, to improve the Business Services division by streamlining the process for businesses to get started, receive information and have the customer support they need.

Government does not create businesses, people do, Hoosiers do, and businesses create jobs, our neighbors create jobs, not government, he said. Government's job and responsibility here is to get done what needs to be done but then to immediately get out of the way so that our entrepreneurs and business owners can get to work serving their customers, creating jobs and feeding their families.

Focused on election verification

Libertarian secretary of state candidate Jeff Maurer, second from left, helped on the campaign trail for Libertarian Donald Rainwater's race for governor in 2020.

Maurer said after seeing the hurt the nation experienced in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, it became important to him that something be done to restore and rebuild trust in the election process.

Having worked in tech, transportation, and budget and finance, Maurer believes his background puts him in a unique position to solve this issue, by using new technology to bring a fresh air of transparency, accountability and accessibility to build trust.

Maurers campaign is centered around the idea of changing the way we do elections. One idea he suggests is to have elections be more like an open-concept restaurant.

I want us to be able to have confidence that you can see your vote, see how its being counted and rebuild trust so we are never in this position again, he said.

Maurer said voters would receive a receipt after voting so that they would be able to track their vote, like a package, throughout the election process.

A receipt will give you the information and the power to go online, look up your vote, track it and know that your voice has been heard. That's the value of the receipt, Maurer said. That's the level of trust that we've strengthened in our elections.

Its not about one party or the other, he said. Its about a process thats failing us and will continue to fail us. It will only get worse until we take action [now] to make things better.

Maurer also believes the auditing process should change in a number of ways because he says the current model is woefully insufficient.

Currently, state election audits are performed by the Voting System Technical Oversight Program (VStop) directed by Ball State University, which falls under the secretary of states office. Maurer said this is a conflict of interest and gives no incentive to report any wrongdoing. By having the audit performed by an independent agency, Maurer said transparency and accountability can be ensured.

Another issue he finds with the current election process is that audits are only made on the 40% of votes that have a paper copy. Nearly, 60% of Indianas voting machines are paperless, which may make them more vulnerable to irreversible errors and breaches, according to Indiana Universitys Public Policy Institute.

According to the 2020 Post Election Audit Report, only 10% of voting machines in each Indiana county include a paper record of every vote. Election outcomes are then checked by hand-counting a randomized sample of paper-voted ballots to confirm machine accuracy. By the 2024 general election, every vote cast in Indiana will have a paper copy.

In the past, the audit is only performed on five out of 92 counties. Ten counties will be audited after the 2022 election.

We urgently need to audit all 92 counties with an independent audit and to have that audit done before the elections are certified by federal law offices, Maurer said.

Maurer said that the certification and verification of election results need to happen at a much quicker rate because currently we're saying we certify these results, we verify that they're good before weve done any verification.

Donald Rainwater, the Libertarian candidate in the 2020 gubernatorial race, is now endorsing his friends campaign.

I'm really excited about the fact that Jeff has some very concrete ideas about how to improve election integrity here in the state of Indiana and do it in a nonpartisan way. And I think that's very important, he said.

We definitely need to provide voters with the assurance that their vote counts because the fundamental foundation of our freedoms and the assurance that our freedoms will be preserved is our ability to vote. So, I'm just very enthusiastic about his candidacy for secretary of state for that reason, Rainwater said.

ARW Strategies, an Illinois-based consulting firm conducted a poll for Indianapolis political commentator Abdul-Hakim Shabazz in July, using text messages and phone calls.

In the July poll, 31% of respondents opted for the Democratic candidate, Destiny Wells, while 28% said theyd be supporting Republican candidate Diego Morales. Maurer pulled 7%, with 34% staying undecided. The poll has a margin error of +/- 3.64%.

I think Destiny [Wells] does have a path to victory, Shabazz said. Also, I think what's interesting too is that some of those Republicans who may not be comfortable with Diego may just go ahead and vote for Jeff Maurer. So I think the ramifications are far and wide here.

Regardless of a win, Maurer said a strong finish would mean a lot for the Libertarian Party of Indiana. In any county where Maurer finishes in first or second place, the party would be able to appoint a Libertarian to the countys election board for the next four years. If Maurer earns 10% or more of the statewide vote, a party primary will be held for the next four years.

Shabazz said he thinks if enough disgruntled Republicans come out and vote, we could see libertarians having third-party status this election season.

Shabazz said that another poll will be conducted in the next week. The results of the poll and the results after people hit the polls on Election Day could always be different.

In politics, a day is a lifetime, and weve still got probably 50-something days left to Election Day, so anything can and probably will happen, so keep that in mind, Shabazz said.

Debate to be held Tuesday

Both Maurer and his Democratic opponent, Wells, have agreed to and called for Morales to participate in a debate with them. He has declined.

In a Sept. 13 press release, Maurer responded to Morales refusal to participate: Voters deserve to see all of their choicesin one place, at one time, answering the same questions by moderators who will re-ask when questions go unanswered.

And in a Sept. 16 WFYI article, Maurer said he feels like Morales is hiding. If your ideas are so bad that you cant even stand in front of a crowd of people, of your neighbors, to defend them, then somethings wrong, he said. You need better ideas.

Now, Maurer and Wells will be debating Tuesday afternoon without Morales.

Maurer said he hopes that, no matter what, voters take the time to learn about the candidates so they can make an informed decision at the polls.

I'm running to solve our problems, to restore and build trust in our elections, and to do that through common sense solutions, receipts and audits, he said. I encourage every voter to do the research on candidates for this office. Listen to my opponents but really understand the issues and what solutions or lack of solutions are being offered.

Go here to read the rest:
No Libertarian has won statewide officebut Maurer hopes to close the gap - The Statehouse File