The Albany County Board of Elections serves as a vital entity responsible for overseeing electoral processes in Albany County, New York. Committed to ensuring fair and transparent elections, it plays a pivotal role in voter registration, candidate nominations, and ballot administration. The board’s responsibilities encompass various aspects of the democratic process, including voter education and poll worker training. By maintaining accurate voter records, managing polling locations, and upholding election regulations, the Albany County Board of Elections safeguards the integrity of the electoral system. With a focus on facilitating citizen participation and upholding democratic principles, the board contributes significantly to the smooth functioning of elections within Albany County.
Aspartame is now as cancerous as drinking beer and wine. It’s big news, especially in natural health circles. Of course, alcohol is terribly unhealthy even in moderation – a lot of the people who defend drinking alcohol are a lot like those who defend eating dark chocolate and bacon. All good things, but be honest they are not healthy and should be considered an unhealthy treat only engaged in very sparingly.
Americans have long had this fear of science and technology. Some of it is justified – the history books are full of stories about advances like DDT, asbestos, leaded products whose uses seemed like a good idea at the time but ended up with tragic long term consequences. But those are mostly unknown risks.
People have been suspicious of artificial sweeteners since the 1960s. Cyclamate was banned in 1970 in the United States based on dubious science and lobbying by the sugar beets growing farmers in the Midwest which didn’t like the competition, despite the rest of the world viewing it as largely safe. Aspartame has been viewed with suspicion ever since. A lot of money and time has gone into studying the safety of aspartame and the results are mixed at best though it seems that in general the risks of aspartame consumption are relatively low.
A bigger concern with artificial sweeteners and food additives like MSG isn’t their health concerns but what they are masking underneath. Artificial sweeteners and food additives are often added to junk food loaded with calories, salt, sugar and fat – and have very little nutrient value or stomach filling protein and fiber which encourages overeating. There is this desire by Americans to blame the chemicals they are eating and not the underlying crappy food that the chemicals are masking.
If you mix aspartame at home with non fat unflavored Greek yogurt and frozen strawberries, what you are still eating is quite healthy. If you put MSG on kale and brown rice, you are eating good healthy food. But the same aspartame used in sugar free ice cream or MSG used on Dorritos is junk food. Chemistry can be good or bad depending on how it’s used – to enhance flavor or mask flavors of junk foods.
A few weeks back, the Albany County Redistricting Commission submitted another plan after many city legislators and advocates for the minority community had concerns with the proposed plan — and the legislature voted it down. While most of changes didn’t drastically effect the Democratic Performance of the districts, I hadn’t run this data based on a like-year turnout model, which would be the 2019 elections.
The only competitive, county-wide two-way race that year was the County Coroner’s race, which actually is likely a good race to use as a model as most voters don’t have much of an opinion on the County Coroner besides their partisan leanings. To calculate these numbers, I took the 2019 Election District results using old 2019 EDs Shapefile that I had previously saved, then used population-weighted interpolation using the Voter Age Population (VAP) and created block level estimates. This is sometimes called the ESRI-method of interpolation, it is widely used for redistricting analysis. The block level estimate were joined against the block list provided by Albany County Redistricting Commission.
Proposed County Legislative Districts (12/9) 2019 County Coroner Race PW-VAP Interpolated
Proposed LD
Antonio Sturges (DEM)
William B. Keal (REP)
Dem Margin
Dem. Percent
1
659
63
595
91%
2
471
43
427
92%
3
535
88
447
86%
4
320
52
268
86%
5
775
84
691
90%
6
466
38
429
93%
7
406
65
342
86%
8
924
145
779
86%
9
1,457
461
996
76%
10
1,506
288
1,218
84%
11
1,406
327
1,078
81%
12
341
96
245
78%
13
846
147
699
85%
14
892
661
230
57%
15
799
246
553
76%
16
825
294
531
74%
17
647
282
365
70%
18
984
410
573
71%
19
908
846
63
52%
20
853
737
116
54%
21
808
696
112
54%
22
875
791
84
53%
23
1,232
1,077
155
53%
24
1,075
894
181
55%
25
1,219
986
233
55%
26
988
904
84
52%
27
849
1,003
−155
46%
28
891
746
146
54%
29
970
643
327
60%
30
917
460
457
67%
31
1,129
977
152
54%
32
966
442
524
69%
33
1,318
678
640
66%
34
1,712
659
1,053
72%
35
1,573
814
759
66%
36
1,025
840
185
55%
37
961
979
−18
50%
38
1,059
821
239
56%
39
1,041
1,222
−181
46%
Andy Arthur, 12/26/22. Estimates created in R using block-level voting-age population interpolation (ERSI method) of 2019 Election Results/Districts.
Basically all of the proposed Colonie LDs, 19 through 28 are competitive but lean Democratic, except for LD 27 which is solidly Republican. A popular Republican incumbent or well-known personality could win those districts or at least make for a tight race in 2023, especially in the current political climate. But Albany County remains quite blue, even if Colonie has a GOP supervisor currently.
One thing of note is the Coeymans district, Legislative District 37 remains largely the same as was from the most of the 2010s. It will be a swing-district, based on the likely turn-out in 2019. It leans Republican in the Presidential and Gubernatoral Elections, and by enrollment, but a lot of independent voters who show up on off-years are Democratic leaning.
The Southern Hilltowns Legislative District 39 (Westerlo-Rensselearville-part of Berne) is nominally a Republican district, but Christopher H. Smith (D) holds it. He is a military-veteran and owns a popular restaurant, but he could certainly loose re-election, depending on who shows up and the climate in 2023. Things are more Republican leaning then four years ago.
I re-crunched, well my computer with 100 lines of Python, re-crunched the now-official Albany County 2022 Election results which now includes blanks and drop-off numbers.
At some point I might crunch 2018 and earlier back to 2011, but the problem I run into is the Board of Elections Enrollments are in PDF format which are slightly more difficult to process compared to Excel files they’ve used since 2019.
