I am resolving in public to spend at least six hours this weekend doing research stuff (hey, it seems to work for vegreville). Here’s my “to do” list through SPSA:

1. Rerun the 1992–2004 NES IRT models and add the slides to the new job talk.
2. Finish up the strategic voting paper revisions, update the results and fancy graphs, and send it out for review (again).
3. Hack together a new draft of the heuristics paper after adding the McCain data analysis Rachna and I worked on over the summer during her independent study at Duke.
4. Put together a submittable draft of the coalition performance paper.
5. Write the paper that goes with the job talk for SPSA and Midwest.
6. Put together a proposal for APSA? (Do I really want to go to APSA? Do I have any new ideas for APSA?)

Items 1–2 should be feasible by Monday. 3 and 4 may get reversed in order. 5 probably needs to get done before both 3 and 4 happen, depending on how busy November ends up being.

Update: I suppose some more job applications should be in that list too.

Here’s how I plan to vote Tuesday… feel free to try to change my mind.

• U.S. Senator: Claire McCaskill (D). Frankly, I despise both major party candidates with a passion, and every campaign ad makes me despise both of them more. Both Talent and McCaskill are lightweights, but that’s fine for a state that has a storied history of sending lightweights to Congress. This is simply a vote for divided government—no more, no less.
• U.S. House: whatever Libertarian is on the ballot; I can’t even remember if I’m in District 2 or District 3, but my vote has been gerrymandered out of meaningfulness either way.
• Stem cell initiative (Amendment 2): for. As far as I can tell, the only substantive effect is to prevent the state legislature from banning stem cell research if it so chose; unlike California’s initiative, it creates no funding for research in and of itself. Plus the opponents just sound like idiots—I get about the same visceral reaction to people who use the term “cloner” as those who use the word “abortionist,” which is basically “run for the hills before this creep can corner me.”
• Tobacco tax increase (Amendment 3): against. It’s a tax increase, and a regressive one at that. Not to mention it’s an intergenerational transfer: the old people who were dumb enough to smoke 17 packs of Marlboros a day get their health care paid for by kids who smoke a pack a week. Besides, wasn’t all that tobacco settlement money supposed to pay for this crap in the first place? No thanks.
• Judicial pay amendment (Amendment 7): for.
• Minimum wage increase (Proposition B): against; the Earned Income Tax Credit works better and actually helps poor people, unlike minimum wage increases (the effects which primarily accrue to union members well above the poverty line whose wages are often tied to multiples of the minimum wage). The Economist explains why.