Election spam

There's an election on November 7, for both state, federal, and city offices. I've been receiving e-mails for about a month now from one of the candidates for city council, George Beier, which has been puzzling me, because whereas it is easy enough to get my e-mail address off of the UC Berkeley web site, how does he know that I live in his district? Or did he get it from the Registrar of Voters?

In Berkeley also we are voting on a couple city measures (referenda). A couple years ago there were ones to legalize both prostitution and marijuana (both failed). This year's are considerably less exciting. One is to reduce city greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Another is to call upon the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney. What is funny about this is that the "opinion against" Bush impeachment that is sent to the voters is written by two people who describe themselves as "witness to Willis-Starbuck murder" and "owner of car destroyed by drug dealers".

It looks certain that Schwarzenegger is going to be reelected, which is unfortunate, but at least this time around I'm not living overseas and don't have to try to explain to people why my state's politics resemble a reality TV show.