I voted against almost everything. The exceptions were the “oops” amendment to the state constitution on who could be on commissions for judicial ethics, where they couldn’t even find anyone to write against it, and the referendum for which the sole arguments against were, “Hey, this measure was written by trial lawyers! It’s obviously the spawn of Satan!”
I feel left out - the only ballot initiative I got was on school bonds. 
God yes, that was pathetic. Lawyers = evil, therefore vote no folks! Gee thanks for that insightful arguement.
I also plan to vote against the smoking ban initiative, mostly because I feel that decision should be made by the local businesses and not the legislature. However that decision was strongly reinforced by reading the arguements.
(paraphrased)
AGAINST: This will hurt businesses and provide little real benefit
FOR: OMG you want our families to be exposed to secondhand smoke! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!1
Great googly moogly! You had to wade through (at least) 79 freakin’ ballot questions? Damn, I thought I had it bad with (uh … 9 + 14) 23 of 'em!
No, no. That’s just the prop #'s. There are only 7 that are on the actual ballot.
No it’s not quite that bad. California doesn’t start over at 1 with each election. We cycle through (300 I think) a large number. This is to prevent people from confusing a hot-bottom proposition from one ballot (i.e. Prop 13 was passed in 1978 and people still remember what it was about) with the same numbered one on a subsequent ballot. We just had 8 this time (+ 1 school board proposition here in Torrance, CA). And I voted no on all of them except the redistricting one (Prop 77)
Thanks, CFOHG, I obviously can’t count. 
In a nutshell, in NJ we have a ballot question to add an elected position of Lt Governor. This is in response to our last Governor resigning in disgrace.
That’s right, let’s add another 6 figure jobs with Perks and all the cost of running an election because it might have served a purpose last time.
This is truly stupid and I really hope it gets voted down.
Jim
Yes, I had the same reaction to that one.
That’s not so bad, then. Here in Texas not only do we restart at 1 with each election, each “authority” is numbered separately starting at 1. So today I voted on State props 1 through 9 (including the “hot button” anti-single-sex marriage prop 2) and City props 1 through 14 (including the local “hot button” mayor-related prop 1).
I’d bet you a dollar a large number of the voting idiots out there confuse state-vs-city and vote for city prop 2 thinking it’s the state prop, and vice versa for prop 1.
Imagine how much more confusing today’s election would be if we had any county-wide issues!
North Carolina doesn’t put a whole lot of propositions and such on the ballots. Amazingly, we put in elected officials, expect them to pass the right laws and such for us, and hold them accountable to do it.
In New York, though, one of the most annoying things about elections was the annual Adirondack proposition. You see, about 100 years ago we put in the constitution that the Adirondack Forest Preserve was to be kept forever wild, with no human construction in it. Then, seemingly every election thereafter (at least 95% of them during my adult life in New York), we passed a constitutional amendment saying “…except that the Department of Transportation may build a section of Interstate highway running [seventeen lines of metes-and-bounds property description omitted here].” or “except that the Olympics Authority may install a cross-country ski trail with warming facilities at [thirteen lines of metes-and-bounds property description omitted here].” The last time I checked, the “Forever Wild” provision and its exclusionary amendments occupied about 20% of the State Constitution by page space.
Actually, I’m pretty much ok with the idea of the smoking ban. But this was just a poorly written initiative. 25 feet? Are they insane?
And of course, I have to cast my yearly vote against Tim Eyman.
Well, in New York this year they didn’t have an Adirondack proposition.
They did, however, have a proposition even further messing with the State’s totally fouled up budget process. As I understood it, instead of the Governor, Senate President and Assembly Speaker holding up the budget in a three-way stand-off, it would give the two legislative leaders the right to independently provide a screwed up temporary budget until they can get the Governor to sign on. It did nothing to resolve the legislative disaster that is Albany, just shifted the balance to the somewhat more odious and unaccountable parties, so I voted no.
I did, however, vote yes on the transportation bond authorization in hopes of eventually getting a Second Avenue Subway.
I voted yes to the two New York City propositions, one requiring City Administrative Law Judges to comply with ethics guidelines and the other retaining in place some financial controls that were set to expire. The seemed pretty non-contraversial though, because the City Campaign Finance Board could not find anyone to write why they shouldn’t be adopted in the voter guide they mail out.
Yeah, that provision makes me sympathize with Dan Savage’s quandary. (Not-in-Washingtonians: statewide initiative would ban smoking in most public indoor places – and within 25’ of a window or doorway, which effectively means people have to go out to the middle of the street to smoke.)
No matter how much nicer it would make trivia night, that 25’ provision made me shy away from voting for the initiative.
I seem to prefer city-specific initiatives – I’ve voted for the monrail 5 times now, and I made sure to seek out the petition that would save lap dances in Seattle. Looks like we’ll be voting on that in the next year.
Hell, we didn’t have any elections today.
At least, I sure hope we didn’t.
They’d have sent me some information if we had an election, right? And they would have mentioned it on the radio, yeah? I think I’m safe.
Under Maine law, gays are a protected minority, illegal to discriminate against based on sexual orientation for things such as loans or leases or whatnot.
The religious right, however, are positively pissing themselves over this. They don’t want anyone raining on their prejudice. So, they’re attempting to strike out sexual orientation from all anti-discrimination laws. However, simply saying “we hates us them gays and wants all the opportunity to stomp on 'em whene’er wes can” wouldn’t garner much support, even from the right; it would smack too obviously of hate speech. So, instead they’ve being arguing against a fictitious same-sex marriage proposal.
Yes, read that again. They’re defending against an enemy they’ve invented themselves. It would be like, if I were against Prop 305, discount bus fares for war widows, I’d argue: “Vote ‘no’ on 305, keep blood-thirsty pterodactyls out of our kindergartens!”.
It’s utter, utter insanity. And scarily, most of the ardent supporters on the Yes side (for striking it out) don’t realize at all what they’re in support of. They actually think they’re against same-sex marriage. The tactic was brilliant for whoever organized it, otherwise they’d be almost completely alone and look like raving lunatics (which, you know, they are). Projections show us on the No side will win, but it will still be a frightening night that could go either way.
Even it were for same-sex marriage, I simply don’t understand the reasoning from the opposition. The message seems to be:
- Legalize same-sex marriage
- …
- Total and irreversible collapse of civilization
In other words, the “argument” part of the argument seems to be absent.
The other six points are less interesting, and far, far less debated. Five of them are just funding issues. One of them is support for public colleges and Universities, which is needed. Maine has one of the highest funded K-12 systems in the country, but our higher education system is severely lacking.
I wanted to sign that strip club petition too, but the petition guy wasn’t very effective; he just sort of ran by mumbling “sign a petition”. Maybe it was too cold out for him. I do hope it comes up for a vote next year though, so we can get that stupid, stupid law repealed.
I feel the same way. I’m not a smoker and I’m no fan of smoking, but the smoking ban just struck me as crossing the line into busybodyism.
Oh, it’ll be up for a vote – they gathered twice as many signatures as they needed. Apparently the signature gatherers didn’t have to do a lot of convincing.
I’m with you on this one. I ended up voting no on this one because of that, and because I think there should be a “tavern exception” (as distinguished from bars; if all the place offers is beer and pool, you might as well be able to smoke too).
Matter of fact, I voted no on everything other than the charter amendment about judicial assignments. Stupid special interests can’t work with the legislature, so they throw a bunch of confusing, competing measures in front of the public. Regardless of whether the ideas have merit (The Stranger recommended a yes on the lawyers’ side of the medical insurance issue), I’m hoping the initiatives fail, as a means of telling the various parties to go back to Olympia and work with each other like FUCKING ADULTS.
Jeez.