1115.org

Back in the mid-90s when I was attending college, I spent a few years living in Richmond, Virginia. While Richmond is a lovely city in many instances, I generally haven’t had much reason to feel homesick for it. That changed about an hour ago, as my eyes were glazing over at the California ballot.

“Man, I could be voting against George Allen right now, but instead I have to choose between Angelides and Schwarzenegger. Ugh. The system is broken.”

Oh well. I held my nose and received my flashy “I voted” sticker. Some thoughts:

1) There were electronic voting machines in my polling place, but none of them were working. Voting was by old-fashioned paper ballots instead. Considering the continual and varied problems with electronic voting machines over the past few elections, including widespread stories of problems today, when will the people running elections finally wake up? Voting machines shouldn’t be used unless they are proven to be reliable and free from tampering or irregularities. Period.

2) I’ve lived in California for over seven years, and I still think the ballot initiative process is ridiculous. The average voters shouldn’t be expected to read through pages and pages of fine print legalese in order to figure out what exactly they are voting for. Enacting legislation really should be the job of our legislators, who instead sit back and get a pass from making any tough decisions on their own. Considering the size of California and the difficulties inherent in running the state, to have so many budgetary issues reliant on ballot initiatives is just stupid, and leads to Prop 13-style financial train wrecks down the road.

3) If you haven’t voted yet, make sure you do. Better yet, make sure other people are going to vote, as well. This should be etched in stone for most of our readers (yes, except you, Tom), but every reminder helps.