I wasn’t feeling patriotic yesterday until I dialed my radio to NPR and listened to their Independence Day coverage. Then I reacted like an angry WASP.
Be an informed California voter in 2010!
I just got my Sample Ballot and Information Pamphlet from the State of California in the mail today, and I’ve been going over it to decide how I’m going to vote in a few weeks. Most of the qualified ballot initiatives were unfamiliar, but the little descriptions are often vague and misleading, so I got online to do some research. I’m not going to tell you how to vote on the June 8 California election, but please vote wisely. Don’t trust the little blurbs on the ballot to give you the real deal. It’s that kind of not thinking that got that industry-killing “farm cruelty” proposition passed two years ago. Those poor chickens.
We have a fairly direct democracy in California. Any one of us can write legislation, pay the fees to get an official title and summary, circulate a petition for Wal-mart shoppers to blindly sign, and file our initiative so that it shows up on the next statewide ballot. As a result, several great and terrible ballot initiatives show up every election for uninformed voters to yay-or-nay according to their whim. And these are often intended to amend the state constitution! We have a responsibility to be informed, to fight back against the collective ignorance that won these initiatives their right to be on the ballot in the first place.
The links below take you to each currently qualified initiative’s unofficial Ballotpedia page. At the bottom of each page, you can usually find a link to the actual text of the legislation. Please take time to read each of these with its corresponding Ballotpedia commentary. The propositions are usually rather short; some are only a few pages. The Secretary of State also has some limited information.
Consolidated Primary Election (June 8, 2010)
- Prop 13: “Seismic Retrofitting Amendment”
- Prop 14: “Top Two Primaries Act”
- Prop 15: “California Fair Elections Act”
- Prop 16: “New Two-Thirds Requirement for Local Public Electricity Providers Act”
- Prop 17: “Persistency Discounts State Statute”
