If you are a voter in Okaloosa County, or any county that uses ‘mark-sense’ ballots [the one’s that look like the school tests where you have to fill in the oval], the number of amendments that are on the ballot means you will have two sheets to fill out. If you are an absentee voter and intend to mail your completed ballot back to the Supervisor of Elections, you need at least 65¢ worth of postage. Most people will need to put two First Class stamps on the envelop unless they take it to the post office.

The only place I found this fact was on the web site of the Supervisor of Elections. There is nothing on the return envelop other than the fact that you have to put a stamp on it. It would be nice if the County covered the return mailing cost, but that isn’t going to happen.

If you only put one stamp on it, the Post Office will return it to you with that stamp canceled and an insufficient postage message, so it will cost you a total of three stamps to reach the election office.

If this annoys you, blame the people responsible, the Republicans in the legislature who want to change the state constitution – constantly.

The BBC reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu calls early poll.

Bibi can’t get a budget passed because his coalition includes the parties of the whacko fundamentalists who are exempt from military service and live on government welfare. The new budget needed to cut some benefits and the parasites won’t agree to them.

People don’t understand much about the government structure in Israel, so here’s some information.

People don’t get to vote for members of the Knesset, they only get to vote for parties. The parties create their individual lists of people that will fill the seats, but there are no guarantees. The leaders of the parties are selected by party members, so the general public doesn’t get to vote for the Prime Minister.

There are 120 seats in the Knesset, the parliament of Israel. The parties are given the number of seats that is equivalent to the percentage of the total vote they received in the election, i.e. if a party receive 10% of the total vote they received 12 seats in the Knesset, so the top 12 people on their list have a job.

In the last election the Likud Party received about 23% of the vote, so they have 27 seats in the Knesset. Since you need 61 seats to have a viable government, Netanyahu had to form a coalition with 5 other parties.

Netanyahu and his party don’t even represent a quarter of the electorate of Israel. If they can’t convince Israelis to support them, what on earth is the US doing backing every hare-brained scheme they come up with?

I would note, that US Presidential candidates should keep in mind that after the Israeli election in December, Netanyahu may not be the prime minister, so slavishly looking for his approval is not a great idea.