Time Running Out
From the Okaloosa County elections office:
BOOK CLOSING
Books close on October 6, 2008 for the November 4, 2008 General Election. Be sure all new registrations and party changes are submitted to our office or mandated sites by close of business.
There’s less than a week left to register in Florida to vote in the November election. At this point you really need to register or make changes to your registration at your county’s Supervisor of Elections office, so if there are any questions or problems they can be dealt with immediately.
VoteSmart Florida has information on the Florida ballot initiatives. There are three fewer than I wrote about in June. The Florida Supreme Court threw out:
5. Another attempt to shift costs from property taxes to sales taxes, this time aimed at schools.
7. Gets rid of the ban to giving tax money to churches.
9. Tells schools how to operate while providing a backdoor for vouchers by overriding a court decision.
There is still a lot of dross left. My rule on these things is that if the purpose isn’t absolutely clearly something you agree with, proposed by a group you trust, vote NO. There has been a lot of mischief done with deceptive ballot initiatives.
6 comments
There has been a lot of mischief done with deceptive ballot initiatives.
no! really?! /awful sarcasm
i was glad to see those go. unfortunately, we’ve still got the marriage ‘protection’ amendment, which will bring out the far right base in droves. ugh.
Why would anyone think it was a good idea to have the electorate of Florida define anything?
I really despair over the use of ballot measures, because the people writing them can rarely create a meaningful phrase, much less a sentence, and yet they are allow to write laws and amend the constitution. Without any legislative history to guide them, courts can go wherever they feel like with these initiatives.
…Orygun has been a ballot measure factory for a few decades now, and I have developed what I call “Uncle Jack K’s Simple Rule of Thumb” to deal with ballots that have had more than 20 measures now and again: if the measure is an amendment to the State Constitution, vote no…
That works for me, Jack, because no sane state would have a “pregnant pig” amendment in their constitution, but Florida does.
i’ve always liked that one myself. it’s going to be especially fun if the marriage thing gets added to the constitution.
There are going to be a lot of ticked off retirees in Florida who are going to be affected by this. They don’t get married because that would affect their retirements, but they have legal agreements covering shared property, health care decisions, etc. The wording is going to act just like the one on Ohio that screwed up the domestic abuse laws and invalidated “common law” marriage.
Every time one of these groups of whackos writes a bill to ban civil unions in addition to defining marriage they screw up the legal system. They aren’t simply bigots, they are ignorant bigots.