{"id":1778,"date":"2006-11-08T15:14:25","date_gmt":"2006-11-08T15:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubuntu.my\/wp30\/archives\/2006\/11\/08\/prop_83_blocked.html"},"modified":"2006-11-08T15:14:25","modified_gmt":"2006-11-08T15:14:25","slug":"prop_83_blocked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/archives\/2006\/11\/08\/prop_83_blocked.html","title":{"rendered":"Prop 83 blocked in court"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those of you who didn’t obsessively watch the election results last nite, Prop 83 (the flawed sex offender one<\/a>) passed 70\/30. This is not at all surprising although what really gets my goat is the number of people who voted for it who didn’t realize what it did. Every time i’d bring up 83 with people, they’d tell me they were all for it. So i’d tell them what all it would do and show them the fine print. They were horrified. I’ve managed to convince everyone i’ve talked with to vote against it (except the people at the CyberSafety event who believe that anything to stop sex offenders even if you kill the baby in the process is AOK). This drives me crazy because it’s a classic example of ill-informed voters hurting everyone.<\/p>\n

So, while i was really hoping that my message might have gotten out about 83, i knew that it was going to pass and i was prepared for that disappointment. I wasn’t prepared for the immediate blockage of 83 by the courts:<\/a> “U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, ruling on a lawsuit filed here early Wednesday, said the measure ‘is punitive by design and effect’ and likely unconstitutional.” I really hope that this means that it might not go into effect because the law is so problematic and costly. It might also mean that, if it works its way up the courts, it might be blocked in other states. ::bounce::<\/p>\n

Still, the problem stands: voters don’t read the fine print when it comes to propositions. This means that many other propositions can pass if worded in a way to capitalize on people’s fears. That REALLY upsets me and i’d like to know what to do about it.<\/p>\n

So, all and all, it was a decent night. We have the House. Rumsfield resigned. We may get the Senate (but even if we don’t, Cheney has to be the tie-breaker which is *fascinating*). Of course, we still have the Terminator terminating education in California. And far far far too many states banned gay marriage. And the reality is that no one voted _for_ the Democrats but _against_ the Republicans which means that we really shouldn’t be celebrating per say. On the plus side, more people seemed to have come out to vote than have in a long long time. And it looks like a lot of young people came out too. But i still can’t call that a victory because more does not mean close to all.<\/p>\n

I’m also disturbed about something else. I watched election returns until it was clear no more info on Virginia or Montana was coming in last night. I couldn’t help but think about how close the last few elections have been and how much money is being made off of election coverage. I remember being horrified when i realized that there’s fine print at the end of Reality TV shows saying that the producers have input over who gets kicked out. In short, they make sure that the results are rigged so that people want to watch the show. The last few elections have felt like that – uber close elections meant to make people like me obsessively watch TV coverage all night, nearly memorizing all of the ads (i will definitely see Bobby<\/a> on Thanksgiving). Please please please tell me these close calls aren’t scripted. I really couldn’t handle that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you who didn’t obsessively watch the election results last nite, Prop 83 (the flawed sex offender one) passed 70\/30. This is not at all surprising although what really gets my goat is the number of people who voted for it who didn’t realize what it did. Every time i’d bring up 83 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}