Planning my Ballot, Seeking Opinions

[quaintance]

Hello Smart People!

I have been doing my ballot research, and among the National, State and Local Seats and Propositions, I am seeking your input on the following:

CA Proposition 2, 3 and 5
SF Propositions E, H and K

Feel free to email me if you are more private about your positions on these matters.

Comments

Wow - democracy

[anonymous]

I'd read/heard bits and bobs about Prop. 8 (including the information that you posted from your Rabbi friend), but I'd not visited the official election website until now. Despite the results of the election, I'm quite impressed with the whole electoral framework built up around the propositions. Particularly the arguments and rebuttals section - that's a really cool idea. Instead of just laying out the extremely brief wording of the proposition, and hoping that TV coverage, etc., fills in the gaps for voters, the website publishes formalised arguments for and against its implementation to be debated (albeit in a somewhat limited fashion). Nice. While I'm sure that there are hundreds of websites out there that do the "same" thing (e.g. more-or-less from biased positions one way or the other), I like this up-front and formal approach to it. There are certainly some big hitting names in these sections (former/serving judges, police, lawyers, activists, etc.).

Here, our parties (and, occasionally, their memberships) pick the policies and either put them in manifestos or try to ram them through our houses of parliament. But there's no sense in which we, the public, directly interact with them (except, of course, through the "focus groups" that the parties place their faith in).

Andrew.