CA Ballot Propositions, November 2008 edition.

[lostintransit]

California's propositions are a unique populist institution that were designed to allow Californians to have some direct ability to influence the state's laws and spending. As some of them can alter the state constitution or create billions of dollars of spending (or remove billions of dollars of state revenue), they are important and not to be

Comments

[michaelpop]

Great job as always, Vishal. Our ballots are pretty much identically aligned, although I was leaning towards a no on 5, simply on the possibility that hardcore drug users could use their addictions to lessen penalties on other crimes. You're right that they'd have to convince a judge on that, though.

[coolbean98]

I think I may have voted the same as you on every proposition! I was weighing Prop 2 for a while if only because it seemed like such an obvious choice, and I started to worry about the impact on small farmers when I realized that the big offenders are really the giant poultry producers and not the small farms. Also, I (embarassingly) didn't think about the public health benefits from moving away from current poultry-farming conditions, so now I'm even more sure of my vote in support of 2. This article on egg labels also made me think more about what "cage-free" meant and now I even think this measure isn't enough, but baby steps, right

[studxkitten]

we're pretty much voting the same, to be honest. 1A, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10 are the ones i've researched enough (aside from the ones in my county) to know what i'm voting and have the same thoughts on them as you. the others i haven't decided - was planning on reading over tonight, but this will certainly help me a bit. thanks for spelling your thoughts out for us.

[onetoadore]

teh vish

[lostintransit]

i'm okay with having a distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage. if catholics don't want to let gays marry, then that's an internal fight they can have, as long as gays have the legal protections of civil marriage afforded to them. the idea of a "separate but equal" institution is not something i'm amenable to, though.