It arrived today. It being my county’s General Election Sample Voting Machine Ballot.
The only question I have about the sample ballot involves the Public Question proposed at the bottom of the ballot. I read the question twice and then read the Interpretive Statement which purports to explain the meaning of the Public Question. At first I felt a bit annoyed at the fact that the question was presented in a way that required an interpretive statement so that I could understand what it meant. Why couldn’t it just have been written in plain English so that I wouldn’t need a law degree to understand it? What is even more exacerbating is that the interpretive statement is even more convoluted and confusing than the original proposition.
After thinking about this issue a little while I have come to the conclusion that the ‘powers to be’ really do not want the voters to understand what they are trying to slip by them. And if they don’t want us to understand what chicanery they are attempting to pull off it is probably not in our best interest.
My suggestion is the following: Rather than present the voters with a simple Yes or No choice on a Public Question they should offer a third choice - Maybe. In that way the politicians and their cronies would be left as confused about how to interpret the results on a question as are their constituents on how to vote on it.