Yay Democracy!
As I wrote to my folks Tuesday morning:
[Here in San Francisco] they have these GIANT ballots in English, Chinese, and Spanish. Really neat! Its like a giant scantron, and it is somewhat gratifying to hold this huge five-pages of ballot in the blue secrecy folder between your hands and feel like maybe the participatory democracy thing is of some importance.
Proposition J: Shall it be city policy to call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney?
They also do ranked-choice voting for some municipal offices, though it was a bit silly because in both cases there was only one candidate running. I suppose a really enterprising citizen could have ranked in three write-in candidates and that crazy person would already be living here anyway.
This town certainly has its moments.
This morning I check in to see that Democrats have taken the House, and quite possibly the Senate as well.
And, it is not like I’m really impressed with the Democrats, and their fear of articulating some vision of a better America, but it is nice to see the system correcting itself a bit. The best wisdom I have heard is that at least now President Bush will have a check on his power, and he’ll have to behave a bit more like a President. It seems the process has already started, as the GOP has announced that Donald Rumsfeld is going to resign.
The system works.
As far as impeaching Bush goes, I admit that is a silly ballot proposition for a municipal poll, but it is totally San Francisco, and it is a pleasing break from reading up on school bond proposals and sick leave. Unfortunately, they only had “yes” and “no” as options, I would have preferred “oh, hell yes!” (Though, I’m not sure how well that translates into Chinese.)
Responses
-berto
I went to vote late in the afternoon. The polling place was crowded with voters of all ages, races, and backgrounds. I haven’t seen it this crowded in years. Blue collar workers with grime and grease still on their clothes. Yuppies in their track suits and power suits holding their metal coffee mugs. The elderly, divided into two groups, those with guarded patience, and those with a bitter look that stated ‘I’m mad as hell and not gonna take it.’ The line was divided into two groups- those waiting for electronic voting and those who wanted to vote on paper. I chose paper, for starters that line was shorter, but I also like the feel of an oversized, double sided ballot printed on a thick stock of paper. Maybe touch screen voting is better, despite all the problems, but until everything is electronic, I will use the paper version if given the option.
Unlike previous years where voting was done punch style, any chance of hanging chads was eliminated this year. Next to each candidates name was a partial arrow pointing to the candidate’s name. For example, ‘1. John Doe
Ji Village News
I guess you can say: 举åŒæ‰‹èµžæˆ!, which literally means “raise both of your hands in agreement”
Erik
Our voting place was just on the edge of Chinatown, so beside all the notices in Chinese, Vietnamese (and Spanish) I also saw the English :) there were a few other western-looking people beside me :) it was pretty busy which is great.
We (Bostonians) had a few entertaining propositions also – one was whether supermarkets and convenience stores should be allowed to sell wine (a lot of them arent here in Mass), which seems like a no-brainer. Then there was this weird one whether it should be allowed to put your name in for more than one party, so that you “can show you support more than one program”. That’s just ridiculous!
Erik
Let me clarify that last proposition described: putting in your name for more than one party applies to CANDIDATES, not us voters. So if I want to run for representative for my district, I could be 80% dem and 20% independent, for example.
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