04 November 2008

Election Day

This is it. Today is the Presidential election (and a lot of other important decisions down ticket). In Colorado, you can vote in person until 7 p.m., and in Denver, you vote at your precinct (unless you have a mail-in ballot, which can be hand delivered through 7 p.m. today).

Officials expect about 1 million voters in person today, and there are several hundred thousand mail-in ballots not yet received.

If you've been sleeping through it all, this is a year to throw the Republicans out of power, and there are also many issues on the Colorado ballot. The short version:

Vote "No" on everything except, Amendment 50 (gambling), Amendment 51 (developmentally disabled funding with sales tax), Amendment 58 (severance tax increase), Amendment 59 (DeBruce Colorado), the lettered referrenda, and Denver issue 3A (school bonds).

2 comments:

Michael Malak said...

For further clarification, the 2006 fiasco of "vote centers" has gone away. In 2008 you vote in your precinct. Moreover, precinct locations change from year to year. To find your polling location for this year, type your address into:

http://www.denvergov.org/ForVoters/WheretoVote/ElectionDayVotingLocations/tabid/431118/Default.aspx

As for the ballot issues, I am one of the thousands of signatories to the proclamation for the separation of school and state. Thus, I vote "no" for any ballot issue that would result in increased funding for public schools, from pre-K through college.

Public education was created to engender flag worship and nationalism. It's only gotten worse over time. Now No Child Left Behind gives children's names to military recruiters, who then visit the public schools. If we didn't have public schools, I don't think the U.S. would have gone to war in Iraq.

To defund public education, vote "no" on:

* 50 (gambling proceeds to go to community colleges)
* 58 (oil and gas severance taxes to pay for state college scholarships)
* 59 (repeal TABOR in order to fund public schools)
* 3A (bonds for Denver Public Schools)

I also voted "no" on 51 (sales tax to go to developmental disability programs) under the "sacred cow" theory, which is that as an excuse to raise taxes, government official put sacred cows on the ballot so that they'll pass, thereby freeing up the other revenue for things that the government wants that aren't as popular as the sacred cow that people think they're voting for. It's all a shell game.

Anonymous said...

Malak is right. Offering universal education undermines the elite's control of government. Otherwise who's gonna cook our burgers and tend our pools?