On Tuesday Why Did Voters Not Approve Moving Fort Worth Or Democracy Vouchers?

When I voted in Tuesday's Texas election I found myself thinking, once again, how bizarre the voting in Texas is.

As in, how bizarre how few things there are to vote on.

And how bizarre that the only things on this most recent ballot were amendments to the Texas Constitution.

The long-winded verbiage on the ballots, explaining each amendment, was confused gobbledygook.

And yet Texas voters passed all the amendments on the ballot.

The one amendment which I could pretty much make out what was being voted on was #7. In this amendment voters were voting to approve billions of dollars to be spent on roads, with no new taxes, fees or tolls.

Huh?

The amendment did not spell out where this road money was going to be spent, or specify where the money for the road building was coming from.

And why is such a thing an amendment to a state's constitution?

Do any of the other American states put goofy constitution amending stuff like this on their ballots?

I suspect not.

Even a General Election in Texas is bizarre with the few items to vote on.  No wonder so few Texans bother to vote.

And how come the Texas Election Committee, or whatever it is called, does not mail voters a Voter's Pamphlet? My old home state did this. The issues being voted on were explained, along with pro and con statements. Information about all the individuals running for the various offices, at the state level, is also included.

Speaking of Washington....

So, let's go to Tuesday's election in my old home state to see why it is I find Texas elections so bizarrely nonsensical. It costs a lot of money to stage an election. To do so with only goofy nonsense on the ballot, that should have simply been measures passed by the state legislature, well, like I said.

Bizarre. And nonsensical.

So, that long skinny graphic you see above is all I could screen cap of what was on the ballot on Tuesday for Seattle voters.  I got this from the Seattle Times. Yet one more example of something I see in a west coast news source that I would not see in the Star-Telegram.

Or any other Texas newspaper.

As in a ballot with lots of actual meaningful stuff to vote on.

I had to shrink my browser's text to 25% to capture what I could of what was on the Seattle ballot.

This was an off year election. Yet on the Seattle ballot there were some substantial issues which the voters said yes to. Such as the "Move Seattle" ballot measure.

In Proposition 1, known as Move Seattle, voters voted to spend $930 million over nine years on various transportation projects, including one I think to be quite cool. That being 60 some miles of elevated bike paths.

Note the last line in the graphic above, informing us that Snohomish County voters passed a transit issue regarding buses. Snohomish County is the county adjacent to Seattle's King County to the north. My old home county, Skagit, is the next county north. All the counties in the Puget Sound zone have voter approved public mass transit.

Seattle voters approved Move Seattle and its almost billion dollar price tag. A price tag very close to the current cost of America's Biggest Boondoggle, that being Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, which the public has never been allowed to vote on, hence that project is not fully funded, hence that project has no real project timeline, unlike Move Seattle, which, with its 9 year project timeline, will be finished in 2024, a year after The Boondoggle is currently claiming its project will finally be finished.

Even though America's Biggest  Boondoggle has no actual project timeline because the project is not fully funded.

Somehow I think Move Seattle will be moving Seattlites long before Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision moves anyone anywhere. Except  maybe to jail after convictions for criminal malfeasance.

I digress.

Another thing on the Seattle ballot. Democracy vouchers. Approved by the voters.

I had no idea what Democracy vouchers were before I read the 'Democracy vouchers' win; first in country article in the Seattle Times.

I can not imagine such a measure on a Fort Worth or Texas ballot. Well, maybe in Austin.

Click the link to the Democracy Vouchers article. Read the article. Ask yourself if you can imagine reading such an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. As in the Seattle Times article about Democracy Vouchers is very detailed, very balanced, very well written, sort of edgy, sort of self deprecating, sort of sophisticated, and well, just overall very intelligent.

All attributes one rarely finds in the Fort Worth Star Telegram.  Except, maybe, occasionally from Bud Kennedy. And even then it is a bit of a fluke.....

The 2012 Election Is Over With Marijuana Legal In Washington While Texas Gets A Lot Of Republican Judges

Well, another election fades to history.

At some point in last evening's return viewing I decided it could wait til morning for me to learn who was going to be president for the next 4 years.

Thirty years ago if a science fiction movie was about the election of 2012 and that movie envisioned the high tech future of coverage, methinks that movie's viewers would have thought all that high tech gadgetry was totally far fetched. And really cool.

But, the reality 30 years after 1982 is that the TV news people manipulate info on giant i-Pad like devices, whilst the viewers at home sit with their smart phones and tablets that do the same thing, on a smaller scale.

My old home state had a couple interesting items on the ballot. Initiative-502 had to do with legalizing recreational use of marijuana. Referendum 74 had to do with letting anyone get married who felt the need to get married. Also known as same sex marriage.

I-502 passed. R-74 is in the process of passing. I don't think it has been called yet. My guess is within a year you will be able to go to your sister's wedding to her girl friend in Washington and smoke pot while watching the ceremony.

I got a letter from my favorite aunt this morning, she being my dad's sister. Among the items in the envelope was an article my aunt snipped from the Washington Post titled "Posturing in Texas validates the world's autocratic regimes." Referencing this article, in her letter, my aunt wrote, "Only in Texas."

The article was about idiotic comments made by the Texas State Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding international election monitors, with the Texas AG threatening to have them arrested and criminally prosecuted.

I do not know what other Referendums and Initiatives were on the Washington ballot this year. Usually there are quite a few, in addition to local bond issues for various things, like a new school or a water works project like Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Billion Dollar Boondoggle that the citizens of Fort Worth have never been allowed to vote on.

There were zero state-wide Referendums or Initiatives on the Texas ballot. I don't recollect ever seeing such a thing on a Texas ballot. Are Texas citizens not allowed to collect signatures on a petition  to put an issue on the ballot?

Voting in Texas is very odd. I suspect others who have voted in other states, prior to voting in Texas, have thought the same thing.

The oddest thing, to me, is you really do not get to vote on all that many things on a Texas ballot. Like I already mentioned, no Referendums or Initiatives to vote on, no approving or disapproving of something like legalizing gambling or legalizing marijuana use or legalizing same sex marriage or any other thing or building a bridge or a football stadium or a useless pond and unneeded flood diversion channel.

In Texas you get to vote on an incredible number of judges, most of them Republicans running unopposed. Is this why Texas produces so many judicial embarrassments that amuse and appall the rest of the country?

In Texas you do not get a voter's pamphlet in the mail. In Washington you get a voter's pamphlet in the mail. In that voter's pamphlet you read the pros and cons of all the Initiatives and Referendums and other ballot issues. Plus info and statements from the candidates.

Does Texas not have voter's pamphlets because the majority of the info in it would be about Republican judges running unopposed, with no state wide votes on anything that would require providing info to the voting public?

It is all very perplexing.

Early Voting in Texas

Early voting began today here in Texas. I guess I'll go vote.

Voting is way different here in Texas than I was used to up in Washington. One difference is, up north, I had a permanent absentee ballot. This was much more convenient than driving to a polling place.

The biggest difference between voting in Texas and Washington is in Washington there'd always be way more on the ballot that I had a motivation to vote on.

Like Initiatives and Referendums and Propositions. I don't think Texas has a state-wide Initiative and Referendum system.

Texas towns do put Propositions on the ballot. Like for this coming election Fort Worth has 2 Propositions. Fort Worth's Proposition #1 is about whether or not to allow the sale of beer and wine for off-premises consumption. Fort Worth's Propostion #2 is also booze-related, as in whether or not to allow the sale of mixed beverages in restaurants by food and beverage certificate holders.

That's it for Fort Worth. The good citizens of Fort Worth don't get to vote on things like the destruction of the confluence of 2 forks of the Trinity River to build a little lake and some canals. Or how about a Proposition for a bond issue to raise money to fix up the Fort Worth Stockyards? Or how about voting on whether or not to provide funding to keep the Fort Worth Public Libary system fully operating?

Usually, up in Washington, on any given voting day there are several Initiatives and Referendum and Propositions to vote on. It can be things like the entire state will vote on whether or not to blow up a Kingdome and build a new football stadium. Or King County will vote on whether or not to build a light rail system. Or vote 5 times on a proposal to build a new monorail. Or several affected counties will vote on whether or not to spend $1 billion to build a new suspension bridge.

In Washington citizens can put something on the ballot via getting enough signatures on a petition. That's called an Initiative. The state legislature can pass a law that can also end up on the ballot due to citizen action. That's called a Referendum.

In Washington it'd never fall to one town to vote on and build something that the entire region benefits from, like a professional football stadium. In Washington no one would dream of using eminent domain to take citizen's homes to build a football stadium. Mostly because you'd be an idiot up there to think you could do that and successfully win a public vote to finance a stadium. In Texas you can be an idiot and successfully get people to vote to tax themselves to build you a stadium and to evict your neighbors from their homes, with nary a peep of protest.

In other words, in many ways other parts of America are more of a participatory democracy than Texas.

So I guess I'll go vote. The only thing I have any interest in is the Presidential vote. The rest are mostly meaningless names to me. Oh, there are those very important Fort Worth booze-related Propositions. I'll be sure and vote no on those.