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.
