california - WTF?

[cacophony]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us...cs/10prop.html

so they're reforming election law to reduce their choices to a two party system. and what's great is it means the majority could get ZERO CANDIDATES on a ballot if their field is too split during primary season.

i'm starting to think californians have no idea how to make intelligent decisions. overpaying for housing, electing the govenator, running their budget into the ground by forcing every measure up for general election, prop 8, i mean seriously what the hell is going on?!

[cured]

Arnold isn't that bad actually, he's just up against a machine that doesn't like being tinkered with. California has a lot of budgetary problems, much of it has to do with union money-grabbing in terms of outrageous salaries for some sectors and incredibly inflated pensions in others. The voters take a lot of the blame for passing a lot of the propositions that come along during election night. People don't understand (as was the case with me) that the propositions aren't covered in any part of the budget; if passed, the assembly has to find ways to pay for them. So we borrowed for awhile but we just can't do it anymore.

Housing is a different issue; a much more systematic issue. Responsible home-buyers were really screwed when the market inflated only to come crashing down. There's a lot of people out there with negative equity who have never missed a house payment. It's sickening.

[cacophony]

and what about the election reform?

[cured]

Originally Posted by cacophony

and what about the election reform?

I hadn't heard much about it, to be honest. They did this same thing in Washington state, which is very liberal. This allows Washington to have a general election with two democrats instead of one democrat and one republican, if it were to play out that way.

I must say I'm a little indifferent about this and can only say time will tell if this does end up strengthening the power of moderate politicians. The way districts are drawn, politicians need to be more conservative than their opponent or more liberal than their opponent, depending on political affiliation, and that just drives the wedge apart. Time will tell but we'll likely fuck it up.

[Sean]

I actually missed out on voting with what has turned out to be a serious disc protrusion that's pinching a nerve and causing constant, searing pain in the right side of my upper back, all the way down my right arm. But that aside, I was torn on how I would have voted for prop 14.

Basically, I think we have a major problem in how party-centric primaries are. Candidates campaigning during the primaries are typically forced to play to the base of their parties - typically the more extreme folks - just to win the nomination, while the more moderate primary candidates fall by the wayside. The clearest example to me was back in 2000, when McCain lost the primary race to Bush, because McCain was too moderate for the tastes of the Republican base. Hell, that's why we have to deal with an idiot like Sarah Palin now. Yet again, McCain was forced to satisfy the Republican base by bringing on a token extremist, and voilÃ* - a moron is unleashed on the world. So anyway, we end up being stuck with candidates in the general election that are ready to serve either the extreme left or the extreme right, but where does that leave the majority of the country, which consists of moderates on both sides of the political spectrum and independents? It leaves us stuck on the outside while Democrats and Republicans prioritize what's best for their party over what's best for the country. And that is what has brought us to a place where elections are beginning earlier and earlier every cycle, so our representatives spend more time campaigning than they do governing.

My biggest fear about prop 14 is how it can be abused by the wealthy, just as the article you linked mentioned Cacophony. But that seems like a separate problem to me, as illustrated by the primary race for the Republican Gubernatorial candidate this year. Meg Whitman against Steve Poisner. They estimate that Whitman outspent her opponent by at least seven times, using her own personal fortune to do so of course. So with or without prop 14, it seems that campaign finance laws still have a long way to go before we have an ideal system.

So I don't know, I actually lean towards the idea of prop 14 based on what I know now. I could definitely be swayed though, as it's a subject I still have much to learn about.