Election Roundup 2007

Rarely am I compelled to write about anything political, but after yesterday's election festivities, I thought I'd make a few comments considering about everything I voted one way on went the other way.

Prop 1 - the aptly named "Roads and Transit" package that would bring light rail everywhere and lots more roads, failing miserably. I think the problem all along has been the "roads" part of it. I'm a huge fan of light rail wherever they want to put it. The vocal masses opposed to this measure took issue with the roads part, and well, I guess I can't blame them for that. The problem was they tried to put it all together. I think people would have approved the light rail if it were all on its own. Oh well... I guess we'll just have to wait another decade for solid public transportation options and pay twice as much.

Initiative 960 - Tim Eyman's latest attempt at "armchair legislating" which would require 2/3 legislative approval (or any voter approval) for any tax increase in Olympia, PLUS an "advisory vote" of the people for any new tax... passing. How anyone can vote for anything that comes out of Eyman's bag o' crap anymore still astounds me. The one commonality that every one of his initiatives have demonstrated countless times before is that they create sweeping changes that hurt far more than they help. Can we recall back to his first $30 car tabs initiative that was passed? You don't have to look far to see the lack of decent bus service and sky-high ferry tolls to see the results of that. Oh, but Timmy's Lexus SUV is as cheap as ever for him to license. Good thing we saved him some money. On the bright side, this ridiculous piece of legislation will likely be tied up in court as they determine it contradicts with the state constitution and then shoot it back down. Then Eyman will start crying out that the "will of the people" is being ignored by the state, blah blah blah... we've been through this all before.

EHJR 4204 - Reducing the requred vote from 60% to 50% to approve school levies. Is this just a change to make it easier for school levies to pass because they keep failing? Of course it is. But does it still make sense? Of course it does. Why should schools be held to higher requirements than anything else? It only takes 50% (+1) of the people to approve stupid initiatives, and other major taxes, why do schools have to get more? This never has made any sense to me. Plus, schools need the money, and it's a much better way to spend it than on most of this other junk. If 50% of the people don't want it, that's fine, but 40% shouldn't be able to dictate the terms.

Everything else on the ballot is relatively uninteresting. We didn't have any elections for any big state or federal positions, so it was relatively uneventful. But at least it's all over now, and I can stop seeing all of those darn commercials.