Election Research
There’s an election coming up on Tuesday. I just spent a long time doing online research on the candidates and issues. I found http://www.smartvoter.org/ and http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/ to be very helpful resources, particularly for the various Propositions. Propositions make my head hurt, but I think I was able to come to a good decision on most of them. Being able to see which organizations and individuals contributed to some of the campaigns made it quite easy — for instance, Prop 86, a tax on cigarettes to fund healthcare programs, was supported by the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and the American Cancer Association, and opposed by Philip Morris and The Retail Tobacco Dealers of America. Tough call, eh? Ha. But most of the time it’s difficult to decide how to vote. I don’t want to make things WORSE. Often, as in the race for Senator, I feel I just need to choose the lesser of two evils. As much as I disagree with Dianne Feinstein, I think I’d better vote for her in order to prevent Mountjoy from coming to power. Bah. What a system. I feel pretty good about Phil Angelides for Governor, though.