ballot review

Every election my husband and I host a ballot review party where we invite friends to come to our house and over a meal we go through the ballot together sharing what we know and our opinions about each of the issues.

Last night we had 18 people to the house. Peleg made three kinds of soup. Our friends brought desserts and a couple of bottles of wine. The California ballot has 12 statewide propositions this year, plus city and county issues, and community college and school district issues. I made up a flip chart with the official titles of every issue, and noted whether each issue was a proposed statute or constitutional amendment. For the bond issues I noted the dollar amount of bonds at stake, and for taxes how much that would cost.

And then I threw the floor open. Each of our guests had been asked to come prepared to present on an issue that interested them. We had a really great discussion. I was very impressed actually with the level of preparedness, and the seriousness, and the smarts that were in the room. I changed my mind on at least one of the Propositions. In the end we presuaded each other to unanimous positions on nearly every issue (well it was a like-minded group of friends to start with).

One of the guests blogged about the evening here and she also recorded the positions that we advocate on each of the 12 propositions. Check it out and remember to vote tomorrow. No on 8.