{"id":368,"date":"2008-02-04T21:42:56","date_gmt":"2008-02-05T02:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/california_ballot_proposition_algorithm"},"modified":"2013-11-17T23:43:18","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T23:43:18","slug":"california_ballot_proposition_algorithm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2008\/02\/california_ballot_proposition_algorithm.html","title":{"rendered":"California Ballot Proposition Algorithm"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s election time this Tuesday in California, and you know what that means. Yes, once again we have a raft of ideas so bad they couldn’t be shoved through the Legislature<\/del> shiny new ballot propositions offered for our consideration.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I have painstakingly developed a straightforward algorithm for evaluating ballot propositions. It goes something like this:<\/p>\n

Is the proposition related to water infrastructure?\n  If yes, do my two friends who are professional water engineers support it?\n    If yes, vote YES.\n  Else vote NO.\nElse vote NO.<\/pre>\n
A small caveat: Lobbyists are hip to the fact that Californians tend to vote NO on propositions all things being equal, and so sometimes they cleverly craft a proposition such that a NO vote actually implements the opposite of what the voters might think it does. So the algorithm only works if you first unscramble any Bizarro<\/a> Ballot Propositions such that NO really means NO, not YES. Me am not understanding? You am not understanding? Good!<\/p>\n
Anyway, let’s apply the algorithm. Since none of the propositions relate to water engineering, we fall through to NO on each one. What could be simpler?<\/p>\n
But wait — we need to check our work. Let’s pretend for a moment that we don’t<\/em> have access to this powerful algorithm, and actually look at these propositions one-by-one:<\/p>\n