The forms of democracy

[redbird]

I voted this morning.

I voted because, well, it would feel wrong to skip an election merely because there wasn't anything significant on the ballot. In Manhattan, we had a handful of uncontested judgeships (one "vote for up to four" with a total of four candidates, and one "vote for up to three" with a total of three candidates) and the statewide ballot question, an extremely minor amendment to the state constitution. So I pulled the lever marked "yes," voting in favor of letting the town of Long Lake, in Hamilton County, trade twelve acres of town land, approved by the state legislature, for a specific acre of state-owned land they want to drill wells in. The one acre in question is a state-owned piece of the Adirondack State Park, which means they can't do this without amending the state constitution [1]. If this passes, there will presumably be text about this minor real estate trade in the New York constitution for years or decades.

[1] Our state constitution specifies that several million acres of the Adirondacks are "forever wild." It's a complicated mosaic of public and private lands, not a compact, contiguous [2] area.

[2] That phrasing is specified for congressional and state legislature districts. My father once drew his own map, from the description in the redistricting bill, rather than trusting the one the state legislature had published. Then he let them know they needed to rewrite the legislation, because they'd specified a figure eight.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Today I voted on school board members and whether we will switch to a charter government in this city. I have already voted against the charter twice, I think, and so did everyone else, and the charter people keep coming up with ways to put it on the ballot again, which annoys me. They can't come up with any coherent reasons why we should change the entire structure of our city government, so...leave it alone already!

We were voters # 20 and 21 at our polling place, which is at the Eagan City Hall. I hope this means we're making a real difference in the school board race.

[redbird]

cattitude and I are usually voters 20 and 21, or 21 and 22, at our polling place. Yesterday we were 7 and 8. I expect the turnout was higher elsewhere in the city, where there were races for district attorney and a couple of city council districts.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I got to vote against Republicans and Right to Lifers.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Me too, here in Virginia, but two of the Republicans, including the bigot, won anyway.