The Continuing California Proposition Thread

In the Independent Republic of California, the grammar police will be actual police.

 

We got our June primary election booklet in the mail yesterday, so it's time to update this thread. The primary election in June has five propositions. The propositions are not very interesting this time. Maybe they will be better in November.

Links below are to Ballotpedia.

Proposition 68, a bond measure for state parks and water projects. In general, California supports bond measures, especially when they're for fluffy things like state parks. I'm not sure if this is a stealth measure to get money assigned to the delta tunnel project or high speed rail or something like that, but this one will probably pass easily.

Proposition 69, a measure to ensure that money from transportation taxes are used only for transportation projects. Or something. It looks like a way to get money spent on pet projects like high speed rail, and the people who submitted the opposing argument are Republicans, so I'm in favor of it.

Proposition 70, a measure that would require a one-time two-thirds majority vote in the state legislature to use cap-and-trade money. Or something. This is not an obviously partisan thing - Governor Moonbeam submitted the argument in favor, but it was co-signed by the evil capitalists in the Chamber of Commerce, and the California Democratic Party and that rich guy who buys ads against Trump, Tom Steyer, are opposed, so I think the correct choice is to vote against. More research is probably required.

Proposition 71, a measure to ensure that ballot propositions are enacted in a consistent time frame after the election. It seems trivial, but the argument in favor is that with more people voting by mail (in my county, this primary election is vote-by-mail), the amount of time needed to count votes means that some propositions which used to take effect right after the election may now take longer. The opposition argument is written by some dude who raised the specter of child molesters being free for longer if this passes, so I'm pretty sure he's full of shit.

Proposition 72, a measure to exclude the value of rainwater catchment systems from property tax assessments. You see, if you spend money adding a water conservation system to your house, it adds value to your house and you have to pay more in property taxes (not sure if this is affected by Proposition 13 or not), but whatever. Some states still punish homeowners for adding solar panels to their property, meanwhile California is leading the way because as our water issues get worse, people will be adding water conservation systems to their property.

So that's what's on the ballot. Nothing too interesting, just remember that California is about 20 years ahead of the rest of the country - we elected our sexist celebrity governator way before you guys elected Trump - so whatever stupid shit we pass will be coming your way in a couple of decades.

 

So I'm sure you're all fascinated by this, but here's how my wife and I decided to vote on the five propositions:
68, bond measure for state parks and other stuff: YES, we love bonds around here.

69, transportation tax revenue must be spent on transportation projects: YES

70, requires two-thirds vote in the state legislature to spend cap-and-trade revenues: NO, we've seen what happens when things require two-thirds majority to get something done, it allows the minority party (aka Republicans) to hold things hostage, so ******** those guys.

71, sets the effective date for ballot measures: YES

72, allows water reclamation systems to be added to houses without adding to the property tax assessed value: YES, have you seen Mad Max Fury Road, let's not go that way.

There was also a regional measure for the nine Bay Area counties (basically every county that touches the San Francisco or San Pablo bays), a transportation measure that will raise the bridge tolls over the next several years to pay for a grab bag of transportation projects, and of course we voted YES, because who doesn't want more infrastructure, and who doesn't want to make commuters pay for it? It's kind of unusual to have a regional measure like this - usually things are either statewide, like the propositions above, or at most county-wide and more often city-wide or school district-wide or whatever, this is the first time I remember seeing a multi-county but not statewide measure like this on the ballot.

In any case, the current results on the propositions are here:

https://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/ballot-measures

As of now, there's about 2% of the precincts reporting, and the results are exactly like my wife and I voted, so, you know, most of California is rly smrt like us. I'm not sure when the full results will be announced - my county was one of five counties (out of 58 statewide) that did vote-by-mail, like Washington and Oregon do, as a trial for future statewide elections - we're going to see if it increases turnout -- see, we can learn from our blue state neighbors -- but I dropped off our ballots at one of the vote centers yesterday, and there will be a lot of ballots still in the mail for a couple of days, so I'm not sure when we'll have full results. Probably they will be able to call most races tonight, but close races may need to wait a few days.