Did anyone else in California have a problem voting today? My neighborhood precinct polling location, the library on Page St., had no record of my name. Which is odd, considering I've registered twice in the district -- once when I moved here a year and a half ago, and again when I moved apartments in the same building and filled out my change of address forms.
I realize that organizing an election is hard work, and a special election doubly so. Still, I can't help but wish that my vote counted. (I'll likely never know whether the provisional ballot is recorded.) And this election apparently cost us $40M dollars -- all just so that our Governor could push his personal/partisan agenda. Sadly, that's a wasted $40M of taxpayer money, as the voters don't seem to be buying into it. Isn't this the state that recalled Grey Davis to put an end to just this sort of politics?
Of interest to me was a ballot initiative to ban handguns in San Francisco. If I remember correctly, even when they are passed, local laws banning firearms have historically been overturned by the courts due to the Second Amendment. Still, it's refreshing to think that a community would even try to challenge the status quo and stop firearm violence. We've had far too many gun-related fatalities in San Francisco neighborhoods this year, particularly in the Western Addition and the Mission.
I'm all for a more participatory democracy, but I do think that the Governor could have waited until the next scheduled election day. Maybe I'll be on the rolls for that one...