Talked with a friend while she filled out her mail-in ballot tonight, and it was eye-opening.
She voted for the Democratic candidates including Harry Mitchell. Turns out she lives in one of Chandler's CD5 precincts . (Whooo hooo!)
I expected that, however, since while she's not as politically active as I am, she does have a pretty liberal view on life.
She generally voted the 'liberal' way on the ballot propositions, except for most of the ones related to illegal immigrants. She was in a car accident caused by an illegal immigrant, and still has medical issues related to that accident. Issues that aren't covered by any insurance or health plan, because she didn't have health coverage, and the driver that caused the accident didn't have auto insurance.
Hence, she's still pissed.
I knew about the accident and while I disagreed with her choices (and told her so), I could understand her motivation.
That wasn't the 'eye-opening' part that I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
What was eye-opening was her primary motivation for voting, and voting early, this time.
Prop 107.
When she pulled out her ballot, before looking at any of the races for office or at any of the other ballot questions, she immediately sought out Prop 107. In fact, it was all she talked about, and talked about "colorfully," at that.
Turns out that she loves her big brother more than anything in the world, and he's very openly gay.
And NOBODY gets to mess with him.
So far, it's only anecdotal evidence, but she's not the first person that I've met that is similarly focused on Prop 107, just the one that I know best.
Perhaps the theo-cons will realize they made a mistake with this measure.
It *will* draw out their base on Election Day (whether it will do a better job of "drawing out" than their ethical issues and Iraq do of "turning off" their base remains to be seen) , but it seems to be motivating a number of heretofore disinterested but otherwise liberal people to vote this year.
And, after the election, when Len Munsil looks back to try to figure out where it all went wrong, he's going to look at his measure, the one attacking same-sex marriage and unmarried couples of any combination, and say
"Oops."
2 comments:
She is not the only one who went right to Prop 107 first. My husband and I made sure that our 2 sons who are away at college got their early ballots, that our newly 18 yr old high school daughter got hers, and that my mother and her husband down in Tucson got theirs. Why? One of our sons is gay and if we have anything to do with it, no sanctimonious, holier-than-thou politician is going to mess with him.
BTW we voted for Harry Mitchell too.
Cool. And thanks for the vote for Harry, too!
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