The polls give me reason to be hopeful about the Schwarzenegger-backed ballot intiatives in California. But how much are polls really worth these days?
I expect that the vote will go Arnie's way, at least in part. That's why he got rid of Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who -- for all his faults -- genuinely opposed Diebold and other fraudmakers. Vote-rigging explains why Arnie prefers to achieve his goals via highly expensive special elections, as opposed to dealing with the legislature.
So I expect bad news in a short while. (Always expect the worst. That way, all your surprises will be happy ones.) The news probably won't be all bad -- the polls against Arnie's beloved propositions (designed to give him supreme power) are so one-sided that the manipulators wouldn't dare to override the predicted results in all four cases:
Proposition 76: 60% oppose; 31% favor.
Proposition 77: 56% oppose; 34% favor.
Proposition 75: 51% oppose; 40% favor.
Proposition 74: 47% oppose; 45% favor.
My prediction: We will soon see "surprise" wins for 75 and 74. California voters aren't dumb enough to swallow a nearly 30-point discrepancy between predicted results and the actuals. But an eleven point gap? Yeah, they're just dumb enough to buy into that.
75 is particularly insidious. It prevents public employee unions from donating to political campaigns or to lobby for legislation. (In California, union members already can opt out of paying their union for political work.) Of course, nothing would prevent corporations from buying as many candidates as they please, without bothering to ask the shareholders' permission.
I can't resist mentioning a delightful irony. When Arnie tried to vote today in Brentwood, he was told that he had already voted. If this sort of thing happened to Joe Average, he'd be handed a provisional ballot, which might or might not end up being counted. (If Joe Average were a Democrat, "might not" would probably have the edge.) But for Arnie, they cleared the matter up immediately, for fear that he might say "I'll be back."
Conny B. McCormack, L.A. County Registrar, said that "This is someone who breached our protocol and was playing around in advance of the election."
Heh heh heh.
4 comments:
The big question at the moment is why weren't the votes in CA, NJ, and VA hacked? Or were they, but not enough to alter the outcomes? Be interesting to compare final counts with projections, in all the elections. And then the speculations can begin!
Have the neo-cons had it with Ahnold?
Did they just not want try to steal some elections they couldn't spin as believable? Why have they suddenly started caring about whether they look believable? Have they decided to let go of California for now?
It wasn't a question of letting go.
California was lost. Arnold had
approvals of I believe 35%.
When I went to visit my family on the East Coast last summer I ran into some old, lost friends. I had to embarrassingly admit that Californians are doubly D-U-M. One, President Bush was our President (which was what they had in common). And Two, We had The Gouvenator in Sacramento. (I probably shouldn't feel so dumb, when I went to high school for a year in Maryland I was one of two students who could correctly name the capitol as Annapolis, and I had just moved there....)
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