If You Don't Understand It - Don't Vote or Vote NO!

Most people would agree with the idea that legislators should read the bills they vote on. We can find a lot of self-righteousness on the topic on-line.

From Greta Van Susteren's blog on the Fox News website.

How about reading the #### bill before you vote for it???! What is wrong with Congress? 

CBS reported 

Let Freedom Ring, a non-profit, grassroots organization that supports a conservative agenda, announced an initiative today urging members of Congress to sign a pledge to read and give citizens the opportunity to read any health care reform legislation before voting on it.

From Rand Paul's website:

Once elected Rand Paul has pledged to never vote for a bill he hasn’t read and one of the first bills he will sponsor is the Read The Bills Act.

Maybe it's because the Democrats are in power that the sites I can find quickly on this topic are conservative sites.  But no matter, I think most people agree that there is something wrong when our members of Congress don't read the bills they vote on.

On Tuesday, Alaskans have two Ballot Measures to vote on.  Each is about five pages in the  State's voter pamphlet full of language like this:

(A) No public body, public officer, person in the employ of the state, any of its political subdivisions, any school district, or candidate for public office may, directly or indirectly, direct, permit, receive, require, or facilitate the use of tax revenues or any other public resources for campaign, lobbying, or partisan purposes, including payment of dues or membership fees of any kind to any person, league, or association which, directly or indirectly, engages in lobbying, campaigns, or partisan activity. No candidate, political committee, or political party may accept any contribution from any state, state agency, political subdivision of the state, foreign government, federal agency, or the federal government. A violation of this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

Neither of the petitions are easy to make sense of.  In talking to a few people about Prop. 2 it became clear that what they thought a 'yes' vote would do, really needed to be a 'no' vote.

My advice to people is this:  We shouldn't make new laws that we haven't read or don't understand.  If you haven't read the ballot measures, you probably shouldn't vote on them.  If you insist on voting, you should probably vote no - that that new laws don't get added that people haven't read and/or don't understand.

And if you have read them but don't really understand them, the advice is the same.  Either don't vote or vote no.

If a significant number of people who vote for candidates but do NOT vote for the petitions, this will send a significant message to our legislators that we won't copy their behavior and we want them to copy ours.  If you haven't read it, don't vote on it.

Of course, being me, I could argue that there are times when you might want to follow the advice of someone you know who's an expert in a topic and vote as they suggest.

And one could say that this is just a sneaky way to manipulate people into defeating these two ballot measures.  It's true, I don't think either of these is a great measure.  Both are very confusing.  Legislation often needs to be complex to reflect the complexity of society, but the writing can still be clear so that someone willing to read it should be able to understand it.

I truly believe that no great or even minor tragedy will occur if both these measures and the point of passing up these two would have a positive effect.\

You can get the Voter Pamphlet here (it's a pdf file) and read them yourselves.

I'll try to get some specifics up about Ballot Measure 2 by Monday.