The One With the Voting

Tuesday, I spent the whole day trying to decide if I was going to go vote. I've been following the election a little bit and I had some opinions on the propositions that Gov. Swartzenegger was proposing, but I really didn't feel that I had a good enough grasp on the issues to get out and vote. However, once I heard an ultra-conservative colleague talking at work, I decided I'd better get caught up fast and get out there to vote.

The Governor was proposing seven propositions, three of which especially were designed to give him a lot more power to cut funding to certain programs, including education. I feel pretty strongly about this because LA has a lot of very impoverished areas. I see kids coming through our education program who will tell me that they're hungry because they don't have food at home. These kids aren't going to get opportunities to learn and make their lives better when the classrooms are crowded, the teachers are losing their benefits and there aren't enough textbooks to go around. He claims he wants to "reform Sacramento." I just don't think he's the guy to do it. His term hasn't been very successful thusfar.

But the biggest reason I got out to vote was Proposition 73, which would require teenager girls to have permission from their parents before they could get an abortion. I know that on the surface that sounds like a good bill, but I'm pretty much against anything that removes a girl's choices. Imagine being a terrified 15-year-old who made a mistake and now faced the decision of fixing it or letting it change the rest of her life and knew she couldn't seek solace in her ultra-conservative Catholic parents. This girl is going to find a way to get rid of that baby. Why not give her the option to do it in a safe way, in a clinic with an experienced doctor? A friend of mine reminded me that this proposition was really being overlooked -- by everyone except the religious vote -- so if I felt strongly about it, I really needed to get out and make my opinion heard.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that it's my civic duty to vote. It's my right as an American, and I need to take advantage of it. I'm glad I did. Proposition 73 failed by a very small margin. In fact, all the propositions failed, sending a very strong message to the Governor that California is not happy with his agenda. I'm amazed that we could elect a guy that we all seem to disagree with so strongly, but anything can happen in California. :)

I was also dismayed to hear that back on the homefront, in Kansas, we have again become the laughingstock of the nation by removing evolution from our school ciriculums in favor of teaching creationism. I don't think I need to explain that creationism should be taught in the homes and churches and evolution should be taught in the schools as a scientific theory. We are doing a real disservice to our children. The two theories can co-exist in the Christian home. ("Without evolution, how do you explain opposable thumbs?" "Maybe the overlords needed them to steer their spacecrafts.")