Vote Early and Often, I Do

That could be slightly misleading and unnecessarily self incriminating, however I am never sure I've broken laws when I actually read the text of them.   I know it is illegal to run into the mall doing a happy dance naked while selling hashish candy, yet if I were to read the applicable statutes and codes, I'll bet I'd be tempted to fulfill that naked, happy, drug-food selling, enterprise fantasy.

But, law schmaw, I say.  Who needs no schteenkink law?  This is California, home of sunshine and Moonbeam.

So, my official election ballot arrived in the mail.  My neighborhood is a mail in voting deal, by default.   I think I could change that if I cared to go through the bureaucracy to do it.  My theory is that the least amount of business I conduct with governments of all levels, the better off I am.

That may come from the fact that I may have just managed to squeak under the radar long enough had I ignored the draft way back when.  But no, I made sure I was on top of things, so they suspended the draft while I was in basic training for the boy scouts.  Air Force basic, actually.  Much the same, I'd think.  Believe it or not, at that time, and probably still holds, the USAF had a measurably brighter level of enrollment than the other services.   Working the mess hall on KP made me acutely aware that if this was the cream of the crop, our crop was seriously troubled.

Would it be unseemly to sell my ballot to the highest bidder?  That may be illegal, but no ID is involved. Just sign and mail it in.

I worry that if I do it too soon, my vote will have no impact.  If some issue is really close, and I wait until the end to send in my vote, then maybe my vote will be the deciding one that saves the day.  It is always the last votes that decide things, so the first ones may as well just be tossed out.  Right?

We've got lots of propositions on the ballot here in CA.  Some are easy and straightforward.  Some are a little trickier.  Often things sound good but turn out to have little hidden pockets of evil lurking behind happy faces.

They have one that eases some of the draconian possibilities in the three strikes law.  I'm sorry, but I find the three strikes thing a bit worrisome from the get go.  You have crimes.  You have punishments.  Then you have a law taken loosely from baseball and baseball metaphors.  The problem is that it is a wide open opportunity for anything from vendetta to racism to corruption to further cloud justice.

Handle the regular laws right, make it ok to shoot people who threaten you and yours, and forget these sports allegory things.  How about if someone is arrested four times and beats the rap each time, he gets a total reset like a first down?  Maybe give him a get out of jail free card for his efforts.

If you think long enough you can come up with three strike situations, four ball circumstances, maybe something akin to ruffing the passer, and on and on.  We can eventually just meld all criminal law with sports rules from popular games.  I suspect the scrabble and chess nerds will not get a fair showing but will gleefully complain.

Most crime problems have to do with The Great Pretense and stupid philosophies which prohibit people from protecting themselves and their property.  That coupled with the fact that it is safer for police to harass those who can pay the fines, yet don't have any power, than it is for them to go in busting gangs.  Anyway, three strikes may sound emotional satisfying, but it is nonsense which avoids the real issues.   The real issue being that the Great Pretense approach has not worked out very well.

OK.  I think I'll photocopy my ballot and vote now, then again later when it might be the decisive difference which changes the world.