Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Three public questions that I saw on a ballot...

1) For the health and saftey of children and the entire community, shall the state of Illinois enact a comprehensive ban on the manufacture, sale, delievery, and possession of military style assault weapons and .50 caliber rifles?

2) Shall Illinois enact legislation in 2007 to increase the minimum wage for Illinois workers from $6.50/hr to $7.50/hr?

3) Shall the United States Government immediately begin an orderly and rapid withdrawal of all its military personnel from Iraq, beginning with the National Guard and Reserves?


Interesting. Perhaps with the exception of the second one these quesitons are ideologically loaded.

7 comments:

pathickey 8:42 AM  

I'll vote a Yes on all three.

Anonymous,  8:53 AM  

Where, exactly, did you see this ballot? What a loaded question #1 is. What's the definition of a "military assault rifle"? How many fifty caliber weapons are used on the street?

It's not up to the voters to decide what minimum wage is, that is a legislative function.

Also, it's neither the voters, local or state's place to determine whether or when to pull the military out of any conflict.

If people want change, fine...elect those representatives who have the ideals they believe in.
Otherwise, this "ballot" is useless.

crash-dev 9:36 AM  

Levois,
How would you phrase the first and third question to make them less loaded?

Levois 11:16 AM  

I saw this on the ballot right behind the judges seeking retention. This was a ballot from Chicago.

And furthermore instead of rewording these questions, I would have just kept them off the ballot. Though the first question I'd just drop the part about for the health and saftey of the children. That's just designed to cause a favorable result.

Of course that is not to say that I wouldn't disagree with the banning of assault weapons.

Anonymous,  11:20 AM  

Jerry,
Your comment doesn't answer the question on what a "Military style assault weapon" is. That is so open to interpretation that a bayonet could be considered as an assault weapon.
As for military withdrawal...the proposal mentions ALL military personnel be withdrawn. Again, the voters don't have the authority to make that determination.
Since Blagojevich seems to enjoy thumbing his nose at Federal authority (ie: illegally importing drugs from Canada), perhaps he should just make a mandate for all Illinois National Guard and Reserves to immediately return home from Iraq. Yeah, that's the ticket.
I see your point on the IFI referendum, and, in my opinion have no problem seeing that it failed.
There's no doubt these are partisan issues, I'm just wondering what ballots they were placed on.

Anonymous,  11:22 AM  

Ah, Levois, you answered my question. (Chicago...go figure)
Thank you.

Anonymous,  2:01 AM  

I voted no on all three because I hate poor people, children, and soldiers.

Imagine if a pollster asked the 1st or 3rd Q in a poll. I think people would be up in arms about push polling, and rightly so.

  © Blogger template The Professional Template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP