Civic duty

We had a primary election yesterday in California, so I walked over to the fire station and cast my ballot.

I was surprised to find candidates besides the one party with which I affiliated myself; in the past, we had a closed primary—you could only vote for candidates from the party which you declared at registration. So that if you said, “It’s none of your damned business what party if any I support,” and registered as non-affiliated, or independent, in the primary election all you got to vote on were judges and ballot measures.

Now, the ballot measures in California are certainly worth the price of admission—I retained my California registration and voted absent ballot for about 15 years after leaving the state, just because of the referenda and initiatives you’d have to decide on. Pretty much every general election you’d find something to do with legalizing marijuana or cracking down on prisons.

Virginia? Snore…

Anyhow, what drew me out yesterday was Proposition 29, a measure to add $1 in tax per pack of cigarettes, to go into a special fund for cancer research. I don’t have much of an opinion on the cancer research, but California has one of the lowest tax imposts on cigarettes, and I think it should be raised. Also, the anti-29 ads funded by Big Tobacco, pissed me off.

We’re still waiting to hear the outcome on that one.

But here’s what struck me: the signs directing me to the polling place were in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean Hindi, Khmer, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese. I could have had a ballot in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog or Vietnamese.

How do you ever get people to come together when there’s no common ground of language? If there is a common ground, what are we doing printing voting materials—the basic building blocks of our democracy—in seven languages?