[TAG] OT: Too darned much democracy

[Breen Mullins]

On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 09:50:54PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Chez Moen is in the middle of a polity (Estados Unidos de Norte America)
> that just had a minor election.  Taxonomically, we're in:
> 
>    [no city]
>    County of San Mateo  <- a corporation established by the state
>    State of California  <- smallest sovereign entity in this stack
>       voting precinct #3402
>    BushCo Empire (or whatever it's called, these days)
> 
> 
Thanks for the reference!

I worked this election the other day. I was at a precinct in 
Redwood City. The polls were open 13 hours and we had 79 voters.

The precinct numbers are assigned by the counties - according to
the SecState http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/hava_introduction.htm
there are about 25,000 precincts in the state.

Note that although we have 5 supervisorial districts, everybody
in the county votes in all races. I'd never come across that 
before moving to San Mateo county. According to 
http://uncorked.wachob.com/node/45 we're one of two California 
counties that does this.

> Having completed this labour, I'm struck by a couple of things:
> 
> 1.  That's a very large number of people to vote on.  Ye gods!
>     The American mania for voting on everything yet lives.

Most extreme example of this I've heard of was a friend in Chicago
who had to vote up or down on some 200 judicial races in Cook 
County a couple of years ago. 

Breen

-- 
Breen Mullins
Menlo Park, California