SHOCKING New Poll Shows Nobody Gives a Shit.

Soapbox, Ballot Box, Fart Box

Popular Sentiment of US Elections, 2024 colorized.

The Exhausted Middle popped smoke 6 months ago, the Nonplussed Nougaty Center dipped last quarter, and now the Interested Internals are getting BTFO’ed. Just about everyone watching the crappiest election ever has dropped their little pink ballot into a dumpster fire by now. The ones with the most remote hope for change, improvement, or even acknowledgment of their socio-political issues face fatigue previously reserved for special forces or ethical Boeing repair technicians.

The culmination of the affair for many will, unfortunately, be Thanksgiving, where nuanced conversations about complex issues will render you more cooked than the damned bird. Those lucky enough to put this to bed by election day will likely see the climax of their frustration staring at a thick paper ballot over the dashboard in the car on the way to the local makeshift inciner… I mean ballot drop box.

I waited until almost the 11th hour to cast my ballot, and I understood why I delayed the second I started reading…

Nobody knows who these people even are…

President? Of course.

Senators, representatives? Less so, but research is easy.

Local officers? GTFOH, homeboy.

What information is readily available from my locality leaves much to be desired. I can see their financial documentation, who has financially supported their campaigns, but out here, it’s all homebuilders or independent doctors, lawyers, and family friends. Their campaigns cost little more than a new RAV4 each, and the donors are so similar, that it is almost irrelevant. Effectively it could be something as simple as the number of signs you see, or whether you saw them in person once.

Then you see all the signs everywhere saying Grumblestump for Parks and Rec, but the job they want goes in one ear and out the other. The name sticks, and when you see it in some odd place on the ballot, you bubble it in, because at least you think you might remember their policies.

I think that if I ever ran, I’d just put up more signs than everyone else and those signs would say my last name and nothing else. For the reasons above, I think name rec alone might be the largest driver of success. Here’s to you, Grumblestump…

Then we get to the most frustrating issue of all:

Manufactured Consent, Intentional Confusion, and Deceptive Propositions

When I started reading the propositions, a couple were different, but most were bond measures.

Some bond measures required a bare majority (51%) and others required 55% to pass.

Those aren’t big deals per se, but the devil is oft in the details.

Someone somewhere wrote these things and laughed as if they intentionally did Satan’s work in crafting these propositions. They are complicated to understand, unclear in their scope, and most importantly, a yes vote for the measure does not necessarily mean affirming the sale of the bonds.

That means some folks out there unintentionally voted against their interests.

I’m not sure why plain English written for the average American is unacceptable for ballot measures, but it seems that they do it just in case we start thinking they get paid too much for spewing feces over the electorate.

According to the Literacy Project, the average American reads at an 8th-grade level and 54% of Americans read at a 4th-grade level.

and 12% of American adults ARE EFFECTIVELY ILLITERATE.

And they are voters.

Look at this: Do you think an 8th grader can read this well enough to responsibly decide what they are voting on?

“To repair, modernize, and construct classrooms, labs, school and career technical facilities to relieve overcrowding and support college/career readiness in science, technology, engineering, math, arts, and skilled trades, fix roofs, plumbing, electrical, water, and safety/security systems, shall … Unified School District’s measure authorizing $542,000,000 in bonds at legal rates be adopted, averaging annual levies of 3.4¢ per $100 assessed value ($37,000,000 annually) while bonds are outstanding, with citizen oversight, annual audits, and all money locally controlled?”

I popped this into Gemini Advanced and asked it to rewrite it at an 8th-grade reading level:

This is about a plan to fix up schools and build new ones so there's enough space for everyone to learn. They want to make sure kids are ready for college or a good job after they graduate.

Here's what they want to do:

• Fix up old classrooms and build new ones: This includes science labs, places to learn trades like carpentry or auto repair, and regular classrooms.

• Make schools safer: They'll fix things like leaky roofs, old plumbing and electrical wires, and make sure the schools have good security.

To do this, they need to borrow money. They're asking you to vote on a plan to borrow $542,000,000. This is like a loan, and they'll pay it back over time. It will cost about $0.04 per year for every $100 of your property's value.

Here's the important part:

• They'll keep an eye on the money: A group of regular people will make sure the money is spent correctly.

• They'll check the books every year: Experts will look at how the money is being used to make sure everything is above board.

• All the money stays here: The money will only be used to fix up schools in our area.

Basically, they're asking you to let them borrow money to make our schools better.

How did this read for you?

This seemed much easier for me to read, and I felt much more informed. As an important note, however, the original AI rewrite stated $3.40 per $100, not the actual $0.034 per $100. I edited that. Human in the loop and all that jive.

Policy writers are amongst the literacy elite, and their editors/approval chains/writing standards don’t allow them to be understood by anyone who doesn’t read at that level. These aren’t written for the voters to understand… so who are they written for?

The premise that bonds must be sold to cover the cost of a program is a little dubious as well, as I would imagine important things like this could bear redirection of funds from less successful or overfunded programs, but that isn’t even being considered as my state just lost billions they couldn’t account for to handle homelessness this year alone.

Then the policies themselves bury a poison pill underneath something I would typically support, leaving me feeling gross regardless of my decision for, against, or to leave it blank, as I am wont to do when I am not dead sure on a position. Burying changing possession of drugs to a felony under a blanket of cracking down on theft was one such instance this go around. There was no winning.

I think Americans need a win sometime very soon due to the rising tension not mentioned in this article and the ballot bullshit presently discussed. Like 747 quality control, just sign and look away, friends. Sign and look away.