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Guest Commentary

My Grown-Up Votes On Ballot Measures

by Lisa Ramelow *

* Ms. Ramelow is a Long Beach writer.



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Ms. Ramelow's comments below originally appeared on her Facebook page.earlier today (Nov. 1.) They're republished here with the author's permission.


(Nov. 1, 2020) -- I’ve been working on staying out of politics. But I do slip every now and then.
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I remember when I was a new voter.

I always thought the Propositions were so interesting. I was so happy to vote “Yes” on many of them. It was so simple: you just checked a box and then someone would be helped.

Students. Yes! ✔
Veterans. Of course! ✔
Widows.✔
Patients. ✔
Inmates. ✔
Yes! Yes! Yes! ✔ ✔ ✔

I was so annoyed at my parents because they always seemed to be voting “No” on almost every proposition. I thought they were getting old and cynical. Why didn’t they want to help all these people?

Well, after 40+ years of voting, now I understand. The money almost never goes to any of those groups of people. Remember that year when everyone was excited for the California lottery to raise money for the schools? I know a lot of educators, and none of them know where that money went.

Even here in my own city of Long Beach, we had Measure A, a total farce and ripoff. It was supposed to fix all this infrastructure and add back officers that had been cut. A few streets were redone, and the rest of it never happened.

And then our dishonest "leader", who said it would never be permanent, put it back on the ballot to do just that. It was losing until a few ballots were suddenly "found" to push it the way they wanted.
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BTW, Measure A, and the way my city is run, is one of the reasons I closed my business.
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But .... back to the propositions. Here is what I think works better: I vote "No" on almost all of them (that Uber one is a little tricky though).

Then, if you really want to help that specific group of people, go do it.

Call a school and ask what they need. Then go buy it and drop it off.

Same for veterans - we have a great VA hospital. Call and ask what they need and go get it. Unfortunately, with the pandemic occurring, we cannot give the gift of our time. Hopefully one day we will be able to do that again.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep checking those little boxes "NO."

Am I old? ✔
Cynical about government ✔









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