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Originally posted by charles1952
May I offer an alternative explanation? I've taken it from here: www.tampabay.com...
Like every state, Florida had put some State Constitutional Amendments on the ballot last time around. The State Supreme Court, said that, even though the people had voted for the amendments, they may have been misled by the summary explanation printed on the ballot.
The Legislature had some very harsh words for the State Supreme Court, and said, basically,"Ok, if that's the way they want to play, we won't put the summary on the ballot, will put every "unprintable" word of every "really unprintable" amendment on the ballot. There are 11 amendments this year. Now you know why the ballot is so long.
Romney's trying to prevent voting? Sorry, no.
You're quite right, I don't know if 50 states have it on their ballots this election. Some that have are Republican, some are Democrat. It's not worth looking up, but I suspect every state has had an amendment on it's ballot at some time in recent history.
For starters, when you say that "every state" put constitutional amendments on their ballots, this is hardly true. Did you mean every state with "Republican" controlled legislatures?
I expect you're quite correct about this, although I don't know what happens if it's a citizen proposed amendment, but we'll assume you're completely correct. But here, a difficulty pops up. Assume that it's a Republican amendment which the Republicans want to pass. You seem to be accusing them of writing bad summaries of their own amenments, which then get the amendments thrown out. That's beyond even the Republicans' level of dumbness.
When you said that the State Supreme Court ruled that people may have been misled by summary explanations of the proposed amendments, exactly who authored those summary explanations? I suspect it was the same "Republicans" that control the state's legislature and the same one that proposed the amendment in the first place.
I agree with you, but I'm not sure. It could have been a unanimous vote, I don't know.
When you say that they decided to put every unprintable word on the new ballots in response to the courts ruling, who decided to do this? I suspect it was the same "Republican" controlled state legislature who made that decision too.
Well, that's what the article indicated, and I have no reason to doubt it.
Now you're proposing that it's the court's fault that this "Republican" controlled state legislature decided . . .
I don't know about "easier and more productive," but I do think they wanted to give the courts one less reason to get involved after the amendment had been passed. Can't say I blame them. As far as the summary goes, they thought they had written a good summary. They wouldn't have written a bad summary knowing that that would kill the amendment they wanted.
it would be easier and more productive to put "every unprintable word" on the ballot as opposed to writing a realistic summary explanation of the amendment?
I wonder if the issue isn't getting changed a little here. This doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with "free and open" voting. Informed voting, maybe, but this doesn't stop anyone from registering and voting.
the "Republican" party viewed the court's ruling as yet another opportunity to throw another impediment in the way of free & open voting.
You are absolutely correct. You never used the name. I was simply using that as shorthand for the Republican party and it's campaign committees, and it's supporters. It's an election year, and the candidates represent their parties, but again, you are quite right.
You see Charles, I never said that "Romney was trying to prevent voting."