Being a Responsible Citizen is Hard

I keep seeing all these advertisements for "vote no on this referendum" or "vote yes for that one", and I see bumper stickers and yard signs for all these people up for election (who the HELL is Ron Paul anyway!?). - okay I just looked him up and he's trying to get the Republican nomination for president in 2008. How in the hell is a Republican getting so much support in Seattle?? I thought we were a liberal majority here. Ack!

Anyway, I have always held the opinion that I should only vote on referendums (and to a lesser degree people) that I am fully informed on. So, I look up the website for the upcoming King County/Seattle City/Washington State elections. It's here. So I click on "Measures on the ballot" and there's a page of other links: State, County, Transit, City, that are all relevant to me! I click on the first one "State of Washington" and there's another link to "information on this measure". I click this one and there are 6 measures or resolutions, each with a link to pro/con statements.

King County has 2 measures, each with very lengthy web pages, Transit is only one but also lengthy, City of Seattle has 5 council positions and 2 charter amendments to vote on.... this is A LOT of reading to do in order to inform yourself of all the issues and people I'm supposed to vote on/for!

You know what would be really cool? If they had an audio file you could download that read all this shit to you that you could download to iTunes and put it on your iPod. That way you could inform yourself of all these referendums and candidates while hiking, driving, riding the bus, etc. Genius, right? Although, I just bought a bunch of CDs to learn Spanish on my iPod while I hike, but the concept is still good.

I'm just saying, being a responsible citizen is a lot of work! But, it sure and shit beats the alternative!