Alabama
Related: About this forumAlabama General Election - 5 Statewide Constitutional Amendments
I am sure our candidate selections will be simply each and every Democrat on the ballot. To eliminate any easy machine discrepancy from electronic ballot readers advantaging a particular party, I recommend marking the oval by the Democrat's name, not the Straight Party Voting oval. I guarantee you, all the voter fraud is in counting, not voting!
Convinced of overwhelming victory, our only hope as Democrats is the Republicans all assume some other Republican will go and vote. Low turnout is usually a plus for Republicans, but utilizing a stealth Democratic Party strategy (so stealthy even Democrats didn't hear about it) we may be able to steal some elections if the Democratic base turns out and the Republicans take a nap. The strategy may be working:
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/11/only_half_of_alabamas_register.html
The Alabama State Constitution is regularly amended during elections. Adopted in 1901, this constitution is quite unique. From Wiki:
At 340,136 words, the document is 12 times longer than the average state constitution, 40 times longer than the U.S. Constitution, and is the longest still-operative constitution anywhere in the world. (The English version of the Constitution of India, the longest national constitution, is about 117,369 words long, a third of the length.)
About 90 percent of the document's length, as of 2012, comes from its 856 amendments. About 75 percent of the amendments cover only a single county or city, and some deal with salaries of specific officials.
Tomorrow we vote on 5 Statewide Constitutional Amendments submitted by our state legislature. There can be additional local amendments on local county ballots, so there may be more than 5 on your ballot.
Simple explanation of amendments from our simple Lt. Gov.:
http://ltgov.alabama.gov/PR/PressRelease.aspx?id=9136&t=28
1, 3, and 5 are right-wing hyperbole. 2 and 4 are reasonable requests.
Number 1 is really outlawing Sharia Law, just in case. Really?
Number 2 is to borrow from General Trust Fund to get critical long-term loans for funding National Guard building improvements and construction.
Number 3 is a State's Right guarantee in addition to our Supreme Court right to keep and bear arms - just in case the Federal government or the UN has other ideas.
Number 4 is to end unfunded mandates imposed by State legislature on local school boards, very reasonable.
Number 5 is an addition to our Supreme Court right to keep and bear arms with right to shoot things with those arms.
So, print you out a ballot for reference, carry it with you - fill in ovals for D's, fill in NO for 1, 3, 5, fill in YES for 2 and 4 - and remember, vote early and vote often!
eppur_se_muova
(37,573 posts)3 and 5 are backed by the NRA. I think 1 is meant to deny AL recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states. I read 4 to mean that you can't spend a lot more on education without a two-thirds vote in the Lege, which will never happen.