I had to laugh reading the opposition statement in the pamphlet – “…this gives the final say for “redistricting” to a commission that was never elected!!!!”

Yeah. That is the whole idea.

I tend to put more stock in endorsements from people whose views I know and respect. For example, claims of Obama being a socialist stop making much of an impact with me when one of the world’s richest men (Warren Buffet) endorses him.

“vote NO on everything…”-wj

@wj
Seems like an eminently reasonable approach.

But now ASC has shamed me into thinking I have to be more conscientious with our California Voter Information Pamphlet Encyclopedia. So I have a new plan.

First I am going to read 2 or 3 of the proponent and opponent statements for each and every initiative for both The City and The State.

Then and only then I am going to vote no on everything.

um… except for proposition K.

But the ones which got on via an Initiative are worse. They cannot be understood even with a legal background — we have to wait to see what the courts decide they meant. In that situation, there are only two options for most of us, most of the time:
1) vote NO on everything,
2) look at the endorsement of whatever newspapers we can get, adjust for their known biases, and vote from there.

Well, I could take a few years off to go thru law school, I suppose. But short of that, recommendations are going to be a factor for all the propositions. As for candidates, I glance at the endorsements to see WHY they are recommending one candidate or another. Again adjusting for the known biases of the recommender, it provides input, but not a guide, for deciding who to vote for.

My God! This changes everything.

I also found it funny when the day after my wife and I talked about how McCain was screwing up his campaign the Detroit Free Press endorsed Obama and gave the same reasons we were talking about for why they were disappointed in the McCain campaign. It kind of reinforced that we weren’t imagining the ways that McCain seems to have changed since winning the nomination.

I guess the endorsement isn’t as big a deal as the trend in the endorsement. Any news organization that endorses Obama after endorsing Bush in 2004 will grab attention. Will it swing votes? It might swing a couple here or there. In some states, though, a couple is all one side needs.

However, I think it depends how much you trust the editorial board who makes the endorsements. I consider the recommendations of one local paper, but ignore the other one.

But today, we for some reason forget all this and assume that newspapers were founded to give the objective details about current events. Not true. USA Today might be an exception, because it’s fairly new. But any paper older than that probably had the sole purpose of energizing a local political party. And political endorsements was part of that game… I guess they just never abandoned the tradition as readers came to expect higher standards in objectivity. (not that they’re any more objective today than before… but they at least claim to be)

All that endorsements were aimed at doing was to raise a candidate’s visibility… and newspapers in general sought to raise the visibility of a party in general. Now we have long-established parties and long-established newspapers. So when they endorse, we scratch our heads and say, “Well, that’s nice… let’s see what else is happening in the news.”