Friday, November 10, 2006

What does this tell us?

Virginia's vote earlier this week had some interesting results (notwithstanding the national issue of our senatorial race).

One issue that I was quite unhappy about was the lets-discriminate-against-the-little-guys marriage amendment. Something that I felt strongly enough about to actually contribute to some of the efforts at stopping it (a first for me).

As feared by many, that amendment passed by a non trivial margin: 1,328,183 votes for and 998,514 votes against. A sad day for Virginia if you ask me. One that we will look back on in the future shaking our heads.

What's interesting is the next issue on the ballot: Another amendment of the constitution. In this case to remove a clause in our state constitution that has already been struck down as unconstitutional (U.S. constitution) and the state itself has been ignoring for the past 5 years or so. You would have thought this would have had like unanimous approval.

This change, a seeming no-brainer "let's get rid of a part of the constitution that we don't pay attention to" amendment, also passed and with suprisingly similar results: 1,425,562 votes for and 761,045 votes against.

What were those 761,045 people thinking? Let's keep the clause that we don't pay attention to? Or, perhaps more likely, "who needs change.... things were so much simpler before".

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