TexasCHLforum.com

seamusTX wrote:

ELB wrote:All of Texas voters decided. Most, through inattention or apathy, just decided to let someone else decide.

IMHO, "I don't care" is not a morally acceptable choice.

- Jim

Oh I think so too, but the same can be said for jury duty, for example, which I think people should do as a moral duty. And even with jury "conscription," lots of people do whatever they can to avoid "deciding." (And lawyers help by trying to cherry pick the members).

In a free society, people are free to make bad choices. One of the costs. Remember, Cuba, USSR, and the NorKs have amazing voter turnout...

As to whether the right decisions get made, with the small turn out...YMMV. As I pointed out the General Election was a complete disaster, and we will be paying for that mistake for a long, long time.

Also while talking about const. amendments and small turnouts...makes me wonder what TSRA could do with certain issues and a good turnout of TSRA members...

seamusTX wrote: This means that 1% of the population of Texas -- about 200,000 voters -- decides on a constitutional amendment.
- Jim

All of Texas voters decided. Most, through inattention or apathy, just decided to let someone else decide.
Besides, remember that the last time we got high turnout, we got Obama.

I worked early voting and election day for this election and for last November's General, and the primary before that. The people coming in for this Constitutional Amendment election clearly knew what was on the ballot and what they wanted to vote for or against. Almost everyone of them had their voter registration certificates, which I see as one of the marks of a dedicated voter -- very few used their DL (or CHL!) as ID to vote. I didn't have anyone who wasn't currently registered to vote (which happened a lot in the other elections), only one guy who had moved from another county to here and hadn't changed registration, and one who had moved within the county and hadn't changed registration address. A good portion of them had notes in had as to which prop to vote for or against. Hardly anyone needed help using the voting machines. They had all done this before.

In other words, these were engaged, educated, competent people who take voting seriously.

During the November election I had people who had to dig a utility bill out from under the sofa for ID. Which meant they had to leave the polling place to do, because they didn't have any ID on them. I was asked more than once which party Obama was in. You don't know hard I had to bite my tongue to avoid saying "Communist." When I told them, then they wanted a Democrat ballot, and I had to explain how a General Election has all the parties' candidates. There were lots of people who had not voted before, had no idea what they were doing, nor knew what else was on the ballot, nor really cared. I would bet some hope and change that if you asked any of them what Obama actually stood for, what his policies were going to be or do to the US etc, they would have had no clue.

srothstein and a couple others hit on the key reason -- when development around a base starts causing problems for the military, either via complaints about noise or actual impingement on activities, the military starts considering moving missions, and eventually bases, and all the jobs and money that go with them. Why doesn't the military buy buffer zones? I believe it has in some cases, but looking at it strictly from the feds point of view, why should they? They will get all tangled up in court cases, eminent domain, etc -- let the city figure out all that stuff. BRAC showed people that bases actually can close -- and even ones that survive the BRAC, or get cherry-picked for special treatment (e.g. Brooks City-Base), can close as well, or be diminished so much through movement of missions that they might as well be gone. (The Air Force decided years ago to close Brooks, and for all practical purposes, they did.)

Even before BRAC, this went on. At Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City, the city bought out a subdivision that was being constructed just north of the base, which put it directly in line with the north-south runway. Was kind of interesting -- there were paved streets with no houses up there. While I was stationed there, one of the local mega-churches decided to build an even bigger building directly in line with the other runway that ran NW to SE -- according to the plans, the top of the spire would either intrude or be very close, I forget which, to the glide path for some aircraft. That church threw a fit when the church went to the city for its building permits (after it bought the land and made its plans), the USAF was asked to comment on it, said "bad idea," and the city balked on the permits. The church raised cane for months, accused the Air Force of all kinds of underhanded stuff. It was solved when a rich anonymous donor gave the church more land on the same street, but farther south, out of the path of runways.

So some some cities like to avoid all the drama and restrict the zoning around the bases. As long as they are in the zoning business, this makes sense to me, and if the locals want to vote for it, fine. Like srothstein I can't figure out people who move next to a military or civilian airport and then complain about the noise. )