I happily voted NO on Prop 16. Please go and read the proposition text - this is some crazy stuff. I literally could not believe that this is actually is on the ballot.
Currently the government and public institutions cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting. A vote Yes would remove this ban.
I don't even live in California, but I enjoyed reading this anyways, especially the National Races and State and Local Races sections as the candidates are described so colorfully.
It's been fairly typical the past few elections at least. Not sure how much we're paying for the voter guides, but I do know they are effectively useless. You get like a paragraph summary of the measure that offers no nuance, and maybe a sentence or two of hyper-biased For and Against statements.
Considering how loaded these ballot measures can be, the guide almost always falls short of providing sufficient information to make an informed, educated vote.
> Not sure how much we're paying for the voter guides, but I do know they are effectively useless. You get like a paragraph summary of the measure that offers no nuance, and maybe a sentence or two of hyper-biased For and Against statements.
That's just the “Quick Reference” section at the front. In the main body, the summary of, for example, prop. 14 is page 16 through about the midpoint of page 20, considerably more detail than a paragraph. The for-and-against arguments are about a page and a half. And, of course, the full text of the measure is also included.
> Do you know if midterm election guides also include all of that?
Midterm (or even primary) elections have the same kind of material on ballot props; they differ only in which candidates are up for election and which stage of the election they are in, but that's not really germane to statewide ballot props.
Currently the government and public institutions cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting. A vote Yes would remove this ban.