Wednesday, November 09, 2011

It Was A Good Day At The Polls Yesterday

When Democrats refused to vote in 2010, the result was a landslide victory in many states electing Republican governors, who promptly went about dismantling the public sector, and enacting laws (many of them illegal). We saw what happened in Wisconsin with the recalls and the Solidarity movement which begat the OWS/99% (and the recall of Walker has started, although a bogus group that supports Walker filed 11/4, while the real group was ready to roll out their petition on 11/15 - the fake group did this so that Walker could start raising unlimited funding for his recall election opposition).

In Ohio, the voters struck down Gov. Kasich's anti-union stripping of collective bargaining by repealing Senate Bill 5 through a voter referendum (Issue 2 on the ballot) by a 2-1 margin. BTW, that appears to be the first time a governor has seen signature piece of legislation rejected by voters in a governor's first year.

In Maine, voters struck down the proposal to end same day registration, which was repealed as soon as their Republican governor Paul LePage and his Republican state congress were in power. Maine has had same day registration for voting for a long time, and this move (as with many other Republican governor's moves) have been a concerted effort to attempt to disenfranchise voters in areas that generally vote Democratic. Glad to see that one go down in flames.

Now, in Mississippi, the "personhood" amendment also went down, and that is especially telling since this state is extremely anti-abortion, and even the right wingers didn't like this bill (which defined that a person starts at the fertilization of the egg). 58% voted that one down.

Many more voting events made news. It's good to see a "fire in the belly" of the electorate pushing back against the Koch controlled governors and their efforts to continue to keep the 1% in control and lock out the 99%.

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