This political season

As we get closer to election time and the political advertisements ramp up the volume, I'm struck by the fact that I've seen a lot of this before. I'm not talking about a lot of the candidates being the same as last time (after all, a lot of the people running for office are incumbents) and I'm not talking about the slogans not changing ("lower taxes", "create more jobs", "get rid of people who aren't like us" - you know the ones), I'm thinking of the ballot question signs. The signs are limited in size and they seem to be targeted at people who are driving by and don't have a lot of time to spend reading them. There would be a lot more accidents if the signs said more. So, the makers of these signs keep them pretty simple:

No on 2

It fills the sign and gets the point across. But what is "2"? Am I supposed to remember that when I go to vote in two weeks? I've seen signs telling me, "No on 2", "Yes on 2", "Yes on 3" and "No on 3". I'll go to the polling station and forget. Was it no on 3 and yes on 2? What was it on 1?

Then I get the sneaking suspicion that the people putting up these signs saved money by keeping the signs from the last election. Maybe they just ALWAYS vote No on any question that is number 2 whether question 2 is about taxes, jobs or building sewers. Maybe "2" has become the opposing political party: Their parents and their grandparents voted No on 2 and now they don't want to vote for 2 and they can't imagine who could ever vote Yes on 2! How could any true American ever vote Yes on 2?


Then there are the ballot question signs that go a bit farther:

No on 2

It goes too far

Now we know a bit more about "2" but I still think I've seen it before. Maybe they're saying it's OK to insist that dogs have collars but don't go forcing them to have leashes, too. Or maybe they think we need to create jobs but not jobs that that girl down the street does!

The most confusing election, though, was the year Massachusetts had a ballot question about getting rid of greyhound racing (that's dog racing to you Out-of-Staters, not racing buses). You would see signs on one lot saying, "Vote No on 3, Save the Dogs" and on the very next lot you'd see, "Vote Yes on 3, Save the Dogs". Wow, now what should I do? I'm all for saving dogs but which way should I vote? Well, it turns out that the people who wanted us to vote Yes to save the dogs felt that the dogs were being mistreated and that if we got rid of dog racing, the dogs would be sold to good homes. The people who wanted us to vote No to save the dogs thought that if dog racing was banned, the dogs would just be put down (that's "killed" to people who don't like euphemisms). It turned out that dog racing was banned in Massachusetts but the dogs were just moved to other states that still allowed dog racing. They are either still being mistreated in a different state or still having a wonderful time competing against the other dogs in a different state. Sometimes you just can't win.