(no subject)

I was pleasantly surprised by Florida this morning! I went to bed with Obama and Romney neck-and-neck, and woke up to an Obama win in the state. I already knew he'd won but I didn't know about the state, and boy was I gonna be disappointed in FL if Romney won here.

So imagine my pleasure to wake up to the news that a bunch of democrats won in Florida! Senator Bill Nelson continues on being awesome, and Joe Garcia won against David Rivera, and it looks like Allan West will lose, but the race is close. I'm pleased that he's ousted but you'd think this would be a slam dunk, because West has been a national laughingstock for a while now. Ros-Lehtinen won my district, and while I think she is a cool lady, when I actually Googled her, I found she opposed pretty much everything I supported, so that is a little sad, but not surprising. She's an institution here.

Not just that, but my county had the longest ballot in state history at ten pages. There were eleven constitutional amendments, most of them presented by the Legislature--only three came up thanks to voter initiatives, which explains the utterly whack-a-doodle fucknuttery that was presented to me. There was originally a measure brought about by the legislature was challenged and struck from the ballot... and then they re-wrote it and brought it back.

Let me share with you the fucknuttery of some of our proposed amendments, which were all rejected except for the homestead exemptions for seniors, veterans, and veteran's families:

1. Allows Florida to opt out of the Affordable Care Act

It's federal, you idiots, so you can't opt out. It had a lot of language about no one being forced to participate. And since they can't bring this portion of the ACA before the Supreme Court because it's already been decided, this is the most token of token gestures.

5. Require that state supreme court justices must be approved by the senate, and a repeal of a court rule can now be done by simple majority instead of a 2/3s vote

Court rules are court business, yo.

6. Prohibits public funds from funding abortion and that the state constitution's provisions cannot be extended to include abortion protections

This one requires a bit of Florida constitutional knowledge: our constitution is, actually, somewhat cool and provides really broad privacy guarantees not seen in the federal constitution, and this amendment wants to limit abortion protections to those in the fed constitution (so we can't use Florida's privacy-oriented precedent to protect abortion rights). Folks, I was stunned that this failed and couldn't possibly be happier! I thought this was going to go through, particularly given the mealy way it was worded. I'm going to guess people didn't vote for it because it looked too twisty.

And the piece de resistance, the amendment that lost a lawsuit and then came back to haunt us: 7. Make public funds available for religious institutions

This one also surprised me, because it, too, had twisty wording-- that "no individual or entity may be denied, on the basis of religious identity or belief, governmental benefits, funding, or other support, except as required by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution" which makes it sound like people are being refused government benefits for being religious. In reality, it's a money grab by religious groups (separation of church and state, what's that?) Given how our school system is being dismantled by the charter school nonsense that our government is pushing through (they don't have to abide by local zoning rules but public schools do? What petty-ass shit is this), I definitely saw this as a way to funnel more money into parochial schools and out of public education coffers.

Of course, there's plenty of reason to be disappointed. Not just the long lines, but I see that my county can't find its collective ass with both hands and a map. They were calling the election for Obama and people were still standing in line waiting to vote--is this what people on the west coast and in Hawaii feel like? I checked a map at one point last night and most states were called with a big gray west coast wall of gray. The US's inability to manage an orderly election is terrifying.