With all the initiatives on the ballot this year, it might be hard to keep them all sorted out. So, being the helpful folks that we are, we here at PPC have put together a sample ballot for the amendments and referenda in the 2008 Colorado elections.

On our sample ballot, you’ll find a quick summary of what each ballot measure is about, our recommended vote, and our reasons behind that recommendation. We’ve even provided a handy printable version [PDF] that you can print out and use for reference while filling out your ballot.

No, I don’t mean the implicit violence in depicting a boy and a woman symbolically torn in half.  I mean the Spanish. Where is the rest of the Spanish?

If you are a Colorado voter who can only read Spanish, all this flier from Mi Familia VOTA tells you is that Amendment 46, Amendment 47, Amendment 49, and Amendment 54 are “attacking our students” and “attacking our teachers”, as if paragraphs of dense legislative verbiage had suddenly metamorphosed into living beings and launched themselves on mindless gibbering rampages of verbal assault through the lunchrooms and faculty lounges of our local schools. Beyond the alarming (and dishonest) scare lines, there’s no explanation of how or why these ballot measures purportedly “attack” students and teachers.

Why, it’s almost as if Mi Familia VOTA didn’t see a need to give Spanish speakers the whole story. As if they just assumed the Spanish speakers would be easily alarmed and easily led to vote against these amendments. As if they felt the Spanish speakers didn’t require (or deserve?) any effort to persuade them - just marching orders.

Interesting.

It’s just as well, I suppose, since the arguments made (in English only) are so blatantly dishonest and deceptive that translating them would only have insulted the Spanish speakers’ intelligence, too.

On the page with the violently torn-in-half boy, Mi Familia VOTA alleges that Amendment 46 would prevent thousands of Hispanic students from attending Colorado’s best colleges. How, exactly? If the admissions standards and scholarships are racially and ethnically blind, and are applied in like fashion, the students getting into Colorado’s best colleges will be…Colorado’s best students. The right way to ensure representative demographics in Colorado’s colleges is not to perpetuate racial and ethnic quotas and preferences, but to make sure the admissions process is colorblind, and that an equally colorblind K-12 education system has prepared students who desire to go to college to earn, fairly, a place in a college suited to their interests and abilities, and to compete for merit-based scholarships to pay for it.

Mi Familia VOTA also claims to speak for all teachers here, by claiming that “the teachers of Colorado” are against it. Really? All of them? Surely there must be some teachers who recognize that Amendment 46 is a good idea – I guess their opinions don’t count. I think if I were still teaching kids, I would resent that.

On the page with the violently torn-in-half woman, Mi Familia VOTA trots out the standard leftist/union anti-capitalist boogeyman to scare (English speaking) voters into believing that corporations are going to take away the rights of teachers and hoard them up like magic beans to empower themselves to who knows what nefarious ends. (Big corporations – is there anything they can’t do?!?) But Amendments 47, 49, and 54 will not take away the rights of teachers or anyone else to fight for better schools – these measures protect the rights of teachers and others by preventing unions from forcing them to join a union as a condition of employment, save taxpayers money by eliminating the expense of collecting and processing the unions’ dues for them gratis, and protect all Coloradans from the effects of dirty campaign donations and quid-pro-quos by removing a corrupting influence from state government. What Mi Famila VOTA isn’t telling voters (neither the English speaking nor the Spanish speaking ones) is that opposition to Amendments 47, 49, and 54, the organization is tacit approval of workplace coercion, the state subsidizing of union finances, and continued corruption of public officials by special interests…that’s something they’d rather not discuss in ANY language, I bet.

And let’s be clear what is meant here by “fighting for better schools”: they mean government schools dominated by unions, with dues collected (at taxpayer expense) from teachers who often have little choice in the matter. Mi Familia VOTA is not fighting for the rights of individual teachers or even all teachers as a group, but to protect the power base of teachers’ unions, which all to often work against the interests of teachers and students alike.

(Hmm…how interesting. I inadvertently typed in the URL www.mifamiliavota.org, and it took me to an abandoned domain containing a page titled “People for the American Way“. Gee, you think maybe there’s a connection between Mi Familia VOTA and PFtAW? The About page on the .net site doesn’t say…)

Today Governor Ritter held a press conference to campaign against Amendment 46: Civil Rights Initiative.  People’s Press Collective has the 4 minute video:

Here are some of the highlights:

“but Amendment 46 undercuts Colorado and destroys years of progress in education, in health care, in workforce development.  All efforts that are important to Colorado’s hardworking families and family owned business.  It is, and like it is, and like it or not, excuse me, we still have a way to go to achieve equality in the work place and in the classroom.” 

That’s funny, I always thought equality meant no special rules for certain individuals or groups.  I bet the Governor also believes that some animals are more equal than others.

“Amendment 46 is a California import.  Now, we import a lot of things from California.  Right?  We import wine.  We import, uh, I can’t think of other things, but we import wine.”

I can think of other things… how about socialists?  Communists?  California liberal zombies?

“We don’t need a Californian coming here to this state and saying, these people can’t play, when you’re out you’re out and you can’t get in.”

I’m not sure where he’s going with this one.  Maybe he’s talking about his second term? 

Bonus Material!  Ritter took questions.

First up, the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative people asked him about their handout they had at the press conference:

Ritter responded:

“I haven’t used letterhead to, uh, promote, uh, an initiative.  So I’ll have to see what the hell, I’ll have to see what they’re talking about.”

Classy.

One more question asked Ritter if he’s going to start ad campaigns against 46.  He’s not sure.  He needs to ask his boss.