Look, folks, it’s been a long week here at home with the Voter Information Guide. We’ve gone through seven propositions so far, finding with each one a new and exciting way of looking at the available information. I’d like to admit up front that I’ve reached the bottom of the barrel with 80, so don’t expect a lot today.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’ve found (admittedly silly) reasons to go with “no” on every issue so far. This is intentional. I hate California’s system of ballot initiatives. They’re nothing more than slimy ways for people with the wherewithal and the inclination to try to slide scummy laws (and having read the voter info guide, this year’s are as horrible as usual) past the voters using ill-stated facts and questionable rhetoric.

The awful thing is that most people only hear the fearmongering commercials (for both sides of each and every issue) on television or some AM radio host yelling about things this way or that. This is no way to make a decision, especially when there’s so much good impartial information (the analysis by the legislative analyst and the actual text of the propositions in particular) available for free. For whatever reason, I didn’t feel like just putting up links to the League of Women Voters pages, so we get these silly (or stupid, depending on how you look at things) little blurbs for each prop with the LWV link included in each. I hope the links are getting followed, and I hope the information they present is getting read. Either way, writing these beats the hell out of spending an evening watching TV.

All of that said, I do firmly believe that the analysis I’ve presented — silly as it is — is at least as useful in a decision making sense as those asinine scorecards that various political organizations send out. You know the ones I’m talking about. They say “vote yes on X, Y and Z, no on A, B and C” and present no additional useful information. Horrible! If you make your voting decisions based solely on one of these, you are an idiot. You’re abusing the greatest right that your country affords you and making light of the greatest responsibility that your country places on you. So if you’re going to vote, please read up on the propositions. You owe it to yourself and to everybody else in the state.

Look, here’s the goddamn League of Women Voters page for Prop. 80. Please read it, and ignore today’s post. It’s not my best work.

Still here? Well, let’s see. So far, we’ve looked at logical fallacies in the argument summaries, the fiscal effects section of the analysis by the legislative analyst, name dropping in the argument summaries, mysterious uses of quotation marks, argument rebuttals, and the handy chart that comes along with the MORTAL KOMBAT initiatives. What’s left? Lord save us, it’s the actual text of the proposition.

Full disclosure: I can read the proposition text, but I can’t retain any of it. It’s all just so much lawyer speak heretofore’s and subsection this and that and giant swaths of text struck out for whatever reason. It’s a sure-fire cure for insomnia. I’ve tried reading them in the morning and in the evening. Neither works. I’ve tried reading them sober and after a few rounds with no discernable difference. These things suck. They are the least fun documents ever written. So how on earth are we supposed to read them without pulling our hair out?

The answer is that we aren’t. Well, not fully, at least. We want to know what they say, but I’ll submit that we can do that fully well using the magic of statistics. That’s right, we’re going to use word frequency to decide how we might vote on Proposition 80: Electric Service Providers. Regulation. Here are the words and counts for the fifty most often used words:

359 the 247 of 208 and 203 to 108 in 92 a 80 that 77 commission 73 shall 69 for 67 service

63 by 59 section 58 be 57 electrical 56 electric 49 with 48 is 47 as 45 an 41 all

38 customers 34 energy 32 this 32 or 31 resources 31 public 30 market 30 electricity 29 from 27 its

27 corporation 25 not 25 generation 25 fi 24 customer 23 at 23 any 22 utilities 22 renewable 22 pursuant

21 are 20 system 20 retail 20 resource 19 eligible 18 power 18 direct 17 provider 17 on 17 new

How do these words make you feel? Are they friendly words? Vote for 80. Do you hate them? Strike it down! Power to the people! Don’t you just want to get up and march against something right now? Perhaps statisticians?

OK, that was bad even for me. Let’s look at a chart of word frequencies.

Wow, that’s worthless as well. How about this: can we make a good haiku out of the fifty most frequently used words in ballot proposition 80?

the commission shall service electricity for its customer an electrical public market shall not be energy at all a retail resource commission pursuant to the utilities utilities are corporation for power not its customer

Bingo! If that doesn’t cement your vote, I don’t know what will.

You all know the drill here folks. League of Women Voters link for Prop. 80, read it, decide, yada yada yada. I hope you’ve enjoyed all of these. Don’t forget to vote. See you the day after the election. I’ll be the one with the roaring hangover.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 8th, 2005 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Election '05. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.