2002-11-05 - 10:10 a.m.

Okay...so this one goes out to all the Virginian's out there, although the general message is applicable to everyone.

Have you voted yet? Rhi and I have, and were in fact 30 minutes late getting to work to do so (sometimes working for a law firm has advantages...when they asked why I was late "I was voting" "Oh, excellent, that's fine then" worked oh so very well :)

Anyhow, there's 4, count em 4 Statewide items on the ballot, two of em you've heard about, two of em you haven't.

The two you have are bond issues, for Parks and for Education. Suffice it to say that even though Rhi no longer works in the Education sector, SCA folks use parks a lot, and schools as well...so I voted for both of these (besides, the bond interest rate is low right now, so it don't hurt much).

The other two are Constitutional Changes that befuddled me and Rhi in the booth, so I checked with one of the lawyers here to find out just what in the heck is going on with them...

The first would "Allow the Supreme Court of the State of Virginia to consider as part of it's Original Jurisdiction claims of Innocence from convicted felons".

What this means, quite simply, is that it would allow the State Supreme Court to hear appeals from those who have been convicted of felony crimes stating that they are innocent of the charges. This would allow appeals based on DNA evidence and the like.

Currently, no such appeals are allowed, so the appellants have to eitehr a> devise some other excuse to get the appeal up there (Civil Rights violations or etc), or not be able to appeal at all and have to go the Pardon Route.

This is harmless enough, and a good thing. Vote for it, 'k?

The other one would allow local municipalities to exempt charitable property from local taxes without requiring the State Legistlature to act. Again, this seems harmless enough, who better to be able to say 'The folks who run the Homeless shelter should be exempt from City Water tax' than the city water tax board?

And, oh...there's these other elections as well...but this being Virginia, in my district at least neither race was contested...the Democrats couldn't even come up with a candidate...sheesh...

Hell...*I* would have run if they'd asked nice. Oh well.

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