More Election
So, in addition to sticking the alderman elections in early, I also forgot to add in the referenda that will appear on the ballot. There are three county-wide and one ward wide referenda on the ballots. The county wide ones follow:
For the health and safety of children and the entire community, shall the state of Illinois enact a comprehensive ban on the manufacture, sale, delivery and possession of military-style assault weapons and .50 cal rifles?
This is a poorly worded referendum. Does this mean that our police are not allowed to use assault-weapons? What is military style? I agree that a city is no place for a gun, but the entire state? This just seems ill-conceived. For the children.
Shall Illinois enact legislation in 2007 to increase the minimum wage from $6.50/hour to $7.50/hour?
Unlike the big box ordinance, this seems like a reasonable way to help out those at the bottom, without driving business out of the city. Although it is unclear to me why the entire state would listen to cook county?
Shall the United States government immediately begin an orderly and rapid withdrawal of all of its military personnel from Iraq, beginning with the National Guard and Reserves?
Again, why are we wasting our time legislating things that we have no control over. The governor trying to keep NG troops in state makes sense, a general referendum on the entire military operation though? Useless. In some world one county might get say in this, however in our world we have a representative democracy and our representatives in the national government deal with issues like this.
And our local ward item:
Should the City of Chicago, State of Illinois, and Federal Government prohibit any lakefront development from Hollywood Avenue to Evanston which includes extension of Lake Shore Drive, or establishment of any other roadways, marinas or harbors, housing, major landfill, or commercial development?
Egads! Why do they word stuff like this? I guess they feel that since it is a non-binding referendum it just doesn’t matter that it is completely unenforceable. If they had stopped at the City of Chicago, this would be a great one, but why does the Federal Government care what one ward has to say? Apparently the wording was even tweaked some. And isn’t Hollywood Ave south of the 49th ward? Oh well, I’m probably going to say that I simply haven’t lived in this ward long enough to have an educated opinion on this issue.