Mr. Frazier –
We voted NO on all amendments.
You were the only sane voice that motivated us to research the proposed amendments.
Idaho is just getting dumbed down year by year. An ad on TV is about as much info as they need.
Orwell may have had the year wrong, but the main theme was right on.
“Vote to save the vote” really means “Make sure you never get to vote again”
Keep up the good work you do.
Thanks.

Lisa, and others, all the mail that came to my house was in favor of the ammendments and all that advertizing contained gross distortions or downright lies. How can we have a democracy if it is based on lies?

And look at all those poor bewildered Tea Party people being manipulated so cruelly by the ultra-rich, who would benefit so much by the implimentation of Tea Party policies?

Look at Walt Minnick pretending to be a Democrat. What nonsense.

Dave,
If you believe the ads we “preserved our right to vote” when we gave up our right to vote.

This sounds like something out of catch-22. I for one am wondering how the media let the ads go up without fact checking that stuff.

We no longer have the rights to vote on debt when you factor in the urban renewal abuses of taxpayers in Idaho.

BG:

Is there a possibility of court action to stay these amendments based on distortions and false advertising? Can the 2011 Legislature repeal them?

Idaho lost a good congressman who was representative of the people he served. With all due respect, Rod, and unless you know otherwise, I am here to tell you because I know, Walt Minnick IS a Democrat. Please stop impugning his character. The election is over.

As a Democrat and a citizen of Idaho, I am understandably not in a good mood post-election.

EDITOR NOTE–The people have spoken and I would hope no court in the land would entertain a case based on advertising. As for Minnick, I have known and respected him for at least 35 years. Something happened to him the I can’t explain. At the City Club a week ago he LOST the election and a lot of support from people who genuinely like him.

Cyclops I think it depends on how you define substantial. There were 451,161 total votes for governor and 434,429 for HJR4.

As for the media, the political advertising was one sided, but that’s what advertising does. I’m not sure why that’s so surprising.

Personally, I thought the news media did a pretty fair job. The Guardian debated Sen. Stegner on IPTV, spoke on KBOI, was the guest on KTVB’s Viewpoint and attended the Boise Young Professionals lunch debate which was also covered by KTVB. I’m sure there are others but that seems like balanced coverage.

If nothing else, the Guardian lost this round, but has positioned himself pretty well for future fights. I think more people know about him now than ever before which is a good thing.

Kappa TA,

Walt Minnick was elected as a Democrat but voted with the Republicans. I said nothing about his character.

We will soon see the flight of the wealthy away from the giant sucking sound of the cities. You were not fighting the city as much as all the freeloaders in the city. Just another buy the vote program.

Rod in SE Boise, you think Walt Minnick’s voting with republicans 30% of the time makes him not a Democrat. Look at the other side of the coin, he voted with Democrats 70% of the time. Seems to me like a rationale position and we need more people who are not afraid to vote with either party based on the value of the law being considered. Link in article to voting record %:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/15/walt-minnick-tea-party-en_n_538837.html

Dave,

I must say, it appears to me that you got what you wanted. Idaho exercised its right to vote on the issues and well my friend your side lost! No one can help the fact that some people decided not to fill out the second half of the ballot that is just the way it happened. If you don’t like it then maybe you should continue on with the political process and try to have it repealed (lawsuits are not the political process but a losers last ditch effort to fight the majority.) I would guess that further ballot attempts to repeal such resolutions would also fail. Move on folks, the world will not end because the airport can now spend money to make our lives easier and hospitals can now buy much needed equipment from their revenues. I would bet if you were to need medical assistance in Cascade you would really want the new x-ray machine instead of the one straight out of the Korean War.

EDITOR NOTE–You won, but your perceptions remain as deceptive as the $750,000 hospital ads. The courts are where we seek JUSTICE rather than a “last ditch effort.”

Every county with a commercial airport supported the amendment HJR 5.

In addition, several counties in eastern Idaho that have publicly owned electric utilities voted in favor of the airport amendment, perhaps out of an understanding that airports, like municipal utilities, have a revenue stream that will be the source for the financed projects.

I think that as the debate on HJR 5 aired over the fall with the news coverage voters realized we were debating the right to vote v. the cost of putting on an election so people could vote on mundane things like a parking garage.

There are comments above about the number of votes on the constitutional amendments as less than for the races at the top of the ticket. This is normal. The experts’ term for this phenomenon is “ballot fatigue” because people burn out over a long ballot. Or, in the case of Ada County, a second sheet.

The ballot fatigue rates fall within the normal range for these types of ballot measures. An initiative or a referendum typically garners a higher participation rate (we didn’t have any this year), and constitutional amendments less.

If the airports and hospitals are cash flowing so well, why not change over from a government entity to an association? As a non-profit they could also raise cash from investors and philanthropists. But we all know the reason: after the money is BORROWED and the entity can’t pay it…the taxpayers will pay. We essentially co-signed a blank check loan.