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A comment on Why did California vote down legal pot?.

Re:Why did California vote down legal pot? by woodpanel on Thursday November 04, 2010 @07:16AM (#1868413)
I've read that when it comes to votes on specific propositions (Initiatives) the average voter tends to be more cautious. Therefore we tend to give into the prohibitionists and fear of allowing something, even if most of us would consider themselves non-conservative.

Examples:

- California says NO to prop-19

- Switzerland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_controversy_in_Switzerl...

- Hamburg says NO to modernize public school system

- Netherlands + France say no to european constitution

- Initiatives to combine administrative entities (e.g. federal states) mostly fail

- If a referendum about the euro was hold in Germany in 1999, there wouldn't be no euro today

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Re:Why did California vote down legal pot? by varjag on Thursday November 04, 2010 @07:35AM (#1868461)
> Netherlands + France say no to european constitution

Why is that a bad thing? The constitution would be a major setback for democratic process in EU, where the actual governance is already too far removed from voter.

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Re:Why did California vote down legal pot? by woodpanel on Thursday November 04, 2010 @08:03AM (#1868513)
I'm not saying that voting it down was wrong. The same would have happened if we germans hat a chance to vote on that. But it proves the point isn't it?
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Re:Why did California vote down legal pot? by varjag on Thursday November 04, 2010 @09:22AM (#1868707)
Well yes, it's just that it was on the list with other items supposedly illustrating a backwards/un-liberal voting pattern.

But sure, your point was clear.

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Re:Why did California vote down legal pot? by woodpanel on Thursday November 04, 2010 @10:59AM (#1869128)
Well that's actually true. But i guess that voting the pattern was not intended to be "people voting down good things" but "people voting to prohibit changes"
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Re:Why did California vote down legal pot? by notahacker on Thursday November 04, 2010 @10:09AM (#1868916)
Conservative is probably the better way to characterise referendum results, because conservatives are generally better at mobilising themselves to vote.
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