Before you vote, read this...

(1) You may find it helpful to look at a sample ballot. A Fayette voter can go to the Fayette local government website (www.admin.co.fayette.ga.us), then click on Departments, then click on Elections & Voter Registration, then click on November 7, 2006 Election Information, and then click on Sample Ballot. This will yield a useful sample ballot, though the characters are small and hard to read. They can be expanded on your screen to be more readable. If printed in the original format, you’ll get small print that’s fairly hard to read.

(2) On the sample ballot, you will find (on page 2) constitutional amendments and statewide referendum items. (The plural of referendum is referenda, so the ballot uses the term referenda.) There is no explanation of these items, and some are very hard to figure out, especially items D and F. The fine-print legal ads in last week’s Fayette Daily News (also Today in PTC) provide an explanation, but who reads that? (I explain them below.)

(3) After you have made your voting selections on the voting machine, and before they are actually recorded as your vote, you’re provided a summary of your selections so you can take one last look before you record your vote. When you get to the referendum items, the machine shows only three lines or so for each item, and you get to see something like, “To approve an Act which provides,” and you don’t get what the referendum item is really about. That’s a flaw in the system.

Referendum item D seeks to exempt homeowners over age 65 from paying the State tax portion of the property tax bill sent out by the county tax commissioner. That tax is very close to $1 per $10,000 of the property’s fair market value. On a house worth $250,000, it would be $25. (You decide whether it’s a good idea or not.)

Referendum item F is a bit esoteric. Homeowners can elect to freeze their home value to prevent their property tax from going up with later property reassessments. When they do, they give up current exemptions, so their property tax goes up at first. If they live in their house long enough and if later reassessments are high enough, they’ll get to benefit from their election. But if a husband has titled the house in his own name and dies, his surviving wife who inherits the house loses the “freeze value” because the house wasn’t legally hers. With this amendment, she’d still get the break from the valuation freeze. (Why we the people have to vote on things like this is beyond me. If the old man was so smart as to get the freeze exemption, why didn’t he retitle the deed in joint name with the missus?)

When in doubt...

Submitted by McDonoughDawg on Fri, 10/27/2006 - 9:11pm.

vote Libertarian...and pass the ammunition...

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That IS helpful

Submitted by swmbo on Fri, 10/27/2006 - 7:01pm.

Another flaw in the system is the summaries of referenda are not the actual law that the voter is approving or rejecting. That is, the voter has no way to know what the actual statute, ordinance or code will say. So, they vote "yes" for something on pure faith that what they understand from that summary is what will actually be put into law.

Thanks again,

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If you and I are always in agreement, one of us is likely armed and dangerous.

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Excellent, helpful lawyer

Submitted by cruiserman on Fri, 10/27/2006 - 11:53am.

Thanks for the tip. I like to stay up on things, but I'm human and can't always gin up the interest to go to the county and get a sample ballot. The times I do, I just carry the darn thing in there filled out and transfer the info onto the ballot. Makes thing fast and easy.

Good to know where I can get one on-line. Some of the referenda wording are terribly confusing for us non-lawyer types. I usually know my stand, but with the way the question is put, it takes some "ciphering" to know wether the answer is YES or NO.

You are the helpful lawyer

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