"<br><div class="_6a _6b"><div><div class="permalinkHeaderInfo fsl fwb fcb"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/bram.cohen">Bram Cohen</a><span class="subscribeOrLikeSentence"><span class="fsl fwn"> · 10,500 subscribers</span></span></div>
<span class="fwn fcg"><span class="uiStreamSource"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/bram.cohen/posts/10152218683280183"><abbr title="Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 7:07pm">Thursday at 7:07pm</abbr></a> via <a href="https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=103667826405103" target="">Buffer</a></span> · </span></div>
</div><h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper"> <span class="messageBody"><div><span class="userContent">This year, I'm voting against representative democracy.<br>
Here in California we have this ridiculous system where effectively all
tax increases have to be put to a vote and new laws can be created by a
simple majority of people who actually vote.<br> I think both of these
are insane. We elect people so that laws and taxes can be done by
professionals, and the results of California's experiment in direct
democracy are reliably disastrous. The state chronically doesn't have
enough money and tax increases are at best mixed with gimmicky feel-good
measures. Laws passed by ballot are typically corrupt and make money
for their corporate sponsors, and even when that isn't the case they're
usually poorly thought out and misleading. So I'm voting with the
following strategy, as a protest against my right to vote:<br> Voting IN
FAVOR of anything which undoes a previous ballot measure, for example
three strikes. There are frequently a lot of these.<br> Voting IN FAVOR of anything which primarily raises money for the state.<br>
Voting IN FAVOR of keeping the ballot districts which were drawn up by
the citizens commission (this year brings a new innovation in things
which shouldn't be subject to referendum!)<br> Voting AGAINST everything
else. Yes this means voting against a lot of seemingly touchy feely
things, but most of those don't mean what you think they mean, and even
the ones which approximately do tend to be extremely poorly drafted
pieces of legislation. Many of the descriptions of what the new laws
will do are downright fraudulent, a predictable effect of being able to
get possible new laws on the ballot just by raising enough money to
collect signatures.<br> My one exception this year will be voting in
favor of getting rid of the death penalty, because it's very clear what
the effect of that legislation is, it's an embarrassment that it hasn't
been done already, and it saves a ton of money.<br>"<br></span></div></span></h5><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 3:14 AM, Richard Stallman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rms@gnu.org" target="_blank">rms@gnu.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I hope many of us have no Facebook accounts and can't access that page,<br>
so can you show us what it says?<br>
<br>
--<br>
Dr Richard Stallman<br>
President, Free Software Foundation<br>
51 Franklin St<br>
Boston MA 02110<br>
USA<br>
<a href="http://www.fsf.org" target="_blank">www.fsf.org</a> <a href="http://www.gnu.org" target="_blank">www.gnu.org</a><br>
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.<br>
Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br>