Weird gibberish

Long weekend, drill (at Cp. Pendleton) was good, but man I ache. Details tomorrow.

This is about a couple of pieces of comment spam.

They seem to link (in a pile of nonsense about searching for someone who likes to frequent my blog, recursive names are used, though different names in each of them) to my blog.

Each of them did this three times.

Is anyone else getting such bits of dreck?

Does anyone have any idea what the point of this nonsense (and it is nonsense) is?

Sweet Jumping Jesus

California has some odd quirks, one of which is the huge number of referenda.

Next year (and in all future presidential elections) it seems we have a more pernicious problem because of that.

See, the quirk is that referenda are supposed to reflect the will of the people, by polling all of them. But, barring a gubenetorial/presidential election, it's rare for more than about 30 percent of the electorate to turn out.

This election cycle, however, we've gone an made it more likely for fewer than that to actually exercise their franchise. Why? Because the ballot measures will be voted on in June, while the presidential primaries are in February.

What does that mean? It means stuff like this is easier to slip past people.

And that one scares me, because while the present system isn't ideal, this proposal, in effect, means that California hands a lot of it's electoral college votes to the losing party; i.e., in the present climate, to the Republicans. Instead of polling the state as a whole, a slew of gerrymandered districts becomes how the votes are apportioned.

A free 20-30 votes to the Republicans, even though the state, as a whole, wants the Democratic candidate.

And, should the nature of the population shift, the reverse could come to be true.

It's a bad idea, and one that has a, frighteningly, high likelihood of coming to pass.