My take on the initiatives and referendums.

In the upcoming election, there are two initiatives that have our attention, Initiatives 517 and 522.

Initiative 517 concerns initiative and referendum measures.

This initiative would make it illegal to interfere or retaliate against signature gatherers or a petitioner signers. Next it will require that all initiatives which receive sufficient signatures shall appear on the ballot. And lastly it also increases the amount of time available to gather signatures.

Since this effort will obviously increase the ability of the people to have a voice in their government I am a "yes" on passage of Initiative 517.

Initiative 522 is the one where all the monies being spent and it has to do with labeling of food products for determining if there genetically modified or not.

I'm ambivalent about this initiative at the end of the day so many of our foods have been genetically modified over the decades that they bear little resemblance to the foods initially started out to be everything from various strains of corn to we to a wide variety of foods have been modified in one form or another since they were harvested commercially in the first place.

Millions of dollars are being spent by various organizations primarily on the no side, stores, various manufacturers, and that can be either a good, or a bad, staying.

Costco for example spent millions to get the liquor store initiative passed. I supported that, because I don't want government involved in the sales of anything that can be handled by the private sector.

Whenever big money is for something or against something, typically that means that whatever the issue is should get a very close look indeed. But try as I might I can't see any strong argument for or against this initiative so frankly, I don't care.

In my case my intention is to vote not at all. When I can't support one candidate or another, or one position or another, then I make it a practice of not voting at all.

Thus in the last election as well as the upcoming election, many of the votes on my ballot will either be blank, or have right ends, not unlike Mickey Mouse, or Thomas Jefferson, or something along those lines.

So this is one of those times where I really don't have any advice as to which side of this issue to vote for which ever way flips your switch.

There are about five advisory votes, the advisory votes are essentially worthless, because the Democrats controlling the House will pay absolutely no attention to any of them, I'm going to be a "no" on all of them because they result in tax increases of roughly $878 million.

(Dictated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking in preparation for hand surgery later this week.)