More on our weighty measures

The other day, I noted some interesting politics in Redwood City/San Mateo County. The Economist isn’t covering this race, but is covering the U. S. Senate race in Oklahoma, and that the total spending there has been 3.8 M$. So the Poizner–Ruskin state assembly race in California and a Senate race in Oklahoma match up on absolute dollars. (Oklahoma has 1.9 M registered voters, so the per-registered voter amount for the Oklahoma race is about 2 $, or a little over 1/8 of the amount in our local race.)

On the Measure Q side, we received another two pro- mailings. One suggested looking at what was purported to be new facts on the measure, but is just a new domain registration pointing at the original site. I poked around, though, and found the following:

This is a classic graphical evasion: the coloring of the “marinas and open space” is green, suggesting grass. But note that marinas are actually on the water and, perhaps more importantly, the graphic does not separate out internal roads or parking. It would be difficult to find a common California definition of “open space” that includes roadways. If we look elsewhere on the site, we find

A very different assessment of open space, and one that raises questions about why this factor is being emphasized so strongly. I await the next mailing.