Unidentified Women On Horseback In Golden Gate Park, October 29, 1934
San Francisco Public Library Historical Photograph Collection

We’re all for citizenship and all—we would even consider ourselves to be citizenship geeks. We love voting (of course) and jury duty (jury opportunity, we like to call it). We love the Post Office and even the DMV (especially those the traces of the Eisenhower era that remain here and there in those temples of citizenship… call it a fetish).

But in perusing our Voter Information Pamphlet today, we realized that the system is broken. We had to spend nearly three minutes thinking about whether or not there should help pay for stables in Golden Gate Park, and people, that is just plain wrong.

So just to clarify:
1. Yes, we only looked at the ballot today. Citizenship may be our hobby, but procrastination is a way of life.
2. What’s wrong again? The fact that we had to spend almost two hundred precious seconds of our short lives thinking about this ballot measure.

What to do? After the jump.

...think of the children...

We were tempted to vote no, just out of resentment. But people we like seem to put forward some sound arguments in favor of establishing the fund. And although we admire the learned and tenacious rebuttal of these arguments by Terence Faulkner, we are suspicious of him because he seems to want to call himself “Dr. Faulkner” on the basis of his J.D., and that’s a no-no in our book.

Then we were tempted to vote yes, imagining that we might choose to go for a horsey ride some day, instead of exhausting ourselves in a rented cast-iron pedal-car. Maybe some of the Supervisors could come with us—we would all look very striking in our riding outfits.

Then we were tempted to vote no again, thinking that Deborah is almost certainly right (see below).

To solve the dilemma, we came up with a mathematically certain recipe for deciding how to vote:

1) Imagine yourself in a snappy horseback-riding outfit, trotting through the Park (with or without a Supervisor). Then, assess the likelihood of you or anyone you know actually doing this.

2) Add up all the “I Have a Horse and I Vote” bumper stickers you’ve ever seen in your life (democracy is not just about self-interest--we have to think of others, too).

Percentage chance you or anyone you know will actually use the stables + total number of “Horse” bumper stickers seen = less than 50, vote NO.

Percentage chance you or anyone you know will actually use the stables + total number of “Horse” bumper stickers seen = more than 50, vote YES.