Let's look at the ballots we've gotten so far. The state ballot this year clocks in at 192 pages, same as the city of San Francisco ballot. Let's see, that's...eight...carry the one... 384 total pages of election goodness to read through before voting. Why wouldn't people not be thrilled about all of this? To put that in perspective, our beloved "The Stranger," clocks in at 123 pages and in that book, you'll at least figure out how to discover meaning out of meaningless. "On the Road" is about 254 pages and that launched the Beatnik movement. And Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City?" 272. Voting is like having to cram for a test in that you have to set aside a couple of hours to read through really boring stuff you really don't want to read, except if you don't do a good job, instead of failing, you wind up with a Hollywood actor running things.

According to the story, another issue election officials are having to worry about is that between printing and mailing costs, ballots are getting pretty darn expensive these days.

The thing is, though, we can't really come up with a better way around this. It's all pretty much fair and equitable the way things are done. Of course, we could argue that the whole proposition thing has gotten way out of hand, but that's a debate for another time.