After a well-needed rest yesterday, I'm back to say a few things about what transpired on November 7th, 2006. Most of you already know that Nevada's Question 7, the Regulation of Marijuana Initiative, for which I spearheaded the Internet campaign, did not pass. The final breakdown was 44% for, 56% against. Let me say a few things about this.

First, the good news: we did 5 points better than the similar initiative that failed in 2002 with only 39% of the vote -- that equates to about 100,000 55,000 more votes for ending marijuana prohibition in Nevada over four years, although some of that number naturally comes from the population growth in the past few years. But because the actual percentage went up, we clearly won over a new group of voters. Unlike in 2002, we outright won a county with 53% of the vote (the libertarian-oriented Storey County, home of Virginia City) and nearly won Washoe County, home of Reno and the second-biggest county in the state, with 48%. Washoe, incidentally, is considered a more conservative county than Clark County, the home of Las Vegas; it has more Republicans registered than Democrats, the opposite of Clark. Washoe also had a higher turnout rate than Clark County.

Some good news also came by way of the exit polling results, although, being a statistical sampling, they can't be considered entirely reliable. In any case, the exit polls showed us winning among the Latino population, which I imagine will only get bigger in the upcoming years. We also won outright among Democrats and Independents, taking all of our losses among Republicans (which, I admit, doesn't exactly jive with Washoe's results). We broke about even with union members (even though almost every union publicly came out against us), and easily won the 18-29 age group.

Now let's look at the not-so-good news: we only got 44% in Clark County, seeing nary a difference from the state results in this heavily Democratic county. Incidentally, turnout was the lowest in the state in Clark County, meaning that despite our herculean efforts, we couldn't get out the transient population as much as we would've liked. Clearly, we didn't do so well in the rest of the rural counties, which make up about 1/6th of the state's population. Moving over to the exit polls, we received only 40% of the African-American vote. (The White vote was similar to the final results.) We did 3 points better among men than among women. And while we ran a close race in every age group above 29 and below 60, we got killed by the elderly population in Nevada. In fact, it wouldn't be far-fetched to say that we lost the campaign essentially because we couldn't convince the elderly population that the harms of prohibition are worse than the harms of marijuana.

And really, while I'm not happy about it, that result makes sense. We're talking about the generations of people older than the Baby Boomers who never lived in a culture -- even as youths -- where marijuana use was common and accepted. This World War II generation generally looked down upon the late-60's culture. They never smoked marijuana in dorm rooms while listening to Sinatra and, from what I've seen in movies, preferred the poison served in highballs than from the cannabis plant. It seems fairly obvious to me that when the Baby Boomers become the predominant elderly population, marijuana prohibition will be on its last legs.

The last thing I want to mention is what a damn good campaign we ran. Every single member of the senior staff was not only competent, but passionate about the cause and creative in their ideas. We had no major missteps, and quite a few breakthroughs that impressed the media, both local and national. Our campaign manager Neal was anal about our messaging, but it's clear from the end results that our commercials paid off handsomely. And I do feel that, with my colleague Sean (and with the ideas of the entire staff, especially Neal's initial vision), we put together one of the most Internet-savvy statewide campaigns I've ever seen. Because all of our phone banking and data entry tools were written for the web, the hundreds of thousands of calls and data entries made (with the help of bar scanners) were all done on Linux computers, except for those done over the web by our volunteers. Our blog had over 600 posts during the campaign, thanks to our Communications staff, and our message board was sometimes too popular. We put over 80 videos up on YouTube and received nearly cumulative 100,000 views of those videos. We had over 6,000 MySpace friends. During the 15 days of voting, we used the Google Map API to allow any voter in Washoe and Clark counties to find and get directions to their nearest voting locations. And we text messaged thousands of voters and volunteers with voting locations and information about how they could help. We did a lot more than that for our internal politicking, but I won't get into it here.

On a final note, I should say that while Question 7's loss was hard for all of us at the campaign, Wednesday was still a great day to wake up to. I, of course, was thrilled to hear that American voters finally decided to show their displeasure with the Republican party, sweeping in a Democratic House and Senate and sweeping out Donald Rumsfeld. I was happy that South Dakota voted down the abortion ban (but alas, medical marijuana failed there with 48% of the vote) and that Arizona voted down a gay marriage ban. Unfortunately, the Democratic wave that hit the country must have been blocked by the very same mountains that divide Nevada from the verdant valleys of California. The Democratic candidate governor got about the same percentage of the vote as Question 7, even after her Republican opponent was caught up in three scandals, one sexual, one financial, and the third hypocritical. While some of the higher offices such as attorney general and treasurer went Democratic, the Republicans held onto the one Senate seat up for grabs and the two competitive House seats. However, on a what is to me a cosmically hilarious note, the heavily-funded attempt by casinos to confuse voters from implementing a smoking ban failed -- which means the Nevada of chain-smoking marathons of video poker in grocery stores and 7-11's will be gone within a month. I'll say more on this later, but let me end with this: the greatest trick that Nevada ever pulled was convincing the world that it is libertarian.

October is the last full month before Election Day, so I expect to be kept quite busy working on the campaign to pass Nevada's Question 7, the Regulation of Marijuana Amendment. I'll continue to post whatever comes my way that I find interesting, but my leisure time will be scarce.

For those interested, the big news today in my campaign is that a coalition of Nevada religious leaders have come out in support of the iniatiative. Maybe you could call that our October Surprise... what's Karl Rove's?

Leaving aside the marijuana initiative campaign I'm working for, there are two anti-smoking initiatives on the Nevada ballot this November. Question 5 bans smoking on school grounds and in day-care centers, shopping malls, video arcades, the slot machine sections of grocery and convenience stores, and bars that serve food and restaurants. Question 4, which was introduced by casino and gaming interests in Nevada in response to Question 5, bans smoking in public schools and day cares, but would continue to allow smoking in the gaming areas of grocery, convenience stores, and bars. According to state law, if both of the conflicting initiatives pass with a majority, only the initiative with the most votes would become law.

Today, the Las Vegas Review-Journal released a poll showing that 77% of the respondents support Question 4, and 62% of the respondents support Question 5. That means at least 29% and at most 62% of the respondents support both initiatives, even though they are mutually exclusive! I've looked at the ballot language for both, and it's clear that the Secretary of State has made no attempt to clarify this point to Nevada voters.

Imagine if these two questions were about raising the minimum wage and that you generally support an increase. If the first question you read asked you whether you wanted to raise the minimum wage by 10 cents, you'd probably vote yes. If the second question then asked you if you wanted to raise it by $1.00, you'd probably vote yes again. If the questions were reversed, however, you might decide to vote no on the 10 cent raise since you've now seen there's a better option on the ballot. In other words, the order of the questions matter when the questions are intertwined. I feel like the only way to handle this situation is to present the two questions at the same time, or to be extra clear to Nevada voters about the related questions.

I became so fustrated by this poorly designed election mechanism that I wrote a letter-to-the-editor to the Review-Journal, who didn't seem to blink an eye to the respondents who contradicted themselves. I hope they print it:

Secretary of State needs to clarify anti-smoking initiatives

The results of the poll on the anti-smoking initiatives (" Poll finds strong support for both anti-smoking initiatives," Sep. 26) should concern all Nevada voters. The polls found that both initiatives have a large majority of support even though the two initiatives directly contradict each other, indicating that a large number of respondents are unaware that the two initiatives are mutually exclusive. Regardless of the underlying policy issues, it's alarming that the Secretary of State has decided to put this question to the voters using two complex and order-sensitive questions, without indicating in the condensed ballot language of either that a "Yes" vote for one negates a "Yes" vote for the other. By not clarifying the unique interaction between these two initiatives, the Secretary of State has created a perverse incentive for future initiative opponents to introduce a less restrictive initiative in order to "game" the election mechanism. This problem could be solved by either by posting signs at polling locations explaining the matter, or by tweaking the electronic ballot software to present both questions simultaneously while not allowing a "Yes" vote on both initiatives, just like presently it does not allow a "Yes" and "No" vote on the same question. Without such a solution, the Secretary of State is failing democracy in Nevada.

We recently updated the web site for the marijuana initiative campaign that I'm working on. You should check it out there, but for the lazy, here's the new explanatory animation:

If you support ending marijuana prohibition, you can start by helping pass the initiative that will be on the ballot this November in Nevada. No matter what state you live in, you can call Nevada residents from the comfort of your own home to help us identify supporters and undecided voters.

We're currently in the midst of a campaign to get 3,000 volunteer calls by the end of the month -- help us reach our goal by coloring in the cactus pictured above. Click here to use CRCM's web-based phone banking tool to start ending marijuana prohibition right now. (Disclosure: I'm the web developer for the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana in Nevada.)

Update: We reached the June goal, and now are working on 5,000 calls for July.

The Daily Regulator, the blog representing the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana in Nevada, has launched. CRCM is supporting an initiative on the state ballot this November to remove all penalties for marijuana use for adults 21 and over, to create a system for the legal cultivation and sale of marijuana, and to double the penalties for DUI charges and providing marijuana to minors. Full disclosure: I am the site's web developer.

So the activity on this blog is about to slow down dramatically (as if it hadn't already with the recent holiday-related silence). The reason: I recently was hired for a full-time+ gig as the webmaster for the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana, here in Las Vegas, Nevada. The CRCM is working toward passing an inititiative on the ballot this upcoming November -- you can read about it here. This is my first time working on a political campaign, and I expect it to keep me very busy for the next eleven months.

I still plan to post to the blog, but expect to see fewer "asides" -- those brief posts that usually consist of a link and a pithy comment. If you really enjoy those, I suggest becoming a regular of kottke.org. I know many of you have enjoyed this site as a place to converse with the wide net of people I'm connected to, so if there's enough interest, I'd consider giving accounts to some people who would be interested in keeping this space going (e.g., doorframe, jonmay, etc.).

Lastly, when I was at midnight mass on Christmas, the priest had something like this to say during his homily: "For those of you who think Christians differentiate among people, that they don't view everyone equally -- blow me ." At least that's what I heard, along with my brothers and several cousins. My sister claims that he said "baloney," but I only think that he meant to say "baloney" and confused the "m" for the "n," saying something like "balomey." It was funny.