By Chase Stevens ’12
THE ROUNDUP
On Nov. 3, after the results of the midterm elections were held, one could hear a faint weeping coming from the 216th room in the Eller building.
Mr. Tom Danforth ’78 and other liberals alike were rather upset over the results of the midterm elections.
The fact that Ben Quayle, running on a platform of going to Washington and knocking the hell out the place, got elected as a U.S. Representative is an insult to democracy. It proves that not everyone should have the right to vote.
Gov. Jan Brewer managed to not have a horribly long awkward pause in her political career by keeping her position as Arizona governor.
Brewer is notorious for backing racist laws such as SB1070.
During the two weeks that she has been legitimately elected governor, she has already passed budget cuts that stop nearly 100 people from getting organ transplants, according to a CBS article on Nov. 17.
Republican candidates also won other top seats such as Secretary of State, Attorney General and Superintendent of Schools. Many of the candidates ran on platforms that included “Supports SB1070” regardless of whether their position had much to do with the law or not.
Seeing these results made many liberals disappointed to see how far red this state has gone.
However, there was at least an unexpected outcome in this cloud of political failure.
For a while, it seemed like Proposition 203, the proposition to allow medical marijuana in Arizona, would fail by a close margin.
After all of the absentee ballots were counted, it turned out that Arizona voters actually passed the proposition.
According to the GlobeNewswire, it passed with 841,346 votes in favor and 837,005 against it.
Arizona is now the fifteenth state to allow the sale of medical marijuana.
Proposition 203 was the only bill this midterm that was a citizens’ initiative bill, meaning that regular people were the ones responsible for making sure Proposition 203 was on the ballot this year.
This is the fourth time that medical marijuana has been on the ballot in Arizona. It passed in 1996 and in 1998, but due to a loophole it did not stop medical marijuana users from being arrested. However, Proposition 203 changed that.
