My wife and I filled out our ballots and mailed them in. It was our act of rebellion. We have three close elections in our TV viewing area. Nowadays close elections means lots of negative ads. So when we received an offer for mail-in ballots we took them up on it. I was pretty tired of the television ads. Frankly, I did not glean a significant piece of information from any of the ads on where they stood on important issues. So we voted for the people who we already knew.

We had several constitutional amendments on the ballot, too. I almost voted for the amendment to raise the minimum wage. I run the payroll for our farm and our Habitat affiliate. Although both organizations are exempt from minimum wage laws, we have always paid a wage rate than was higher than the minimum wage. Like most businesses we pay the prevailing wage rate. It is hard to get   and retain good employees. Minimum wage rate laws have never been important to our business. The problems we have had with our Habitat homeowners has always been them losing their jobs not the wage rate. As a result of my statistical sample of two, I do not find much value in the minimum wage rate increase to anyone except politicians and people who like to talk about how they are helping the working poor. I am sorry about my cynicism. God is not finished with me.

My problem was not the wage increase but all of the extra stuff they threw into the amendment with it. The amendment is almost a page long. It is as long as the other six amendments combined. I have insurance policies with less verbiage.  I am confused why we could not have a simply worded amendment to raise the wage rate and let the state government figure out how to manage it most effectively. I definitely feel like I was subjected to a bait and switch ploy so I voted against it.