Common sense prevails in North Dakota tonight

After hard-fought (and heavily-funded) efforts to push a pair of Tea Party initiatives on today's primary ballot, North Dakota proved that, despite being a historically red state, it's people can still surprise us all with demonstrations of common sense and the capability of resistance to right-wing media hype.

Measure 2 was an effort to abolish property tax altogether. While most agree that property taxes in ND could be reasonably lower, they are set at the local level, and are used to fund municipal services, school and park districts, among other functionalities. While the idea of their elimination may be a wet dream for those of the Taxed Enough Already philosophy, the reality remains that doing so shifts the burden of funding to the state level, and creates a projected annual deficit of $80 million to which no proposal to offset was addressed.

Scarier, though, was the much-ballyhooed Measure 3, known as the Religious Liberty Referendum. This joint effort by the North Dakota Family Alliance, the Catholic Conference, and the New John Birch Society (no joke) was a knee-jerk reactionary right-wing response to the contraception "debate". It would amend the state Constitution as follows:

"Government may not burden a person’s or religious organization’s religious liberty. The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief may not be burdened unless the government proves it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing the specific act or refusal to act and has used the least restrictive means to further that interest. A burden includes indirect burdens such as withholding benefits, assessing penalties, or an exclusion from programs or access to facilities."

To any rational-minded person, the implications of the vague, broad language of this proposal should be concerning. It would effectively allow Constitutional sanction of domestic violence, terrorism of women's health facilities, child marriage, among other religion-approved atrocities. Spending on promoting this measure exceeded $700,000, over seven times the average ballot measure campaign budget for the state.

Gratefully, the people of ND displayed not only the horse sense, but the motivation to vote down both of these attempts by the right wing to flaunt it's perceived influence. I like to believe it is a sign that the Midwest hasn't completely fallen prey to the domino effect the GOP is expecting in the wake of Wisconsin.

[link:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/north-dakota-primary-2012-property-taxes-religious-freedom_n_1591957.html|