Maine Opts To Rejoin The 20th Century In the 21st

Maine decisively beat back the anti-vaxxers at the polls, defeating a "peoples' veto" of a bill tightening requirements for vaccination of school age children K- College and people who worked in health care after the pudding-headed libertarians, both Republican fascist and pseudo-left had left us with one of the worst vaccination rates in the country in the name of "liberty" or something.  That's right, the opponents even thought that healthcare providers should be able to opt out of vaccination so they could be Typhoid Marys in doctors offices and emergency rooms. 

As of now about 73% of Maine voters voted to keep the new requirements for vaccination in place.  Which is good news even as other news is mixed.  I look at such ballot measures that are so easy to get on the ballot here due to other 1960s-70s era "liberalism"that sounded so nice to all those nice liberals in the Maine Legislature, making it easier to junk up the ballot with things put there by an easily gathered number of petition signatures which sounded so grass rootsy and folksy (I'm really off the "folkie" stuff these days) and so friggin' Jeffersonian but which, as always seems to happen with such pudding headed "reform" of that sort, it was easily gamed by special interests, most of them anything from Republican-fascist to overtly fascist and with some money behind them.  This latest one seems to have had a lot of Chiropractor money behind it which sort of makes me think I wouldn't go to one of those during an epidemic.  

One of my biggest objections to it is the practice of those behind such measures to rig the timing so they can get them on during a special election or something like a primary that are likely to have a low vote turnout so their true believers can get it through with less of an effort.  I don't think any such measure should ever appear on anything except a general election ballot when the largest number of votes can be expected.  I've been even hotter on fixing that idiocy than I have been on getting rid of the caucuses. 

But in this case, perhaps thanks to the ongoing reminder of what a pandemic can be like, we didn't do the stupid thing at least here, for now.