mixed bag in WI: Doyle wins but so does death penalty & ban on gay marriage

[WI_DEM]

Gov. Jim Doyle became the first Democratic Governor to win re-election in 32 years by a 53-45 percent margin. We also picked up a House Seat (in 8th CD) and we won back the State Senate and won five seats in the Assembly. But...

We lost the Attorney General's office narrowly and by a 59-41 percent margin voters choose to amend the state consitituion to ban gay marriages and civil unions. Voters also approved an "advisory referendum" to bring back the death penalty which has been banned since 1853! This was approved by a 200,000 vote margin.

[AlCzervik]

1. well the ban might get overturned in the courts, lets hope.

[Vorta]

2. I don't get the death penalty support

Yes, in my weaker moments there are those I would like to see executed. Oddly, I can't name any that are currently on death row, but surely there are folks who deserve it. Objectively though, the death penalty makes no sense in terms of thrift or justice. Well perhaps it does if you honestly believe that said person is dispatched to Hell, but I mean logically.

The death penalty is horribly expensive. It's much cheaper to sentence someone to life and keep him in jail than it is to keep him in jail and spend a fortune with all the appeals. The death penalty is horribly expensive in terms of the time, energy, and resources spent arguing about it. Life in prison would seem a much more horrible punishment to me than execution; as someone who has had general anesthesia many times I can tesitfy that death under those circumstances would go unoticed by the patient. Lastly but not leastly, if we don't execute people, then our conscience can be soothed that we don't risk executing an innocent man. As long as he's alive we can correct errors.