That’s the talk, as hundreds of thousands of ballots in Fresno County contained illegal, politically-charged language describing the global warming act-postponing measure. The Sacramento Bee reports:

Ballots printed for the county’s roughly 380,000 registered voters say Proposition 23 would suspend laws requiring "major polluters" to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That language was thrown out by a Sacramento superior court judge, who ordered several edits to the original language drafted by the attorney general’s office, including changing "major polluters" to "major sources of emissions."

The Proposition 23 campaign has demanded that the county "take immediate steps to reprint the ballots remaining to be sent to vote by mail voters as well as ballots to be distributed on election day."

"Fresno County is a county of significant size in California and in a close election, its vote, now tainted by this serious error, could call into question the state results and possibly give rise to an election contest and require a new statewide election on Proposition 23," attorney Colleen C. McAndrews wrote in a letter to the Fresno elections officials.

Officials say it’s too late to do anything about the 140,000 mail-in ballots that have already been distributed, and that they will post signs with the correct language at polling places.

This is not insignificant; environmental extremists have been trying to label carbon dioxide emitters (that would be me and you also, readers) as "polluters" to push their fraudulent global warming scenario since they took up the cause. If you were just faintly familiar with the issue, would you be more likely to vote against the measure if businesses were identified as "polluters" rather than "sources of emissions?"

A major screw-up that could require a new election. Not surprisingly, the opponents of Prop. 23 are pooh-poohing the significance of the error.

Originally posted here.