Well, in case you are one of the 15% of our readership who does not live in Georgia, Governor Sonny Perdue unveiled his "solution" to the flag crisis in this state last week.

His proposed solution, which has now been introduced in the House, calls for a two-part ballot question whereby the voter must answer both questions in order to have either of his/her vote count.

Question #1 will ask "Should the current Georgia State Flag be changed?" Question #2 is "If the current flag should be changed, which of the following two designs should be chosen?" And, the two versions offered are the pre-1956 State Flag and the post-1956 State Flag, with the Confederate Battle Flag in prominence.

The Secretary of State's office has issued a concern on the structure of the vote because, literally, the voter must answer both questions in order to have his/her vote count at all. If they answer just the first question about changing the current flag, and do not decide to pick one of the only two options on the second question, their vote on the first question doesn't get counted.

PV Has Just A Wee Bit of A Problem With This: You know, in commerce, the act of selling goods on the basis of "tying" the buyer's purchase to another item is illegal under anti-trust law.

The same problem applies to this "solution" offered by the Governor. You cannot demand that someone must vote on all questions in order to have their ballot count. If this method is deemed valid, then we should pass a law that says unless every question is always answered on any given ballot, then the entire ballot must be thrown out. Because, we know that most Dims don't answer the down-ballot questions as thoroughly as GOP voters, and all those ballots would get thrown-out as well and not counted.

So, if someone thinks the current flag should be changed, their only choice may be the best/worst of two alternatives? What's up with that?!

PV Asks The State House For A Full Disclosure Question: In the interest of making sure the public is fully cognizant of the issues involved in changing the state flag, we recommend the following wording on Question #1:

"Should $1,500,000 of your taxpayer money be spent on changing the current flag?"....OR

"Since Georgia and the rest of the country is in a budget crunch, should any of your tax dollars be spent towards changing the current state flag?"...OR

"100,000 Georgians have lost their job and had their lives wrecked, but the most important thing our government wants you to decide is whether or not our current flag should be changed."

Anyway, something along these lines would help voters make better decisions of such weighty matters...