So, it’s Halloween ... supposedly the scariest day of the year.

My thought: Ha!

This evening I finished voting in the November election. (For those of you reading this from outside of Oregon, remember that we’re the one state that is exclusively vote-by-mail. I will put my ballot in the mail tomorrow.) As I complete my personal part of this electoral process, I look forward to next Tuesday, November 7th, as the most terrifying day of 2006. The stakes are high for the country. The stakes are high for Oregon. And the stakes are high for me. Let me explain ...

Nationally, we need to elect a congress, both House and Senate, that will stand up to George W. and his failed foreign policy. And bring an end to this fiasco in Iraq. This is an absolute must.

Additionally, the voters of Oregon need to reject the latest of the wildly-insane ballot measures that would lead to catastrophic cuts in state spending and cripple our education sectors and other highly-critical state-funded services.

Finally, and obviously, the outcome of the election is of personal import, because I work in public higher education and we receive a large portion of our support from the state’s general fund. The huge cuts that would result from the passage of Measures 41 and/or 48 would almost certainly dictate eventual job loss for me and perhaps the inability to ever be employed here in my working life again.

Watch out for those Oregon voters. Now they’re scary.