Damian Carroll wants people to vote for each and every measure on their ballots. So for several election cycles, heâs distilled ballot measures into clever and incisive haiku-inspired poems.
When he’s not tackling California politics â Carroll identifies as a Democratic activist â he serves as the National Director for the LA-based non-profit  Vision to Learn, which provides eye exams and eyeglasses to low income communities.
Hereâs Carrollâs haiku introduction to this yearâs statewide propositions:What’s California voting on this November? Here’s an easy guide
Carroll has broken down everything from Prop 7:daylight savings time could be made permanent by legislative vote.
to the potential healthcare costs within Prop 8:Sets a profit cap For kidney dialysis At fifteen percent
There’s even an ode to the missing Proposition 9, which the California Supreme Court removed from the ballot:split our state in three. Where’s the map? Whoops, nevermind. The court threw it out.
Carroll began writing these poems in 2016. âI started posting them one at a time up on Facebook, mostly for friends, but at the end when I put them all together, boy, they just took off and thousands of people re-shared them and use them to vote,â he says.
Thereâs one technicality at play here. Carrollâs poems do meet the 5-7-5 requirements of haiku, but the Representatives of the Haiku Society of America say (via email) that because his poems donât conjure up images, theyâre more zappai â another type of Japanese poem â than haiku.
Carroll is comfortable considering his poems “haiku-inspired,” he says. And he plans to keep writing them. âAt this point, the audience is demanding it,â he says.
Check out all of Carroll’s proposition haikus to quickly orient yourself on what’s at stake this election season. For a more in-depth breakdown, read KQED’s prop guide.
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