I’m just amazed the matter even got to the vote:

Three cities Tuesday — two in Ohio, one in Texas — voted to rip the things down. In College Station, Tex., the camera manufacturer and their subcontractors reportedly spent $60,000 campaigning to keep them in place, more than five times the amount raised by the opposition, and lost anyway.

Voters in Chillicothe, Ohio, went against the cameras at a rate of 72 percent. In Heath, Ohio, the mayor got caught removing anti-camera campaign signs from an intersection. He, and the cameras, got sent packing.

Nationwide, there have been something like 11 elections on automated enforcement. Your vote total: Revolting Peasants 11, Machines 0. Yet the cameras multiply like something out of science fiction, like that robot Mr. Smith in a sequel to “The Matrix,” like the red weed in “War of the Worlds.”

It’s also like something from Hesse’s Steppenwolf, the war between man and machine.  Worrying that film and television can presage real world events.

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