One of them, there's about 20, will make it through before the 2006 elections.

You'll have more missed meetings. But as for SOX or privacy compliance, who cares? I don't see any broad implications.

I thought they would have come with some recommendations that actually reduce the burden -- maybe, you'll only have to, say, audit a third of the controls in any given year. Or maybe they would have come with some clarity on what are effective controls, a problem for all-sized companies.

Projects that were not aligned with compliance and corporate governance were delayed or cancelled, and SOX efforts inhibited the purchase of large amounts of software related to building new technologies and deploying new projects. However, by the second half of 2005, increased interest in IT solutions to ease the burden of compliance has begun to drive new spending.

There are only three elections, and they are obviously in very different parts of the state. But we, hopefully, will be able to glean some information from the results of these elections.

We have drawn lessons from the previous elections and we are cautiously optimistic that glitches will be reduced to a minimum.