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Rock the vote!
It's November 4th, which means if you live in the United States, it is election day! Please, please, please go and vote if you're registered! I don't care who you vote for, or if you just want to draw an enormous frowny face on the ballot in protest of all the awful politicians, just go vote!
If you DON'T live in the United States, please click here so you don't feel left out! (Actually, everyone needs to click the link anyways... because I said so...)
If you DON'T live in the United States, please click here so you don't feel left out! (Actually, everyone needs to click the link anyways... because I said so...)
3
Comments
(nsfw, btw)
As excited as I am to be part of the process and vote, I'm equally excited to make the ads stop.
That being said, I got an interesting call from my grandmother explaining she was excited that "the pot" was going to help the economy and maybe she could figure a recipe to make those special brownies that my hippy brother talks about.
My grandma wants to make special brownies. (I might get stoned for the first time in over a decade for this)
The race between Warner and Gillespie was 49.06% vs 48.49%, which is crazy close. One of the guys on Warner's team even said this: “It breaks my heart to say it, because these are my people, but racism was a huge factor in this,” he said. “I think in many areas of rural Virginia, racism is still prevalent, and they dislike Obama more than they like Mark Warner.”
...which is, sadly, probably very very true.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
That being said, I'm sure I will get the, "Then you can't complain when something happens that you don't like." speech. However, I would like to point out, that neither can you, but I have more right to complain. Reason being, I'm not the one who voted some jackwagon into office. Now, if you voted against it/them, we both get to complain (yay complaining!).
To end my rant, I would like to say this.... I cannot wait to see the world burn and the failure of today's and future politicians crash, like the stock market of the Great Depression.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
Perhaps I should have clarified that in my original post.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
Votes absolutely matter. The congressman for my district was only just decided today, with the initial margin only 400ish votes before it went to recounts.
If someone breaks into your apartment, your house gets set on fire, you have a medical emergency, a pipe bursts and floods your street, a traffic light is down causing chaos on the road, a rabid animal is roaming your back yard, municipal sewage is backing up... Those response times are based on the proper management and funding of local governments. Moreover, local governments enforce local sexual predator ordinances, make planning and zoning decisions, and try and bring industry (and therefore jobs) into the area through tax incentives. Furthermore, children using books from the 1970s in school buildings that are falling apart and have cruddy technology can blame poor local/state government management/funding.
Additionally, big decisions like euthanasia, capital punishment, pot & drugs, prison reform, abortion, and gay marriage are being fought primarily at the state level - that's where progress (or regress depending on your politics) is being made.
Now, if you don't believe in democracy? Fine. Don't vote. If you don't care about the issues enough to vote? Fine. Don't vote. Frankly, all the pushing to encourage uninformed/unwilling people to vote bothers me. Yes, it's someone's right to vote. Yes, I believe it's an important right. Notwithstanding that, why is there so strong a push to get people to effectively Christmas-tree a ballot in order to obtain a nifty sticker and "national pride?" ...That is not to say that it's not someone right to do precisely that. It is. I just do not understand the push to encourage it. If anything, all it does is encourage stubborn people to dig their heels in further.
If the only thing truly keeping someone from voting is the electoral college, that person can write-in "Godzilla" when voting for the President and then move on to the other elections and referendums on the ballot. Ultimately though... Someone choosing not to vote for whatever reason they come up with does not bother me at all... And the mantra that "if you don't vote you can't complain" is... Incredibly unpatriotic to me. People can (and should) complain about injustices and social concerns (and whatever else they want to whine about) all they want to, regardless of whether they vote.
Failing to exercise the right to vote does not mean that one sacrifices the right of free speech. Alternatively stated: Our rights are not contingent on voting. There are millions of people in this country who cannot/do not vote. Thankfully, they still have rights and protections against the government... And even if they do not exercise their right to vote (or do not have a right to vote), I hope they are consistently encouraged to exercise their other rights no matter what.
TLDR: The way Americans neglect local politics makes me sadface and pushing people who don't want to vote to vote is silly to me.
I think part of it is more than apathy, but rather a voting process that is not as friendly to those types of voters as it could be. A single mom working 2 jobs who uses public transportation often simply cannot find a way to feasibly go in to vote - yes, write-in ballots are an option, but you need to set that up weeks in advance and all that. I've heard there are steps being taken to make voting itself easier, such as letting anyone vote at any poll regardless of what district they are registered in. If you made it a facebook app I'm sure you'd get all the young people voting, but the nightmare of potential hacking and cheating would be insane. Still, I think there's more that can be done to make voting more accessible and easy.
However, here's where I disagree. Even though everything that falls into the public domain, is up to the local state government, I do not feel that the governor/mayor/congressman/insert political position here, really cares what any of the city's citizens say/vote unless said citizen can put money into their pocket. I mean, we live in an age of empty promises. The people in political power, regardless of whether its local or federal, tend to say, "I promise to do this." but then turn around and never do what they promised they'd deliver. Instead, what they do, is look at what they can benefit from at your own cost. As it is, in my local city, the ONLY time things get done is when the citizens get together to pay the MAYOR with what needs to be done.
Now, on the flip side of that coin is that SOMETIMES, when a group of people get together, they can change the way bills/laws are written, or they can get better streets cemented, or better transportation. However, if the group of people didn't do anything, would it have been changed or altered? No. Why? Because more times than not, the people in political power tend to forget about us little guys (average citizens) and focus only on what can be put in their wallets.
Also, all positions of political power (if not most), are voted in by a group of their fellow peers of power, not by you, not by me, and not by a large group of us.... but by majority vote of their peers, based on who THEY want in office, and not you. Numbers are easily smudged, written, recorded, and/or counted to make the average citizen think that their vote mattered, because we humans have this uncanny desire to feel important, and they exploit that with numbers.
TLDR: Regardless of whether or not you vote, the way the political structure is set up, the people in power will do what they want (depending on their views as Faerah pointed out), when they want, because they don't really care about you or me... only about what can be put in their pockets.
There have been studies published that show the increasing role of contractors and bureaucracy - whose positions are more static than the legislative and executive branches - in maintaining government, to say nothing of all the corporate money being thrown into the system. Altogether it means that voting on a national level is, effectively, useless. Average American citizens aren't the ones who make calls on that level, and they don't generally possess the monetary or political capital to wield the necessary influence. It's rare - take Net Neutrality as one such occurrence - for there to be enough unity and base mobilization for people to care about holding elected officials accountable.
Note that locally - as Faerah has said - it's a very different issue. Being a Californian, I live in a state where it is very easy for citizens to put propositions on the ballot - Sturgeon's law applies, since all you need is five thousand signatures to do so, but the fact is that the barrier between citizens and legislation is quite low compared to a lot of other American states. As such I consider that voting on local ballot issues is rather important, given that these frequently represent popular opinion. We recently passed a proposition here that made penalties for nonviolent, nonserious crime less severe - a good first step to making our jails less overcrowded.
I think that the overall setup is flawed, too. The two-party system is the perfectly logical and unfortunate result of our majority-based voting system, which means that political minorities in any given jurisdiction do not receive adequate representation - and that overall, especially with effective gerrymandering, representation at the higher levels of government is skewed. There are other systems - with their own flaws, granted - that could go a ways toward mitigating these problems and giving other third parties play on the local and national levels. I think this would be very, very good for America, as would the reintroduction of a labor party. That's not going to happen, though - as mentioned before, the national government's bought and paid for, and a lot of people profit off of the false choice between Democrat and Republican. You've got two incredibly poor options and if you vote outside of them then your vote doesn't count. A labor party or any party that would represent the interests of the working classes would have a long, uphill battle ahead of them, as such movements have always had in American history.
So as a result, while I cast my vote on local issues, I consider the national level and the major parties something of a lost cause. I consider it my duty to stay politically informed and to maintain an awareness of contemporary American issues, and to support good causes where I can. People say 'if you don't vote, you can't complain' - I'd like to turn that around and say 'If all you do politically is vote, you can't complain.' I used to care how people vote, but I don't as much these days - I judge them on whether they love and accept the people around them, whether they're willing to help when they are needed and able, and by the causes they support and invest their free time in. That tends to be a much better measure than figuring out which way they vote, although in my experience (as in anyone's) I've seen some unfortunate trait/party correlations.
Examples from recent elections: requiring background checks for firearms, tax increase/decrease maintenance or repeal, marijuana legality, same sex marriage legality, new charter for how our local government functions, various aspects of building an interstate bridge, allowance of charter schools, privatising liquor sales, increase in property taxes to fund schools and much more!
The only legit reasons I accept for not voting: I live in a place it is horribly inconvenient and simply can't manage it, I forgot/was late, I am opposed to the democratic process and abstain from voting in peaceful protest, I have not the time, energy, or care to research these issues thoroughly enough to submit an informed vote.
I think the push for EVERYONE VOTE. VOTE VOTE VOTE is annoying. If you are not informed, I don't want you to vote.