I am suddenly filled with rage. Not about who won or lost, which doesn’t thrill me, but at the general ignorance of Americans. I spent last night working in the lab with a friend, listening to the elections results. He’s almost 20 and yet I had to explain most of the election process to him. He’s not dumb, he just didn’t know. I was raised watching the election results come it. I remember being allowed to stay and watch them 1988, when I was three. My parents took me to the polling places with them. My father took me to register to vote not one week after my 18th birthday last year. I was taught that if you don’t vote, you can’t complain. I was taught it was my civic duty to vote. Not a right, a duty. Just like serving on jurys or being drafted (ignore the fact I female) and going, not because how I felt about the war, but because I was called to.
One of the girls I go to school with said that she didn’t understand why people were so mad, that it didn’t matter anyway, and that was why she wasn’t registered. I am so irked that someone could think that. My roommate and I called her on it. She said it didn’t matter and that voting was a right, not a duty. Fine, let’s say it is a right, not a duty, but does that mean we shouldn’t exercise it? I drove almost an 1.5 hours, round trip, to go home and vote. For my roommate, it was more like 3 or 4 hours, including 2 train rides. I can’t stand people who don’t vote (other than those that can’t).
Did anyone else find either blinding ignorance or utter stupidity yesterday from the electorate?
Instead of spending all this time, money and energy getting everybody and their cat to register to vote, we should spend it on teaching people the how and why of voting.
on the “teaching people to vote” thing that was the part in the subject line about the civics classes.
i’ve never been very much involved in politics, as well, i come from tinytown, MA, where you’re kind of in your own little bubble, but i’ve become much more informed and have been much more effected by politics in coming to college.
if you did not vote, i do not want to hear you complain. i don’t care for whom you voted, that’s your business. i’m not completely dispared at the re-election of bush. that isn’t who i voted for, but hell, it’s our government in it’s working. BUT if you did not vote, then you throw away your rights. i don’t want to hear this “i don’t care who is president, i am proud to be an american” bull, if you are TRULY proud to be an american, then you should have cast your vote and showed pride in the workings of your nation.
:smack:
grrrrrr.
And so it goes, the entire MTV “Rock The Vote” campaign was once again as empty headed as their programming is of talent.
!!!
House-Senate-Oval Office, GRAND SLAM!!!
LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER LOSER -!- -!- -!- -!- -!- -!- -!- -!-
okay im done now [tee hee]
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It doesn’t amaze me any more. I was in a criminal jury trial last month. During a round of selection the prosecutor and the judge explained the concept of presumption of innocence and how proof of guilt was entirely the responsibility of the state that the defense was not obligated to prove innocence carefully and repeatedly. The defense attorney asked for a show of hands on several questions and one was “when you see the defendant do you assume he might be guilty or he wouldn’t be here?” If they excluded everyone who got it wrong they would have needed a new jury pool.
I’m amazed that every four years I have to explain to people how the Electoral College system works. It’s not that hard to figure out in my opinion. I understood it in 1972 when I had my checklist of states and was ready to put them into Nixon and McGovern columns.
And I was 6!
OK, so I was a geek, but still.
But in 2000 people thought I was a god for all the stuff I knew!
That’s sort of a trick question. The defendant wouldn’t be in court if there wasn’t some evidence that he may have committed a crime. That doesn’t mean that he is guilty.
While I tend to agree that if you don’t vote, you shouldn’t complain, I must admit to feeling it’s an exercise in futility when a.) my husband and I voting for Kerry merely canceled out my parents’ votes for Bush, and b.) it doesn’t matter anyway because I live on a veritable island of northerners amidst a sea of evangelical Christian southerner farmers.
I understand what you’re saying, but I think there’s something bigger at work here. People don’t vote because they (1) feel they don’t have a voice anyway, or (2) they figure it doesn’t matter and things will turn out more or less the same because politicians are equally corrupt.
I voted for Kerry in Texas, and I knew going into it that basically my vote wouldn’t count. Yes, that made me feel like it was a waste of time, but I went anyway.
Anyway, why are people so determined to “get out the vote” of people who can’t be bothered to vote? If they’re that lazy or apathetic, maybe they shouldn’t vote.
Not that I disagree with you in principle, the framing of your statement in absolute terms puts me off.
Because you have the right to do x, doesn’t mean you are obligated to do x. Not doing x is an equal exercise of rights. Furthermore, speaking for or against x is another right. Does the failure of one to exercise a given right cause abrogation of another?
At least this will be the end of divisiveness in this country. :rolleyes: How dare you? The Presidency of this country is something that should be taken seriously – this is not a ball game, dear. The lives of hundreds of millions of people are dependent on the outcome of the race, and this is your response? Not a reasoned argument as to why he was the clear choice, but rather a childish, HA HA at the other side?
How did we get to such an adversarial, us v them place? When did this happen? I’m reminded of another Republican’s statement to the effect that “a House divided cannot stand.” I don’t like where this country is headed, and I don’t know what to do about it.
The only presidential vote I have ever cast that “counted” was my first, when I lived in Colorado. In all the time since then I have lived in Illinois, where my Republican vote has had no effect at all on the outcome of the election in my state. I know that going in. I still go every time, and I will continue to do so, because even if that one doesn’t really make a difference, there are still local issues and candidates.
And even more important, the mere fact that I exercise my right to vote makes a difference. Every vote cast helps to preserve the right to vote for everybody. We cannot afford, nor can we risk, losing any of that to sheer apathy.
— Well, it probably had something to do with the second post:
Hey, sorry–some of us like to own guns, like the idea of killing terrorists on their own doorsteps and don’t like the idea of the US taking orders from the UN.
I think a more interesting question would be why the two parties succeeded where they did. Looking at the different state maps on the CNN website, it is obvious that big city areas were mostly Democratic, while all the outlying areas were Republican. The popular assumption I had always heard for this was that inner-city voters (largely minorities) support Democrats because Democrats support social welfare programs much more heavily than Republicans do. What other theories are there? Or does that pretty much cover it?
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Here in Australia once I am registered I only have to notify the Electoral Commission if I move to a different electorate. This requires me posting in a free mail with my new address.
Even then I don’t have to be in my electorate to vote. I can go to any polling place and lodge an absentee ballot.
I don’t think I have ever travelled more than a couple of miles to vote.
Me personally? No, but I did have an interesting conversation with my younger brother, who was a first time voter. Apparently he and some friends were taking about voting on Monday, and some of them had the great idea that they didn’t need to vote “because the electoral college will vote for me.” Okay, sure it will, but they had no idea how the electoral college decided how to vote! This isn’t MA or TX, the race was extrodinarily close, so the potentiality of a few more votes for one person or the other really could have turned the tide… this is, after all, the only state that was intitially called incorrectly. ::puts head on desk::
If they’re students, they’re probably registered where they’re officially residents. In other words, they may be permanent residents of City X, but go to school in City Z, four hours away. They’d then have to travel home to vote. Some students change their voter registration to where they go to school, but others (like me when I was in school), keep it in their hometown. It’s sometimes easier to keep your hometown as your permanent residence instead of changing your address twice a year (or more) because you’re moving from one college dump to another.
Typically, a polling place would be fairly close to where you live. In the very small town I lived in in South Carolina, before I moved here, we had three polling places. I’ve never lived more than walking distance from my polling place.
Oh, and, you have to vote where you’re registered. You’re assigned a polling place and they have a list there of everyone who’s allowed to vote at that polling place.
We are students and all of us are registared at home. I planned to go from the begininng, but my roommates were going to vote by absentee ballots, but the student government somehow told people they’d have them and then didn’t, hence the long train ride home.
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