I’m going to start another thread about why people should vote. But I’m not going to talk about civic duty, or statistics about your vote having an effect on the presidential election, or getting the sticker.
The reason you should go out to the polls on Tuesday is much closer to home.
Most of you probably received a sample ballot. You may have noticed that there are many pages to this ballot, with multiple options on each one.
These are the reasons you should be voting. The truth is, the most impact your vote can have is in city, county, and (to a lesser degree) state elections and propositions. Not only is there a smaller pool of voters, the issues that are being voted on are much, much more impact on your daily life, taxes, etc than the national elections do.
The politics of your home town are much more entwined with your daily lives than that of the President, or even Senators. Voting on the propositions, judges, water district managers, and representatives is the important part. Getting involved in knowing what is happening in your community - local taxes and business propositions, etc. For instance, in Los Angeles we have a Municipal Water District election coming up. The contenders are a MWD board member, and a businessman. Knowing who these people are and what their goals are with running the MWD may very likely really affect you.
It seems unimportant, and it is almost never covered by the media, but the local elections are what counts. Voting for your community is what you should be doing.
But while you’re there, you might as well mark off a presidential vote, as well.
Nope. Not here. The only significant thing on the absentee ballot I cast in MI was the gay marriage issue. I voted NO to add a ban to the MI constitution against gay marriages, even though I assume it will pass easily. Politically I am neutral on this issue; however I don’t think a constitutional amendment is warranted. I mainly voted because of the theoretical possibility the Bush v. Kerry vote might hinge on MI. All kinds of unlikely, but what Kerry would lose MI because I didn’t vote, and this was crucial in the Electoral College? This would be such a dishonor I could only reclaim my honor through suicide. Thus by voting, no matter what the result is, I don’t have to eat potassium cyanide.
For me, voting represents the ability to flip the bird to the political status quo. That hole I will punch on the ballot by Badnarik’s name will make no difference whatsoever, but it’s worth it for the sheer stress relief of saying “fuck you” to those bastards up top who so dearly deserve it.
The local stuff does matter, but chances are that the spending/bond props will easily pass while the tax hike props get overwhelmingly shut out. CA will be in a deeper cesspit soon enough.
I always find it interesting that whenever an election approaches I start hearing people encouraging folks to vote, regardless of their political views. Don’t get me wrong, I value my right to vote tremendously and will never pass up the chance to exercise it. But am I the only one who would be just as happy if the people who are voting for the other guy decided to stay home? I care a lot more about having the candidates I support win than I do about having a high voter turnout. I’m also somewhat inclined to think that in some cases the people who aren’t voting just aren’t informed enough about the candidates to know the difference, in which case are we really better off with them casting a vote in ignorance? Even some of the people who are voting are just deciding based on things like charisma, rather than the real substantive differences between where the candidates stand on the issues. Again, would we be any worse off as a country if these people decided to stay home?
I’m not actively trying to discourage anyone from voting, I’m just saying I don’t really understand the motivation behind these non-partisan “get out the vote” efforts. Feel free to enlighten me. Does it just bother you in principal that someone should have such a valuable right and not use it? Do you also think people should exercise their right to free speech, even if they have nothing intelligent to say?
I hope that didn’t sound overly confrontational. To some degree, I’m just playing devil’s advocate – although it’s true that I don’t really care if people who are uninformed don’t vote. My guess is, you’d probably say that people should both find out about the issues and vote, but given that there are people who won’t bother to do the former, do you really want them to do the latter?
Look, it’s not so much that I want the other side to get votes it wouldn’t but that there is (at least was) a certain agreement among the American population that participating in the process was the right thing for everyone to do. That even if we disagreed we could work out a compromise and the first step in that was for all people to vote.
Now, of course, public discourse is largely a matter of shouting one’s opponents down. I swear, if the red and blue divide was purely geographic we’d be looking at secession again (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
I’m really surprised to hear you say this (not how you voted, good for you, but the idea of what’s significant).
A different mayor, a different township board, a different prosecutor, can make a lot of difference in a community. There have been pretty big changes in the place where I live and the town where I work, all because of who was in office.
I just thought about it for a minute (OK, 27 seconds) and I actually feel that getting every person in American to vote would be a good thing, whether they agree with me or not. Democracy is the important thing here - hoping that the other side stays home and doesn’t exercise their right to vote just seems anti-democratic to me.
I’m pretty much in agreement with tim314. It would suit me if the mis-guided souls that don’t see things my way stayed home.
Why I’m voting:
All the State and Local choices.
For the next four years: If my guy wins I can say: “I can’t believe I voted for that jerk to be president!” If my guy loses, I can say: “I voted against that jerk we’ve got as a president!”
I didn’t mean I consider all local offices insignificant. It is just in this specific election, where I live it doesn’t look like any of them are seriously close. The outcome almost surely would be the same even if I hadn’t voted. However, this year the polls for the presidential race have MI as too close to call. Thus in theory I my vote for Kerry could put him over the top.
