All I can say is fuck you if you think your vote doesn't matter. If the candidate you liked lost, you'll probably be staring at your ceiling wondering if your vote would have made the difference.
Many ballot options I have every year are unopposed and thus don't matter. This year is no exception.
I don't even bother researching the unopposed ones.
A lot of people don't realize you can skip voting options; if it's unopposed or you didn't get the chance to look up a certain race, you don't have to guess one. You can just skip it.
I research unopposed ones to decide if I'll lend legitimacy to the candidate or not. Unopposed with 80% of the voters backing you versus unopposed with 5% are very different things. (Or, at least, they should be, but people don't pay attention).
Interesting... assuming that names are sorted on the ballot by last name, the fact that my last name starts with an "A" would give me the same advantage. Hmm...
I don't think I said a single vote doesn't matter, or even implied it. Every vote matters because they're all aggregated.
In fact when I said an ignorant vote may hurt you, wasn't that pretty much the polar opposite of "a single vote doesn't matter"?
My mistake. I thought there was more vocal agreement with Cheese.
Huh? Muppet did, in fact, just agree with me.
Also, I don't think anyone here at all actually said that "a single vote doesn't matter", so I don't know where you got it from.
I agree that voting is important, but voting without actually understanding the issues can just as easily be harmful as helpful. The point is a duty to be informed about politics is a prerequisite of (and more important than) a duty to vote.
Man, most of my local candidates are crap. The incumbents are either milquetoast or horrible people (Vito Lopez in particular), and the challengers have barely any information about them at all. Here's how I'm thinking of voting:
POTUS/VP: Obama/Biden (Jill Stein and her running mate are nowhere near the quality of Nader. I might vote for Peta Lindsay, just because I'm kind of proud of them for even getting on the ballot.)
Senate: Gillibrand. None of the other candidates are appealing, though I think Chris Edes is a smart guy. Too bad he doesn't know anything about economics. (Libertarian, Austrian School, etc)
Supreme Court: Arshad Majid (I heard him speak once, and he's very intelligent). I could find very little data on either of the unopposed runners (and nothing on William Gerard).
County Court: Craig Walker. There is no information online about the other candidates.
State Congress: Nydia Velazquez. (She's actually really cool, and I'd vote for her even if she weren't running effectively unopposed)
State Senate: Martin Dilan. Strong on immigration (on the "pro-" or "treat them like actual people" side), but also seems anti-vaccination. I'm worried he's anti-science, but he doesn't seem too terrible. His challenger has absolutely no information available.
Assembly Member: Fuck both these guys. The incumbent Democrat is a slimy, sexual-harassing party boss and the challenger doesn't have any stances on any issues (and already dropped out of the race once). I think I might write in my own name, because neither of them are qualified.
Just a little view into the thought process of the American voter. Hope you enjoyed it!
EDIT: Aha! I thought Chris Edes looked familiar. He's from Rochester.
You know, it's kind of sad to see that the party which is most backward economically might actually be the most progressive socially. Libertarians are just socialists who dislike FDR.
I haven't seen any Libertarians that don't go full on gold-standard for the economy and don't have the attitude of abolishing any and all existing safety nets and/or the federal government.
I can't do a lot of cutting and pasting since I am on an iPad, but you should look up the hack that occurred in SC. It is a direct consequence of shrinking government by cutting funding... Exactly what Republicans want to happen. Jack, you mentioned cutting government spending by 50%. This is what happens because of that: projects that aren't critical (read, modernizing databases by using encryption) don't get funded. Then, shit happens and now I have to keep getting my credit checked.
Seriously, fuck anyone who issues the blanket statement of wanting to cut government spending. Well thought out detailed cuts that don't leave us all vulnerable, or shut the fuck up. I don't need to suffer because of someone else's ideological idiocy.
I haven't seen any Libertarians that don't go full on gold-standard for the economy and don't have the attitude of abolishing any and all existing safety nets and/or the federal government.
*Raises hand* I don't believe in the gold standard and I don't want to abolish ALL government saftey nets, and I consider myself a Libertarian.
Edit: And that was an example, considerably radical as others have pointed out Churb. We can cut some funding, I believe, from every program and not seriously damage them. For instance, we can trim the fat so to speak from the Defense budget by throwing out old defense contracts that are only still active because congressmen and women (and I'm not pointing fingers) keep them afloat because they're good for their districts, even if the particular system or weapon produced isn't used anymore for whatever reason.
I haven't seen any Libertarians that don't go full on gold-standard for the economy and don't have the attitude of abolishing any and all existing safety nets and/or the federal government.
I'm technically a libertarian, but It's because I registered that way years ago, and the party that I see around me doesn't match the ideology that I bought into when I was younger.
Yeah, sc can't afford to cut shit anymore. We are simply lucky in that we don't see more problems related to obsolete infrastructure. Also we take in a lot of Federal funds. Thanks, other states.
Yep, lifelong stigma for kids who had nothing to do with their parents' lifestyle (which nothing was wrong with anyway), all in the name of punishing the parents through an abuse of authority. Super classy.
Comments
-An ignorant vote is a dangerous thing
-A single vote doesn't matter
Which is it?
In fact when I said an ignorant vote may hurt you, wasn't that pretty much the polar opposite of "a single vote doesn't matter"?
A lot of people don't realize you can skip voting options; if it's unopposed or you didn't get the chance to look up a certain race, you don't have to guess one. You can just skip it.
Also, I don't think anyone here at all actually said that "a single vote doesn't matter", so I don't know where you got it from.
I agree that voting is important, but voting without actually understanding the issues can just as easily be harmful as helpful. The point is a duty to be informed about politics is a prerequisite of (and more important than) a duty to vote.
POTUS/VP: Obama/Biden (Jill Stein and her running mate are nowhere near the quality of Nader. I might vote for Peta Lindsay, just because I'm kind of proud of them for even getting on the ballot.)
Senate: Gillibrand. None of the other candidates are appealing, though I think Chris Edes is a smart guy. Too bad he doesn't know anything about economics. (Libertarian, Austrian School, etc)
Supreme Court: Arshad Majid (I heard him speak once, and he's very intelligent). I could find very little data on either of the unopposed runners (and nothing on William Gerard).
County Court: Craig Walker. There is no information online about the other candidates.
State Congress: Nydia Velazquez. (She's actually really cool, and I'd vote for her even if she weren't running effectively unopposed)
State Senate: Martin Dilan. Strong on immigration (on the "pro-" or "treat them like actual people" side), but also seems anti-vaccination. I'm worried he's anti-science, but he doesn't seem too terrible. His challenger has absolutely no information available.
Assembly Member: Fuck both these guys. The incumbent Democrat is a slimy, sexual-harassing party boss and the challenger doesn't have any stances on any issues (and already dropped out of the race once). I think I might write in my own name, because neither of them are qualified.
Just a little view into the thought process of the American voter. Hope you enjoyed it!
EDIT: Aha! I thought Chris Edes looked familiar. He's from Rochester.
Seriously, fuck anyone who issues the blanket statement of wanting to cut government spending. Well thought out detailed cuts that don't leave us all vulnerable, or shut the fuck up. I don't need to suffer because of someone else's ideological idiocy.
Edit: And that was an example, considerably radical as others have pointed out Churb. We can cut some funding, I believe, from every program and not seriously damage them. For instance, we can trim the fat so to speak from the Defense budget by throwing out old defense contracts that are only still active because congressmen and women (and I'm not pointing fingers) keep them afloat because they're good for their districts, even if the particular system or weapon produced isn't used anymore for whatever reason.
Now these children may have trouble using their birth certificates in the future because they were altered by hand.
yay photoslop!
http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/Son-of-State-Senator-Neal-Kedzie-Attacked-175307881.html