Mentality

[gailadora]

In a friends journal a she posted about voting but a had a reply on their viewpoint of voting or in this case not voting.

It is my personal belief that the "right" to vote was designed explicitly to give people a false sense of control over the government, placating them so they won't get a clue and do something that might create real change. Okay,

Comments

[ifritah]

No matter how tiny our voice, whatever that voice may be and one way to do that is by voting.

That's the thing, isn't it? It's ONE way to use our voice. That certainly doesn't mean there aren't other ways to use that voice of ours. It just happens that, personally, I find my voice is better used elsewhere. Where I don't feel that the language is locked and I can't understand it, but yet I have to make a choice, even though I feel that there's something I'm missing in the wording. Where and when I use my voice gives me the freedom to speak up without being boggled down by someone else's convoluted writing. Where I feel that I DO make a difference.

Does that make me an NPC? Hell no! Does that make me a child? Uh, I'm actually somewhat insulted by that.

I'm not saying that what you're going after is stupid, luv. I respect people who vote (which includes me some years.) I respect YOU. But it's not a black and white issue of 'you're ignorant with no power' if you don't vote and 'bold and empowered' if you do.

[gailadora]

I agree that there are better ways of expressing ones voice. Petitioning, emailing your congress person, posting on a web site about whatever issue, hitting the payment and talking to people about different issues. It's not a switch you can just turn on and off during the year. Yep I voted and now I'm done. But you can't just say well what's the use, my vote isn't going to matter anyway why should I even take the time. It's not a test where you can say, well I'm only going to fill in half the answers. If you don't show up and say, this is how I feel about this, and then you multiply that x half the population, because hell they don't care or don't think their voice will be heard, then they won't. And then you have a system where people who have a voice don't use it because they think they don't. Then they don't have a voice anymore. Not because they don't use it anymore, but because they don't use it at one of the most important times, voting

[ifritah]

I'm just gonna go to the part about finding sites that break it down for you. The rest... well, we've talked that to death, haven't we? ^_~

Thing is, that's what I did. And that's what got me so frustrated. I went to www.idahovotes.com because I was told it was a great place to get a better understanding of the issues. All it did was confuse me more. I tried googling to get a better understanding... nada.

So, when coldfury told me he would help research and we'd talk about it after I got off work, I was willing to listen. But he didn't research. (If he did at some point before voting, I honestly am not sure.) I finally gave up. Seriously, I shouldn't have to break my back trying to find out the issues, trying to learn about who I'm voting for. This may seem rude or messed up, but I don't have the time to spend hours and hours trying to translate 'pretty writing'.

And I wonder, just how many people who voted actually understood what they were voting for?

[gailadora]

So I had a crazy thought. What if next year you and I sit down look at what is up to be voted on: issues, canadiates, etc. Then we could break them down into a couple of understandable paragraphs, what they are about (issues) or who is running (cannidates), what do the pros say about the issues and what do the cons say about it. Or for cannidates what are they for and what are they against. But put it into a language that hopefully a lay person could understand. We could call it something cute like Voting for Dummies: Idaho or something like that and post it here in LJ or somewhere else.

What do you think?

[ifritah]

You know, it's funny. After I wrote that last comment, I started thinking along the lines of, "Man, if I actually could understand this damn jargon, I would love to put something together so that people who are as frustrated as me had somewhere to go to feel the issues are more clear."

So yes, I'd love to do something like that. ^_^