A nice little Repost.
I am reposting this from the LJ of my good friend Chaos Akili. Normally I stay out of politics, but his experience is part of the reason I do so. Since he's from a different circle o' friends than my usual locals, I'm posting this for said locals' benefit, for the heckuvit.
Voting
Earlier last month, I had registered as an early voter here in Tucson, and today I filled out my ballot for the primary and mailed it in.
The entire process reminded me of how just how messed up our voting practice has become. I'm reminded of a quote I read several weeks back in a newspaper, which I'll have to paraphrase since I don't recall the exact quote: 'The general reason given for low voter turnout is often blamed on voter apathy. More often, it's in fact voter disgust'.
Yup, disgust sums it up for me. Let me start by detailing my experience.
To preface, some time ago I grew weary of the same two parties (Democrat and Republican) because they seemed to just be mirror images... or perhaps one of those puzzles where two panels are almost identical, but you have to spot the seven minor differences. So I'd registered Independent.
When I filed for an early ballot, there was no Independent option - I had to choose one of four parties: Republican, Democrat, Green Party, or Libertarian. I filed Green first, since I'm an Independent anyway and I like some of the things they stand for. A few days later, I get letter from the County Recorder's office saying that they can't send me a ballot since there are no Green Party candidates in the primary election. Well... okay, that's fair, but why have that option on the web page if it's useless!? Just remove it for that election cycle!
So I sighed, and filed again for the Democrat ballot, not wanting to go through the same thing with the Libertarians. While this move spawned a pair of worrying e-mails saying that I'd already registered and I wouldn't be getting anything, I nevertheless did get a Democratic primary ballot a few days after that. Immediately, I discovered that the only candidates on the ballot were Democratic ones, although I could write in anyone else.
While I was also sent a Clean Citizen's Elections Commission handbook, it neglected to include any of the candidates for the Senate or Representative seats. While the Democratic and Republican Senate candidates had of course appeared on TV several times, I only found a mention of a third-party Senate candidate (a Libertarian, incidentally) through the Wikipedia, after several fruitless Google searches. I believe this is a problem. I did manage to find information about that candidate, and decided to vote for him by write-in after a fair amount of research.
I repeated the process for the Representative in Congress, and this time I hit a bigger roadblock - I managed to find the 3rd-party candidate, but I could not find any information about him whatsoever. I found a couple unpleasant articles discussing someone of the same name, also through Google, but couldn't confirm that to be the same person. In the end, I had to pass over that candidate entirely due to this. I believe this is a bigger problem.
Fortunately, the majority of the remaining state offices were well-documented in the handbook, with a couple minor exceptions (superior court clerk, and constable-something), that I could not find anywhere.
It shouldn't be this hard. I can think of no good reason why I can't get a ballot sheet that lists all candidates, or for that handbook to be just that much more comprehensive, so I can at least find out more about the candidates on my own initiative.
All of this doesn't even cover the onus put upon anyone who votes for a third party; the idea that it is wasting your vote. First, I can't believe that any vote is wasted, as long as you are voting for what you want (or at least as close as you can get with the available candidates), and this belief is reinforced by the the actions of the media and of the two parties to reinforce that 'wasting-vote' belief, because it truly does threaten them. They wouldn't try so hard if it didn't! The second excuse I hear is that it's about voting for the lesser of two evils. I say, why settle for the lesser evil? Just vote Cthulhu and get it over with. :)
At least I'm done until the General Election, where I will doubtlessly be digusted again. However, the only other option is to give in, and be yet another citizen who throws away any chance to make a change out of the well-understood but misguided belief that I couldn't change anything. But that's not something I'm willing to do. Even if a statician came up and told me that my vote had a great possibility of being meaningless, I'd still do it - after all, you can't get out of dying, but that's no reason to stop living... and people do win the lotteries, despite grim odds. ;)
Okay, I'm done here. =)
Current Mood: Discontent
Current Music: Jim's Big Ego - Stress
Voting
Earlier last month, I had registered as an early voter here in Tucson, and today I filled out my ballot for the primary and mailed it in.
The entire process reminded me of how just how messed up our voting practice has become. I'm reminded of a quote I read several weeks back in a newspaper, which I'll have to paraphrase since I don't recall the exact quote: 'The general reason given for low voter turnout is often blamed on voter apathy. More often, it's in fact voter disgust'.
Yup, disgust sums it up for me. Let me start by detailing my experience.
To preface, some time ago I grew weary of the same two parties (Democrat and Republican) because they seemed to just be mirror images... or perhaps one of those puzzles where two panels are almost identical, but you have to spot the seven minor differences. So I'd registered Independent.
When I filed for an early ballot, there was no Independent option - I had to choose one of four parties: Republican, Democrat, Green Party, or Libertarian. I filed Green first, since I'm an Independent anyway and I like some of the things they stand for. A few days later, I get letter from the County Recorder's office saying that they can't send me a ballot since there are no Green Party candidates in the primary election. Well... okay, that's fair, but why have that option on the web page if it's useless!? Just remove it for that election cycle!
So I sighed, and filed again for the Democrat ballot, not wanting to go through the same thing with the Libertarians. While this move spawned a pair of worrying e-mails saying that I'd already registered and I wouldn't be getting anything, I nevertheless did get a Democratic primary ballot a few days after that. Immediately, I discovered that the only candidates on the ballot were Democratic ones, although I could write in anyone else.
While I was also sent a Clean Citizen's Elections Commission handbook, it neglected to include any of the candidates for the Senate or Representative seats. While the Democratic and Republican Senate candidates had of course appeared on TV several times, I only found a mention of a third-party Senate candidate (a Libertarian, incidentally) through the Wikipedia, after several fruitless Google searches. I believe this is a problem. I did manage to find information about that candidate, and decided to vote for him by write-in after a fair amount of research.
I repeated the process for the Representative in Congress, and this time I hit a bigger roadblock - I managed to find the 3rd-party candidate, but I could not find any information about him whatsoever. I found a couple unpleasant articles discussing someone of the same name, also through Google, but couldn't confirm that to be the same person. In the end, I had to pass over that candidate entirely due to this. I believe this is a bigger problem.
Fortunately, the majority of the remaining state offices were well-documented in the handbook, with a couple minor exceptions (superior court clerk, and constable-something), that I could not find anywhere.
It shouldn't be this hard. I can think of no good reason why I can't get a ballot sheet that lists all candidates, or for that handbook to be just that much more comprehensive, so I can at least find out more about the candidates on my own initiative.
All of this doesn't even cover the onus put upon anyone who votes for a third party; the idea that it is wasting your vote. First, I can't believe that any vote is wasted, as long as you are voting for what you want (or at least as close as you can get with the available candidates), and this belief is reinforced by the the actions of the media and of the two parties to reinforce that 'wasting-vote' belief, because it truly does threaten them. They wouldn't try so hard if it didn't! The second excuse I hear is that it's about voting for the lesser of two evils. I say, why settle for the lesser evil? Just vote Cthulhu and get it over with. :)
At least I'm done until the General Election, where I will doubtlessly be digusted again. However, the only other option is to give in, and be yet another citizen who throws away any chance to make a change out of the well-understood but misguided belief that I couldn't change anything. But that's not something I'm willing to do. Even if a statician came up and told me that my vote had a great possibility of being meaningless, I'd still do it - after all, you can't get out of dying, but that's no reason to stop living... and people do win the lotteries, despite grim odds. ;)
Okay, I'm done here. =)
Current Mood: Discontent
Current Music: Jim's Big Ego - Stress