Tag: voting

VOTE Tuesday, America…even if it’s for Blutarsky

If you want to make a statement, vote. Vote for every office, even in those races where there is a candidate running unopposed.

I am always feeling a bit conflicted around Election Day. From a partisan point of view, I want people to vote for MY candidates, which means I’d prefer that supporters of opposing candidates would stay home.

On the other hand, I truly believe that the right to vote is far too precious not to exercise. After the Bill of Rights, there are only 17 amendments to the Constitution, and two of them, regarding Prohibition, cancel each other out. This means at least 1/3 of these amendments specifically address voting.

I know a lot of folks who have said to me that they don’t vote because it doesn’t matter, or because it encourages “them”, i.e., the politicians. Or worse, they don’t vote, because “they” will see it as a protest vote. Please allow me to set you straight; “they” don’t care. “They” see your uncast ballot as a sign of laziness or indifference.

If you want to make a statement, vote. Vote for every office, even especially in those races where there is a candidate running unopposed. Ever since we’ve gotten our new ballot machines in this part of upstate New York, I have realized that it is MUCH easier to cast a write-in vote.

Consider if you will, John “Bluto” Blutarsky. He had the lowest grade point average at his Faber College fraternity, Delta House, with a 0.0. Yet he went on to become a U.S. Senator. He is no more lamebrained than that Republican state representative from Arkansas who asserted that slavery was a “blessing in disguise”.

So vote. Vote in all races. Vote for my candidates if you would. Vote for third party candidates, if you must. And if you have some folks running unopposed, write in someone. Even Bluto Blutarsky, who you can see in this classic (NSFW) video.
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OH, the FUN Elections can Occupy in Classrooms: Overview of Awesome Ideas and Websites

Religious Freedom and the Presidential Election

An odd Quora question: 2012 U.S. Presidential Election: Do you think President Obama truly wants a second term, or is he just running because he feels like it’s his duty to keep the presidency in Democratic hands?

 

40 Years Ago: My 1st Presidential Vote, for George McGovern

I got to see George McGovern at a rally at my college, SUNY New Paltz in the autumn of 1972.

There were a LOT of people running for the Democratic nomination for President against Richard Nixon in 1972. The general consensus early on, though, was that Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine would be the selection. He had been the Vice-Presidential nominee in 1968 and had been a credible candidate in a close race. But he was sunk early on by the crying incident, which, to this day, I find utterly bewildering, and dropped out of the race early on.

This seemed to give segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama some momentum, much to the chagrin of all right-minded people. An assassination attempt in May paralyzed him and effectively ended his campaign.

Many of the leading candidates – Muskie, and other 1968 candidates Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy – would have been OK to me. I was suspicious of the hawkish Scoop Jackson, though, especially after he later led an “Anybody but McGovern” coalition “that raised what would be known as the ‘Acid, Amnesty and Abortion’ questions” about the South Dakotan. My preferred candidate, though, was Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm of New York, the first black woman to win a primary (New Jersey), though, by the time of the June primary in New York, the race was all but over.

Still, I liked McGovern. He was one of the early opponents to the war in Vietnam and having flown nearly three dozen missions over Nazi-occupied Europe, he had a lot more credibility than today’s chicken hawks, who haven’t seen a war they don’t want to fight, or rather, would send our young men and women to fight.

Unfortunately, his Vice-Presidential pick of Thomas Eagleton proved to be a disaster, when it was revealed the junior senator from Missouri had received psychiatric care, which was bad enough in those days but also had twice been given electroshock treatments, which brought up unfair comparisons to Frankenstein’s monster. This incident reflected poorly on McGovern’s decision-making, and eventually, he forced Eagleton off the ticket, to be replaced by Kennedy in-law and former Peace Corps head Sargent Shriver.

As you can see from these not-too-great pictures, taken by me with a point-and-shoot camera, I got to see McGovern at a rally at my college, State University College at New Paltz in the autumn. That was one of the first of many times I saw Pete Seeger perform, too.

Of course, McGovern lost that election badly, carrying only one state, plus the District of Columbia. Many folks, in 1973 and 1974, during the Watergate scandal that McGovern had complained about during the campaign, had bumper stickers that read, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts,” referring to the one-state the senator carried, whether they were or not.

George McGovern died this week at the age of 90. It seems, though, that he saw vindication of his positions in his lifetime, and never sold his soul.

For instance, from his acceptance speech for the party’s nomination:
“The tax system today does not reward hard work: it penalizes it. Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself while paying no taxes at all. But wages on the assembly line or in farming the land, these hard-earned dollars are taxed to the very last penny. There is a depletion allowance for oil wells, but no depletion for the farmer who feeds us, or the worker who serves us all.”

Sounds – unfortunately – VERY Current.
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A much wiser Arthur@AmeriNZ re: his feeling about McGovern, then and now.

Should be Primary Election Day

All these elections are expensive, and it’d be nice if there was some way to consolidate at least the June and September ballots.

I understand it, I really do. Still, I wish the primary election were being held today, rather than Thursday.

In New York State, the primary is the second Tuesday in September for non-federal elections. September 11, 2001, was a Tuesday, and the voting, of course, was suspended for a week. In fact, it had not even started in upstate New York, where polling begins at noon on primary days.

The rationale for moving the voting to Thursday this year is so that folks can participate in 9/11 memorials. For me, though, nothing would be more symbolic than to be able to cast a ballot on the anniversary of that day.

Thursday, BTW, will be the fourth of five voting opportunities in the state. On April 24, there was the Presidential primary, moved up from June so that it would matter to the final outcome; it still didn’t, as all of Mitt Romney’s opponents had dropped out by then. On May 15, there was the school budget vote, held statewide for most districts. In June, there were the primaries for the federal, non-Presidential primary; that would be for the House of Representatives and the US Senate, per some federal voting law which requires a certain number of days to allow for military absentee ballots. Then September 13, and, of course, November 6.

When I was growing up, even in Presidential years, there were only two voting opportunities, in June and November. All these elections are expensive, and it’d be nice if there was some way to consolidate at least the June and September ballots.

As a secondary consideration, I hate voting on Thursdays – and I really DO need to vote, since there are competitive races – since it means I can’t vote before I go to work (the polls aren’t open yet), so I must vote when I get home, when everyone else is at the polls, then eat, take out the trash, and go back out to choir rehearsal. There is some provision in my work regulations that say that I can get up to a couple of hours off from work to vote. I’ve never actually used that in 20 years, but I’d be seriously tempted on Thursday.

Allowing Ex-Felons to Vote QUESTION

What is the possible benefit of disenfranchising a whole class of people? Even Santorum notes its racial aspect.

 

There were some discussions among Republicans recently about whether ex-felons should be able to vote. Rick Santorum favored allowing felons to vote after they’ve served their prison sentences. Mitt Romney said he didn’t think people who have committed violent crimes should be allowed to vote again. You won’t hear me say this much, but I agree with Santorum.

I used to believe ex-felons should have the right to vote restored because they had served their time. NOW, I believe ex-felons should have the right to vote restored because not doing so essentially criminalizes them for life, making any chance of reintegration into society even more difficult, possibly aggravating the recidivism problem.

Also, if a law is unfair or unjust – that HAS been known to happen – those who might have been convicted under it would have no real say in overturning it. This article addresses that aspect, and shows that NOT allowing them to vote isn’t even a common position among the states; adding restrictions would be a retrograde move.

And not all crimes are equal. A 19-year-old guy having sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend could get him on a sex offender list as a felon in some states. Chaos at an Occupy demonstration could give someone a permanent police record.

What do you think? What is the possible benefit of disenfranchising a whole class of people? Even Santorum notes its racial aspect.

Petition for better US elections

The voting system used by the US, called “plurality voting”, is notoriously flawed. Voters who favor a third-party candidate are forced into a dilemma: they can either vote sincerely and “waste” their vote on a third party, or vote defensively and pick the lesser of two evils.

“A well-funded group called Americans Elect is planning to hold a national primary election on the Internet with the aim of nominating a centrist third-party candidate for president in 2012.” According to the Los Angeles Times, they are considering New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, or even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Assuming this gets off the ground – Bloomberg and Clinton are on the record as not wanting the job – the way the US elections are stacked, they could not win. Theoretically, though, a third party could play a role as a spoiler. George Wallace in 1968, John B. Anderson in 1980, H. Ross Perot in 1992, and Ralph Nader in 2000 may have made a difference in their respective races.

There is a petition to the White House – did you know you could create an electronic petition to the White House? – to create a fairer voting method:

The voting system used by the US, called “plurality voting”, is notoriously flawed. Voters who favor a third-party candidate are forced into a dilemma: they can either vote sincerely and “waste” their vote on a third party, or vote defensively and pick the lesser of two evils.

Plurality voting suppresses new ideas and encourages campaigns built around negative attacks. The effect of this system is to virtually exclude all but two political parties (The last third-party president was elected in the 1850s).

The solution is well known and deceptively simple: rewrite our ballots to use a fair system such as “instant runoff voting”. This voting system is used in several US cities and worldwide with great success [see, for example, fairvote.org/what-is-irv].

There can never be a sustainable third-party movement in the United States as long as there is plurality voting. I support instant runoff voting as a viable option to the status quo. It can’t be implemented nationally in time for 2012, although it is already used in several locales in the United States and around the world.

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