(I suspect I’m going to regret making this joke, but . . . what the hell.)
While I get the idea behind covering “Time Warp” as a way to encourage people to vote “a jump to the left,” I know a lot of people who don’t have a problem with voting a jump to the left. Their concern is the step to the right that immediately follows.
Last thing I’m planning to say about voting for a while, but, seriously, shouldn’t me having cast my votes and being done with it make me feel better, not worse?
With voting, as with much of life in general, sometimes you have to make peace with the fact that you don’t want to have to deal with this ****, then go deal with it.
I’ve heard voting called both a right and a duty, but I’ve never heard it called a pleasure.
There’s a reason for that.
“Registering to vote can make a HUGE difference,” a social media site told me the other day. “So register to vote in Colorado today!”
“They’re right,” I mused to myself. “It would make a huge difference, particularly because I don’t live anywhere near there!”
When it comes to doing research on candidates for local elections, one of my sources is to read the responses to the survey questionnaires major newspapers typically send out to all the candidates. If the candidate can’t even be bothered to respond to said survey, that’s a major red flag for me.
In this current election, however, I discovered another red flag that I’d never actually seen quite so blatantly before. In one candidate’s response to “What are your top three issues?”, their responses were (and I’m not paraphrasing this nearly as much as I wish I were):
Issue #1: My opponent is old and lazy.
Issue #2: My opponent is rude and no one likes her.
Issue #3: Can you believe how bad my opponent is?
There’s an old joke about an army being outnumbered four to one, and after an inspiring speech, the commander finds one of the soldiers smoking a cigarette and leaning against a tree during the battle.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the commander screamed.
“I took care of my four,” the soldier answered with a shrug.
Today I’m that soldier, so if anybody needs me, I’ll be out by the tree in the backyard.
Well . . . my ballot has been filled out and put in the mail, and, no, I’m not particularly happy about it.
But it’s done.
It happens from time to time, but it still throws me. I’ll be researching the ballot for an upcoming election, and suddenly I find there’s this one minor election where there is next to no information about any of the candidates.
This always pains me, particularly since we live in the so-called “Information Age.”
I like to feel like I’ve cast the most informed vote possible, and I hate when I’m forced to make a decision based on “Well . . . I know their names, and I know that this one wrote a book about puppies and ducklings. Decisions . . . decisions . . .”
I have to face the very real possibility that my viable choices for U.S. President are going to boil down to _____ or _____. In the end, I may to have pick one to vote against (definitely not for), and in that event, I might even end up voting for _____.
But at least I have the good grace to be horrified at this concept.
