Why vote?

[Caduceus]

what do I do?

I make an effort to effect everyone’s lives positively. From keeping people from killing themselves to things like saying hello to everyone I walk by on the street.

The concept of one person changing the world is true, yet also false at the same time; depending on how you interpret it.

One person directly changing the world isn’t possible, there are too many variables in there being so many individuals.

But one person in-directly changing the world I.E. inspiring and influencing small groups of people, who then inspire other people etc… is entirely possible.

And I wish I could comment on this voter fraud/not fraud debate but I don’t seem to follow politics as intimately as you all :P

But the way I see this argument, is you shouldn’t take everything you hear as truth whether it’s the news or a good friend is informing you of something they heard.

And you shouldn’t ask for specific cases because otherwise you’re going to reject the entire concept as “not-going-to-happen”.

Fraud is here during our elections. Hand ballots would be easy to manipulate and a few people with knowledge of computers and the language the voter machines are written in could easily manipulate the electronic ballads. I know people who could send me my social security card if they wanted to, I’m sure the ballads wouldn’t be much more of a challenge.

I think you should be debating less about “Fraud, true or false”

And more about

“What can we do as American citizens to assure that our votes are counted, and others as well.”

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[charlabob]

No, cad — you *affect* peoples lives. You have effects on them :-) By the way, I’m really glad you’re back — I thought the discussion about schools was interesting and provocative. So is this one. You are effective in affecting lives and thought.

The reason I challenge claims of fraud is that they’re not as rampant as you would believe, if you just accept allegations. I also claims of racism, sexism, and bad driving. In other words, I’m also a sworn enemy of conventional wisdom.

I agree completely that we should debate how to ensure our votes are counted. To do that, we have to understand the issues and frequency of their not being counted. In other words, when and how are they likely to NOT be counted.

I’m appalled that in Washington they don’t *have* to count write-ins. There’s some arcane forumla/law that controls when they are. I’m running for an office in my precinct as a write-in and could actually wind up winning, but I don’t really know if those votes will be counted, so, in that case, I do have a vested interest.

I also believe that we have to debate how to ensure that the registrations of potential eligible voters are processed.

Republicans do better, especially in Democratic strongholds such as King County, when there’s a low turnout — new registrations tend to be Democratic. Spurious challenges can help to lower overall turnout but, more importantly, they help discourage potential and new voters who think, “My vote won’t be counted anyway.” SO I will always demand the statistics on proved cases, rather than allegations.

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[Caduceus]

Touche my dear.

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[Ken]

I shall leave this thread alone a bit longer to see if anything useful surfaces.

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[Anonymous]

Ken – Just my opinion, but it seems to me that you, better than anyone else, would have the best answers for cad.

Implying that nothing useful has come of the current discussion is insulting to those who have participated.

Instead of insulting fellow members of the forum, get involved in the discussion. We all know that you’re the most educated in this area, so I think a lot of people would hope that you share your thoughts.

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[Trick]

“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”

TDR

I’d much rather vote, than leave it to the politicians to choose for me.

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[JoB]

Trick… bravo!

a most cogent argument for exercising your right to vote…

Charlabob.. i stand corrected. all i meant to say is that as someone who cares enough to work in the elections, you have a vested interest in making sure all elections are fairly run. me too:)

Caduceus… you become more intriguing with each post. Clearly there is a fine intellect behind your queries… and you express both the desire and willingness to do what you can individually to make a difference..

would it be rude of me to ask your age?

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[charlabob]

Thanks, JoB — I just worry that people (not you, knowingly) will find excuses not to deal with the real issues. I’m actually disappointed that it appears we won’t get citings of specific instances of fraud, rather than allegations.

Jeez, I guess I have to do my own research here… I always have a hard time getting the bob to do right-wing my right wing research. :-)

Let me say again, I definitely favor voting — I just don’t favor mandatory voting. The fact that we have a pitifully low percentage of voters is a tribute to the fact that we don’t care. We’ve been brainwashed by the right to think government is always up to no good — why would we want to encourage the $%^&*s?

I *strongly* encourage mail-in voting and Saturday voting, when it’s done at polling places.

Tuesdays became the day for elections to accommodate farmers who had to travel a long ways to the polls (and to avoid conflicts with market day.) Um, this isn’t so much of an issue anymore —

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[Magpie]

I figure, if nothing else, voting gives me complaining rights. I’ve only voted for one winning president in my entire life, but I get great pleasure in exercising my right because I truly believe in the process. Every year, I knowingly waste my vote on voting against every incumbent on the city council (exept maybe one), because I get tired of them never getting anything done, (that is, anything that is truly important to me)..and I can’t wait to vote against the mayor. I know there has been a lot of allegations of voter fraud over the years (my own grandfather was known to have voted more times than I ever will in my lifetime and he wasn’t even a citizen..)but I still believe it is the right thing to do. I remember about 1974, you couldn’t find a person who admitted voting for Richard Nixon….

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[JoB]

magpie.. i definately didn’t vote for tricky dick! i have complaining rights on that one.. and well.. on most of those them;>

charlabob.. i don’t think people don’t care. i think voting has been made more of a hassle than it needs to be for those who have jobs.. and use public transportation.. and people just don’t understand how much it matters.

caduceus.. i want you to know that i didn’t rudely ask your age to dismiss you..i asked it for context…

we are the sum of both our intelligence and our experience… and tricky Dick doesn’t mean quite the same thing to someone who reads about him as to someone who lived that history…

just as the holocaust means more to those of us who had neighbors with both the tattoo scars on their wrists.. and the emotional scars that set them apart… than to someone who never had the opportunity to experience the human devastation it caused…

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[Caduceus]

JoB I understand, I am just very busy and am un-able to respond in a timely manner. :/

Normally I would rather not divulge my age, as I usually find my self being patronized. Since I’m seventeen, people like to think my opinions are of no value and most likely not thought through and I’d be better off in front of the television. But I enjoy you all, minus one or two bad apples from the WASL thread and I recognize that this forum is full of outstanding people.

But I turn eighteen in about a week and a half, woot!

Charla

I found a site called votefraud dot org. I’m sure you found it as well though. I’m not positive on it’s validity as it appears to be one of the more biased websites I’ve come across, but it may prove to be interesting.

Everything else that popped up in google contained the words “scandal”, “alleged” and “refused to prosecute”. *shrug*

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[charlabob]

Thanks, Caduceus — I’m going to have to find someone who remembers the case..I tried the same googles and more and didn’t get anywhere.

I remembered your age (from the WASL thread) and all I can say is I’m impressed. Thinking is such a rare skill these days. :-)

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[charlabob]

Here’s a link to the story about “Project Integrity” — the Republican attack on Democratic voters in 2005. The law on challenges is that the challenger must have personal knowledge of the cases. This woman had personal knowledge that she wanted many fewer Democratic voters. The last minute nature of her campaign made it very difficult for the challenged to prove their legitimacy. These folks really wanted to vote — so most of them did.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002626368_challenges16m.html

More to come. (search string — seattle republican vote challenges)

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[Ken]

ok

I am deep in some books so I did not want to take the time to wrestle with this topic. (or these topics by now).

First off, I don’t have an answer for those who are either apathetic or have the horribly wrong idea that not voting is somehow a rejection of the system. I have run into this view several times before and have found the only thing that can fix it is someone trusted by the non voter or the effects of time and the loss of innocence and naivete.

It does not effect only the young though. Their are a late middle aged couple in my precinct who make a point of proudly telling me that they don’t vote and now I just smile and wave as I go by. Their granddaughter, who will be able to vote in about 3 years however, caught up with me down the street and asked some very intelligent questions that show that she is beginning to follow local and national politics and had learned enough to realize her mom and grandparents did not have any answers and indeed knew little about the way government works or doesn’t work.

I gave her a few sites to look into and pointed out a neighbor she knew well who could answer any questions she had.

I still have no idea what to do with people who don’t understand that we live in a Representative democracy. It only represents those who vote and even those who vote are not as well represented as those who interact within their chosen party.

Those who insist their vote does not count or that both parties are the same, just baffle me.

Those who also parrot the mantra “I vote for the man not the party” also are just tattooing on their foreheads for all to see, that they will buy anything if they see enough commercials for it. Our Sec of State is even now trying to sell this as some “western rugged individualist” value when it requires a massive cognitive dissonance to maintain.

99% of us are never going to have a chance to vote for someone we know personally. And none of us are going to be able to vote for someone we know well enough to invite over for a beer and ask them to explain how the legislature works and what reasons they have for supporting or not supporting a particular bill.

That’s where the party structure is useful.

At monthly meetings you can actually talk to your state Representatives and your state senator if you want to. Your county and sometimes city council members are often there as well. Their email addresses are on their web sites and I know they will often answer. They will answer even if they do not agree with your position. (I know from experience :)

If you cannot go to either the Democratic or Republican platform sites and in a few minutes decide which party you are closer to, then perhaps voting is not for you.

Greens, socialist and non authoritarian libertarians can work within the Democratic party. It is not an exact fit but at least we agree on the framework that includes the Constitution and the rule of law. We also seem to agree that people are basically good and governments job is to protect them from those who are not good and to work for projects which will contribute to the common good. The rights of the minority are protected by the Constitution and the balance of powers between the three branches of government.

Social Conservatives, culture warriors and bible thumpers will be more comfortable in the Republican party (and there is more room now that the Log Cabin, moderate and fiscal Conservatives have been pushed out)

and if you feel that people are basically bad and must be forced, threatened and regimented to keep on the straight and narrow path then the Republican party is for you. The rights of the majority should over rule the minority. The Constitution is trumped by the Bible. Nationalism is called Patriotism, and the Executive branch should have king like powers so that authority can be concentrated.

Libertarians (free market for business) seem to want to make sure there are no barriers between the sheep and the shearer. (Libertarians come in a lot of different factions and if they can agree on on thing this seems to be it.)

Not voting due to apathy is one thing. Not voting as a political statement is ineffective, pointless and would be humorous if we were not living through the results of it even now.

---

RE voter fraud.

It is a red herring and statistically non existent. It is even laughable compared to the effectiveness of the traditional Republican voter disenfranchisement tactics of oppressive id requirements, caging and purges of similar names to felons.

I observed one case in 2005 where the King county board of elections referred one case to the prosecutor. The husband of an elderly couple had died between the time the mail in ballot had arrived and the election. The woman filled out both ballots and signed them both. She did not think she had done anything wrong since she put down who he was going to vote for anyway. I don’t know how it was disposed of but both ballots were disqualified for the purposes of that election. I don’t think the elections board ever looked at which party the majority of the votes were for.

The Republicans want to depress voter turnout, the Democrats want to increase it.

---

When I finish my current stack of books, I might come back and take on some of the specific reasons/excuses I have seen in this thread. But for now, I am going back to my literary addiction :)

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[JoB]

Ken, thanks for popping your head up…

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[charlabob]

Thanks, Ken — I was looking for the statistics and asking for proof of fraud. I’m very disappointed that the Democratic Party didn’t file suit against the woman who filed illegal fraud complaints in 2005. Or against the Repug woman who registered her dog and then used that as proof that you could commit fraud. Yup, the system assumes people won’t register their dogs and otherwise lie under oath. When they do, we have to make sure they regret it :-)

Meanwhile, depress turnout — make sure that legitimate registrations get thrown out wholesale — certainly shows the Republican commitment to our constitutionally-mandated representativeg democracy.

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[Caduceus]

There are still too many whats, ifs, ands, ors and buts in our current system of government.

There is little stability and little loyalty to what they all preach in front of the cameras.

Once we change as a society, the government will have to change as well.

We won’t always have people seriously considering voting for fools like McCain. And we won’t always be so easily manipulated.

Local voting is a mildly different situation but I see no use in voting in a presidential election.

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[Ken]

Well now let’s look at presidential elections as a single unit.

Too bad it is not a single unit.

The selection of a president has wide ranging impact in areas which are not apparent to the casual observer.

The most obvious of which is the nomination of judges to the supreme court. Bush I and Bush the dumber (with the help of Clinton of DLC) have created a court of neoconservative ideologues with a bench so deep our grandchildren will be dealing with them long after we are gone.

The far reaching implications of the politicization of the Justice department and other parts of the executive branch as well as the cancer of cronyism reaching down into the civil service ranks of those entities, will be nearly impossible to root out by those who are not willing to break the law the same way those who infested it were.

Congress has to take their share of blame for this starting with the giveaway of their power in the area of checks and balances. But the usurpation of Congressional authority by the executive branch is a tactic that began long before many of you were born and at the beginning of the shift of journalism from it’s watchdog of democracy role to its current lapdog of power role. It is not really surprising that some who have only lived through the lapdog period do not see the same picture some of us old farts do.

Until the balance of power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches are somewhat restored or at least the worst of the unconstitutional branches are trimmed, each persons vote in the presidential election is vitally important.

I suspect the next topic to be addressed is “How does our vote count if it is filtered through the electoral college?”

That is a longer response and I will need more coffee.

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[Ken]

A video to illustrate a few of the reasons why the presidential election is important this year.

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[JoB]

Ken,

that video was not how i wanted to start my day.. but certainly it spoke to one of the greater reasons why we need every vote.

My heart still carries a huge hole from Vietnam.. and every war thereafter.

You are right that it is almost impossible for those who have lived only through the “lapdog” period to understand what our government once was… imperfect for sure.. but so much more.

Caduceus…

The dream we chase is not an impossible dream.. it is a first step back to government that at least acknowledged there were people… and that they might matter.

We already achieved more than a first step once in my lifetime before rampant greed more than derailed it.

I hate to say this.. my tricky Dick would have been dancing with glee at what this president has pulled off…

it’s time to reclaim our government.. one step at a time..

so that it can keep pace with what i too hope will be another transformation of America…

No matter how well it has been sold, greed never works for the masses as has been proven in the last couple of decades.

The wealth gap in our nation is solid proof that greed bankrupts the masses and enriches only the few… and without wealth and connections to prime that pump.. short of winning a huge lottery.. ordinary Americans will never be part of the select few.

A sobering thought.

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[Caduceus]

I see today’s politicians a lot like today’s celebrities. Their worlds don’t really exist outside the minds of fools.

No one buys that Tom Cruise is a good actor the way no one buys Rossi is going to magically better the traffic in Seattle if he’s elected for governor, the same way no one buys the corny jokes news casters vainly chortle about.

I do not see McCain as a threat to Obama. There is no doubt in my mind that Obama will win. But I’m conscious enough to realize that he is not the messiah of change, and he’ll only be a minor step up from the GWB administration (not taking general party stances into account).

Obama is going to win over McCain with or without my vote, and I was never planning on voting for either of them to begin with.

The only people voting for McCain are simply voting because he’s a Republican and they’re Republicans.

Which solidifies my point that the segregated party system is a joke.

I highly doubt people are voting for McCain because they believe he will be a good president, they just think their party in general will be able to support our country better then the democrats, in which they are mistaken.

McCain is willing to act, in all the wrong ways.

While Obama appears to just enjoy exercising his mouth.

If I had to vote to eat either mayonnaise or cheese for the next 4 years I would chose neither. Regardless of my vote people are obviously going to chose cheese. And I find both to be disgusting, and mayo quite a bit more so.

But I’d rather eat whatever I like and only have to encounter cheese every now and again.

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[JoB]

caduceus..

Gore was going to win.. with or without the votes of many who didn’t vote.

kerry was going to win. with or without the votes of many who didn’t vote..

Obama is going to win only with every vote he can get… and still i don’t think it will be a sure thing.

Yes, i agree that much of what comes from Obama these days is little more than processed cheese.. but if he wins, he is likely to have a historic precedent. He will be democratic president with a democratic congress to help fulfill his mandate. that hasn’t happened for a very long time.

There is opportunity for real progress….

Only time will tell if that opportunity is used or if it is wasted…

but we will never know without the opportunity.

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[JanS]

and then there’s this..just the opposite..disenfranchized vets…

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/opinion/11bysiewicz.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

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[RS]

I think that at 17 I was even more jaded and disenchanted with the system than our friend Cad here. And I grew up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by people way too poor to vote the way they did… But then I went away to a college whose tag line was “think one person can change the world? So do we.” And I totally bought into the idea. Maybe it was all the beer and cornfields… Anyway, I still think the system sucks pretty hard, but I also studied political science and international relations and i refuse to believe that the way people vote doesn’t have freakin HUGE implications in the ways that Ken and others mentioned above. Supreme court and justice dept appointments, FEMA, the reinstatement of the global gag rule (just to throw in a really random but personally important one), wire tapping, health care and education funding decisions… oh, I don’t know, the decision to go to WAR… major decisions, majorly decided by the decider himself. Bush wasn’t a “messiah of change” at the time either and look where we are now.

*Sigh* I still hope you change your mind and decide to vote Cad. Even if only to “buy” your right to complain further down the road.

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[JoB]

JanS..

it sounds like they fear those wounded vets won’t be voting republican…

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[Author]

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