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| Friday, November 5, 2010 02:32 PM |
| Election Day |
 by Fëanor |
I'm fond of saying I don't think people should vote if they aren't educated about the candidates and issues, but I'm ashamed to admit there have been a number of elections when I've just gone into the booth and pushed the buttons for the Democrats right down the line without even knowing their names. This year I wanted to make a more informed decision, so I went online the day before the election to do some research. I knew I wasn't going to vote for any Republicans because, c'mon, even the Democrats aren't liberal enough for me; I highly doubt any Republican is ever going to be. But I thought there was at least a chance one of the third party candidates might align more closely with my views, so I looked them up.
First of all, I was pretty furious to discover that of all the awful political ads I'd been forced to endure over the past few months, not one had been for a candidate it was even possible for me to vote for. None of the folks on my ballot had even bothered to air a commercial. Why did I have to watch all that crap then??
Secondly, I was really shocked at the extremely poor web presence the independent candidates had. Only one of them even had a website, and it was awful; ugly and poorly designed, with multiple broken links. This was the Green Party guy. I found myself agreeing with him on a lot of points, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for someone with such an awful website. Plus, he was obviously a bit of a kook. Of course, a number of the other independents were even kookier. There were Tea Party people, who I just assumed were nut-jobs, and one dude who'd been all set to run as a Republican until he realized he'd missed the deadline to do so and had to run independent.
But regardless of how kooky and out-there you are, c'mon, you have to at least make a website! Everybody has a website. Little kids have websites. Cats have websites. I have a website, for God's sake, and I'm not trying to get my name out there in the hopes of being elected to public office. Do a little work, people!
While researching online, I found a questionnaire that a New Jersey voters' organization had sent out to all the candidates in my district, and I thought it was really telling. Every one of the Green Party candidate's answers were accompanied by a note that said they'd been edited for space; he'd apparently written a novel in response to every question. Meanwhile the kook who'd wanted to run Republican hadn't even bothered to answer any of the questions. Maybe he missed the deadline.
Long story short (too late), I decided to just push all the Democrat buttons after all. I got myself and the baby suited up early that morning and we walked over to our polling place in the freezing cold so he could watch democracy at work. He seemed pretty puzzled by it all. I don't blame him. I'm not sure I have much confidence in it anymore myself. There's just so much corruption and stupidity it hardly seems worth it.
But uh... God bless America and all that. |
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