Hmm, could be a dud...

[altivo]

I did not vote in the Illinois primary. There was no point. Not one of the candidates from any of several parties earned or deserved my support. None of them.

As for anything else on the ballot, unless you take a Republican ballot around here, it is essentially blank. Either it consists of people running unopposed for their nomination, or there is no name at all. Come November, there will be a choice in only a handful of spots, and the rest will be unopposed. I don't vote for candidates who have no opposition. They've already won by default, why should I vote for them? By virtue of their party's clout and stranglehold on the county, and the backroom process that chose them, they are automatic winners. This county is run by the Republican committees, not by the voters. Those committees are open only to people who have a certain amount of money and, uh, influence.

The weather is disappointing so far. After 24 hours of increasing hype about the horrible storm we are going to get, with, according to the latest spot forecast from the National Weather Service, up to 17 inches of snow tonight and tomorrow morning, there is nothing happening. We got some nasty ice and snow right around rush hour time, but it petered out shortly thereafter. Now even the radar is starting to clear. All sorts of events for tonight and tomorrow have been canceled, and even many school districts announced today that they would be closed tomorrow. If it turns out to be a total dud, just imagine how hard it will be to get them to close the next time, when it will probably turn out to be real...

Comments

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

I just realized tonite that my voter registration had expired. *snorts* And I think the deadline has passed so I could re-register for the primary here. Ah well, such is life I guess. I will deal with the paperwork so I can at least vote this fall.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Here it doesn't expire as long as you vote at least once every two years or so. I'm not sure of the exact length of time, but voting in each national election is enough to keep the registration active. Most people don't have to re-register unless they move to a new address.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

I'm not totally sure what's up with mine. I got a new registration in May 07 and it had an expiration date of 12/30/07. I found that to be a bit odd.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Must just be the Texas way. ;p

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

Hah, you said the 'T' word that you despise so much. I am going to write that down on my calendar. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

At least I didn't spell it "Tex-ass" this time.

I don't think much of Tennessee either. Maybe it's just states that start with a T.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

*snickers* True.

Hay now, I am with on the bit about Texas not being a bed of roses but no fair ragging on my home state too. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Tennessee and Texas both have some very pretty geography. How's that? Never mind that they are full of people who by their vehement denial that they are in any way related to apes only manage to prove that they are closer relatives than the rest of us. Or something like that. Not all, of course, but a higher percentage than are found in many other places. ;p

[jumpyfox.livejournal.com]

I live in a very Democratic city in a very Republican state and my district is majority black. This basically means being a white male democrat, my vote doesn't count I guess. I guess I'll vote anyway if I get to it! I don't trust any of the candidates to keep their promises anyway. The Cleveland area has wanted to break away from the rest of Ohio in the past. We're like a metropolitan area of two million in a state with well over 11 and a half million people and we Clevelanders just don't count! Every year more and more babies are being born in this state and they are born very often to poor, Bible thumping, uneducated families. I live in a very educated and liberal community and the rest of Ohio doesn't care about us!

As far as that last storm was concerned. It was predicted that we would have a blizzard that we would have to dig ourselves out of and I was quite glad it didn't come. We tend to get a lot of snow here in North East Ohio and I can only tolerate so much digging and snow shoveling! I guess I've been feeling negative lately. I don't know.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I tend to celebrate heavy snow as an excuse to slow down and NOT do anything.

[jumpyfox.livejournal.com]

I'm very good at NOT doing anything. I just have trouble getting moving, and losing weight for that matter!

[tinbender.livejournal.com]

A 17" forecast is getting pretty aggressive. Guess my three coworkers in the surrounding cubes will wind up canceling their trip through O'Hare if that's the case. They don't want to get stranded there for some reason : )

[altivo.livejournal.com]

As of 5:30 am it looks like a dud. We got perhaps an inch of new snow with a fair amount of rain. There's probably ice out there but the temperature is above freezing. The NWS is still hysterically insisting that we'll get heavy snow this morning with a foot accumulation but they are starting to sound like politicians instead of scientists.

[animist.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's not easy to pick one candidate out from the pack, but I plan on voting. Life does not always present us with good choices - but there are usually bad choices. I vote against those those.

Currently I plan on voting against Romney by supporting McCain. I think Romney is another Bush term, and the way he re-invents himself and re-markets himself is appallingly cynical. Even for a politician. Of the front runners currently, he disturbs me the most. Do we need another son of an oligarchical family in power? No.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately we don't need another fanatical warmonger either, which is how I see McCain. The prospect of eight more years of Republican cronyism and callousness is appalling too.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wouldn't vote if there's just one candidate, either - there's no point, obviously, and you're just lending credibility to the whole process.

I still think that ballots should come with a "none of the above" option; sometimes, I think politicians would be a lot more humble if instead of - say - winning 60% of the votes while their opponent got 40, they'd score 30% (vs. 20%) with 50% of the votes saying "neither". And of course, it's even more true for those who run unopposed.

But then, that is precisely the reason why this is rather unlikely to actually be implemented.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've been saying for years that if there was a "None of the above" checkbox on the ballot, politicians would get a severe wake up call.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles* Indeed, yes.

Of course, they might still just ignore it. For example, take a look at the US president (not just Dubya; anyone will do), and then estimate roughly how many people actually voted for him. If you start with 300 million, you first have to substract those who cannot vote - those who're too young, who're not citizens (whether they're legally there or not), those who've been convicted of felonies and disenfranchised, and so on. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume you lose about one third of the total population that way, so you've got 200 million left. Half of those don't bother voting, so you've got 100 million left. And only about half of those voted for the president, so that's about 50 million.

In other words, out of 300 million people, roughly 250 million - more than 80%! - did not vote for the president. I'm pretty sure that whoever it is, (s)he would do well to keep that in mind and act with the appropriate humility.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Of course that's not how it worked. Back in 2001, Bush was already bragging about his "mandate from the people to make changes" even before he was inaugurated, when in fact the only reason he got to be president at all was that the Supreme Court intervened inappropriately.

Of course the Republicans have taken care of that now by introducing new secret proprietary means of counting votes that no one understands and no one can check up on, created by Republican-owned corporations. Fascism is alive and well in the US, that's certainly true.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Certainly true, yes. :/ What I mostly meant that even *if* you have (or had) elections where that kind of fraud did not exist, the president would still not even come close to representing the majority of the population.

FWIW, I just checked Wikipedia, too, and the number of actual votes that Dubya received according to the official result in 2004, already including all the irregularities and outright fraud, was 62.040.610. Slightly higher than what I estimated above, but still, it's only about 20% of the population - 80% did NOT vote for him.

The same most likely goes for any politician, of course, and politicians who've got some integrity left really should keep that in mind.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

We had unusually high voter turnout in 2004, by our recent standards. That explains how Dubya had such a high vote count. Even his opponent had a higher vote count than previous winners.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK - interesting. Thanks. :)

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

You live in a rural area, and as such is more or less bound to be Republican dominated. The right wing always holds the countryside. This seems to be the unwritten rule. It's the same here. The dense urban areas are normally Labour. Sparse urban being LibDem territory, and the big shire counties are nearly always coloured in the blue of the Coservative party (remember, our colour schemes are different here).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/flash_map/html/map05.stm

It's a depressing situation. I still believe education is the way out of it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

education is the way out of it

I think that might be true, but the Republicans do their best to keep the masses stupid and gullible.

You're right, it's incredibly depressing.

[mymaimary.livejournal.com]

I feel that since my state always votes the same way, the primaries are my chance to vote the way I would want things to be. For example, voting Nader or Green Party on a Democratic primary. This time around it's the only way that I can get my vote in for a 'non front runner' or to pick the lesser or evils. Well , that was until yesterday made things look pretty sewn up.

We chose a Republic when this country was created. When we set up democratic elections in other countries, we insist on a direct democracy to stop exactly the problems we have here with elections.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

I vote whenever they say I can.

"You get to vote now"

*tailwags*

Of course this is why I'm chosen for jury duty
lots too.

@.@

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't vote when there's nothing to vote for. No reason for "them" to believe they've fooled me.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

IMO there's no shame in voting when no candidate moves you... no matter what the talking heads say :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

But what would I vote for? If I refuse to mark any box, then what am I doing?

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Only you can know that, Alt. ;)

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Perhaps vote for the person you hate least?

At least then you'll have the lesser evil.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't hate any of 'em. I just think they are all phenomenal dolts. If even just one of them would try to understand real issues instead of acting like some sort of football cheerleader, then we could talk.

I'm tired of voting for the lesser idiot. An idiot's an idiot.