Tuesday is Voting day here in the states. Do me a favor and don’t vote if you don’t know who the candidates are. Also, don’t vote if you aren’t familiar with the different ballot measures.
If you go to vote and don’t know who and what you’re voting for, you’re wasting your vote and negating the votes of people who do know what and who they are voting for.
Yes, you have the right to vote. Yes, you should vote. But only if you know who and what you’re voting for.
So, take the few days that are left and get familiar with the issues, candidates, and measures. Once you’ve done that, go vote! Please.
Technorati Tags: vote, voting, november 7, tuesday
About Shane Ede
Or do vote like many people do along their party lines regardless of issues. Many people really don’t have to research who they’re voting for or about ballot measures for that matter. Heck Jamestown is probably the worse place for that as a good portion of college students vote there especially in election years. Whose fault is it that they can vote there are local ballot measures that will have little affect on them? The state of North Dakota.
An open democracy is just that, open. The number of people randomly voting on ballot measures while making informed decisions on all but the most no-name of candidates doesn’t negate your vote at all. Remember those coin flipping experiments you had to do in highschool/college statistics? Well, replace the coins with your choice for city garbage collector etc and you’re going to end up with the same results, 50/50 on the candidates they aren’t familiar with. In the end those who make informed decisions really do decide the vote and those that don’t are just wasting their time being the filler that has no effect on election outcome, but I’m not going to discourage anyone from at least participating in an election to begin with considering how few do already.
I don’t think that people should vote like party lemmings either.
I also don’t buy the 50/50 bit. If you take north dakota for instance, we’re voting on a rather controversial measure that has the weight of some of the government against it. Against state law, they have been using state funds to fight it. Chances are, if you don’t know what your voting for, you’ve heard an advertisement of some sort either for or against a measure. In this case, the extra gov money getting thrown against the measure may sway voters who would otherwise vote for the measure simply because they don’t know what they are voting for and heard a commercial.
Help! I know who I’m going to vote for, for the most part, except for State BOE, Justice of the Supreme Court, Judge of Court of Appeals, and Judge of Court of Common Pleas. I’m Democrat, and I can’t find out which of these are Democrats. TIA!
Hey! I surprised myself – I found what I was looking for!
The US elections have really captured my attention this time round. I’m in the UK and the news coverage here has been vast.
Whilst I agree that you shouldn’t just vote for the sake of it, ie. you should have some idea of who or what you’re voting for, I do believe everyone should vote.
In the last century in the UK we had the suffragette movement campaigning for votes for women. Some protesters suffered terribly and others died. We should vote because they can’t.