Primary Voting Time

[netmouse]

Last night thatguychuck went door-to-door with me to ask Democrats in my precinct to write me in for Precinct Delegate (Ward 5, Precinct 6). We split up the list, odds and evens, and campaigned from right after dinner (which chuck cooked while I organized the lists) to right after dark (Thank you, Chuck!). It was great to have a companion as upbeat and forward as he is to walk around with. I especially admired how outgoing he was to people we encountered on the street.

One such encounter sticks out in my mind this morning. As this fellow approached us I asked if he was voting in the Primary. He got a bit surly and declared as he passed us that he didn't vote at all. Chuck called after him, "You should vote, man, it makes change happen!" to which he responded, "That's a lie."

I believe this attitude is pervasive in our country, and I hope you will resist this kind of hopelessness and go out and participate today. Vote! It's not just a right, it's a responsibility.

A number of the people I spoke to were not so hopeless but were very concerned. Our president can't put a sentence together. Our children are not learning handwriting any more, or history, or how to build things and do science. Our country is facing a competitive international scene that is largely angry and disappointed with us. It is time for change.

There are many things that one can do to try to effect change. One of them is vote. I encourage you to vote in your local primary today (Updated to add: or whenever your primaries are, where you live).

Comments

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't advocate random voting just for the purpose of voting. This is why, years ago, I was so pleased to see the creation of Vote-Smart (http://www.vote-smart.org/), a bi-partisan effort to collect information about candidate stances and voting records so that people can try to be informed.

For today's primary (yes, the Michigan primary is today), if you live in Washtenaw county you'll find some interesting articles about the candidates on the progressives of washtenaw (http://www.progressivesofwashtenaw.org/) web site, and I'm sure candidates have more information on their own web sites. Candidates also support each other. I'm supporting Rebekah Warren and Chris Easthope, as well as my fellow precinct delegate candidate, Dennis Tokarski.

To let people know more about me, I happily answer questions, and I also passed around a flyer about Anne Murphy (http://www.netmouse.com/annemurphy). It isn't a whole detailed position platform or anything, so I was pleased to find discussions in person also drew out my opinions on education and international relations, as well as my opinions on development projects local to our precinct, one of which I attended a city council meeting to oppose a couple of years ago (the development happened anyway).

I also answered questions about what a precinct delegate is, and I explained that a bit in my flyer as well.

I think encouraging people to have a position to vote for or about is important, but isn't something you want to do *instead* of encouraging them to vote, but rather hand in hand with that encouragement.

[eviljohn.livejournal.com]

And I've found http://www.publius.org/ good for getting info on our 7th district represenatives in congress.

Figuring out which judges to vote for is still tricky.