VOTE! GO FREAKING VOTE!

[lithera]

Thank you, Warren Ellis.

I need to find stamps for to send in my balloty thingy.

I was going to say something else this morning but I think it got washed away.

Oh yeah. If you don't vote, you lose your right to bitch about how much things suck.

And does anyone want to go with me to see The Prestige on Saturday? I want to see a whole bunch of other things but that's the important one.

Comments

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

Don't SEND in your balloty thingee! Drop it off at a polling place. If you send it it won't arrive in time to count!

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I can do that too.

[ocicat.livejournal.com]

What? You don't have superhero stamps to send in your ballot?

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Heh. I used them all already. I need to get some more.

[quipper.livejournal.com]

I disagree that you lose your right to bitch if you don't vote. Not voiting is a valid political statement. The fact that our voting turnout is the lowest in the civilized world says volumes about our politics.

My vote has been shown to not count. Look at the Bush debacles of '00 and again in '04. Look at our own Washington state, and the hanky panky with our govenor. Voting isn't the only way to make a difference.

Voting is as personal a choice as anything else. If you avoid it becase you're lazy, that's not an excuse. However, assuming that someone doesn't vote just because they're lazy or ill-informed is just like any other stereotype - it avoids true dialoge about people's beliefs and tells them how they should live.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

While yes, choosing not to vote is a valid choice, it is still a decision not to make a decision. If you aren't trying to actively change what is happening, you don't get to complain about the results. Choosing not to participate, even if the results of your participation are neglegible, means that you're not putting your opinion out there. If no one knows what your opinion is, if you don't make it known, you lose your right to complain about the outcome.

Like any other dialogue looking to come to a decision, if you don't voice your opinions and desires, no matter what the decision is, you get to live with it. If we're all deciding what toppings to get on pizza and you don't say anything during the discussion, complaining about what you get is horribly bad form and aggravating to everyone who did participate in the discussion.

I understand where you're coming from on this but choosing not to vote, to me at least, seems like giving up and walking away. There aren't other avenues open to use. It doesn't seem likely that not participating in the process will create other options unless we were to /all/ not participate and let that be a statement.

[quipper.livejournal.com]

See, and I think that voting is just about the least you can do to participate in the things going horribly wrong in this country. Who cares if I vote for inheritance tax or against it? Does that make a real difference? In some ways, yes, in other ways, no.

I think that voting is how people assuage their feelings towards things that happen in this country. I see some of my friends who are really out there *doing* stuff.. volunteering their time for a cause that they care about. Those are the people making a difference. Putting a pencil mark on a paper and marking it with a stamp shouldn't be the deciding factor on if someone gets to have an opinion or not.

Freedom of speech means having to listen to people who annoy us, as well as those who enrich our lives. Bad form? Maybe. Their right? Definitely. If you don't want to hear it, that's your right as well.. but saying they don't have the right to complain is the slippery slope that we're dealing with in politics today.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

It might be the least of what they can do but I think it is the cornerstone of it. And sure, a lot of people use that to say that they did what they could. I volunteer my time and more often my money to causes I support. The main problem with this is voting is the one clear way you can do something. A lot of people are very frustrated with trying to find a way to do anything that will actively change things. I think that doing /more/ than voting is great but I think because you're out there handing out petitions that makes it even more important for you to get out there and vote. Just because you're one voice in millions doesn't mean that you should stop shouting.

And the worst part for me is that almost anything I say or do here, I'm preaching to the choir. I'm surrounded by people who generally agree with me or at least agree with me enough that they're not the ones I'd truly want to talk to about the situation. It isn't like I can get in a car and drive to Spokane and just start talking to people on the street. (Though I have been tempted to do so.)

Perhaps I should have stated myself more clearly then. If you're not voting, you had better be doing something else to actively change what you don't like about the world or you don't get to complain to me. Actively or passively choosing not to use your voice in a way that matters and then choosing to use it to complain about the results of your inactivity .... It never sits well with me. In any situation.

[quipper.livejournal.com]

And that's fair.

I just had a friend who voted and his parting shot was, "At least now I can complain about things." I'm a tad bit horrified that the motivation for voting was just so he could voice his complaints. If that's the kind of mentality of the people voting these days.. well honestly, I do think we all should do something together to get the government's attent8ion. It's getting awfully hopeless around here.

[mike-mccall.livejournal.com]

While I happen to greatly agree with the spirit of "If you don't vote, you don't have the right to bitch", I will agree that the phrase itself is a distortion. Hence, I offer my revised version:

"If you're not participating in the government you have, I don't give a crap how much you whine about it. Do something to change the system or save your voice."

[lithera.livejournal.com]

That works for me.

[elsewhere7.livejournal.com]

The local polls close by me 8 PM tonight, so I'm handling it after work.

And if I want to thank Warren Ellis for all the damage he's done to established comic characters, and the further damage he will do starting in January to 1 of 4 Marvel comics I actually read, can I bring my own baseball bat to administer my thanks? >:/

[mike-mccall.livejournal.com]

The irony of Ellis' little screed there is that at least twice, Spider Jerusalem has gotten actively involved in the outcome of an election.

When you're a guerilla journalist ripping at the political system with your teeth, whether or not you vote IS largely irrelevant.

For the rest of us, it's a wee bit more important. :D