{"id":686,"date":"2002-11-05T09:29:17","date_gmt":"2002-11-05T17:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2002\/11\/05\/686.html"},"modified":"2002-11-05T09:29:17","modified_gmt":"2002-11-05T17:29:17","slug":"go-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2002\/11\/05\/go-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Go vote!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>(This entry is written as if everyone reading it is an American citizen, for ease of phrasing.  Apologies to those to whom it's irrelevant.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/chronicle\/archive\/2002\/11\/05\/DD112433.DTL\">Jon Carroll<\/a> has an interesting column today on why it's worth voting, even if you're convinced it doesn't make a difference.  His take is basically that it's a good habit to be in:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>cynicism is a powerful tool of the ruling class. Depressed voter turnout helps the incumbents. If sensible citizens become disgusted with the process, then only non-sensible citizens will vote. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I'm in idealist mode this morning (despite having not spent yesterday evening going over voter information as I'd planned), so I'll go a step further.<\/p>\n<p>I'll agree with Carroll that in many places, the outcome of the race between a Democrat and a Republican is a foregone conclusion.  But there are still plenty of good reasons to vote:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Even if you cast your vote, it may not make much difference.  But if you <em>don't<\/em> cast your vote, it <em>can't<\/em> make any difference.  The chance goes from small to zero.  (And although it doesn't happen often, remember what happened in Florida last time around.  I bet there were thousands of Floridans who wished they'd voted.)<\/li>\n<li>Not voting doesn't send a message that you don't like the candidates.  It sends a message that the candidates shouldn't care what you think.  If you don't vote, the big-party candidates couldn't care less about you.<\/li>\n<li>There are often small-party candidates who may be more in line with your beliefs than the big-party candidates.  If you don't care which big-party candidate wins, then voting for a small-party candidate <em>does<\/em> send a message.  If more people did it, it would send more of a message.<\/li>\n<li>Even if you can't bring yourself to care about the candidates, there are plenty of ballot initiatives out there (in most places, anyway) that you may have a bigger chance of influencing, and that may have a much bigger chance of affecting your life than any of the candidates.  Learn about the measures and vote on them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For voter information, I highly recommend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vote-smart.org\/\">Project Vote Smart<\/a>.  Lots of good <em>non-partisan<\/em> information about practically every candidate and initiative everywhere in the US.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(This entry is written as if everyone reading it is an American citizen, for ease of phrasing. Apologies to those&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}