"John D. Giorgis" wrote:
>
> At 11:10 AM 11/1/2002 -0600 Julia Thompson wrote:
> >I went and did early voting this morning.
>
> Out of curiosity, given the events of the last two years, did you at all
> consider the risk that your candidate might die between now and Tuesday,
> thus invalidating your vote? In other words, in your mind, does the
> benefit of voting early outweigh the risk of losing your vote - or did you
> simply not assess this risk?
The risk of something coming up between now and closing of the polls on
Tuesday that might prevent me from voting on Tuesday weighed more
heavily in my calculations than the risk of the death of a candidate
between now and then.
Two years ago, I had hellacious morning sickness. On one of my better
days, we went and did early voting, which was just as well, as I was
having a bad day on election day.
With that experience relatively fresh in my mind, I figured early voting
was a better option.
Additionally, my re-registration at the new address never was processed
by the county, so it was either vote early on this side of IH-35, or
drive 35 minutes on election day to cast my ballot. As *Dan's*
re-registration *was* properly processed (highly irritating, as both of
them had been together in the postal clerk's hand last time I saw
them!), the only way for us to both go together to vote was to do early
voting.
> >I voted for at least 1 candidate of each party represented on my
> >ballot. (And I did a write-in.) :) (No, there were no Reform Party
> >candidates, just Rep.s, Dem.s, Lib.s and Greens.)
>
> Also out of curiosity, and I will try to say this as nicely as possible -
> do you think that it is a point of merit that you distributed your votes
> across four different parties? Actually, this is two questions:
> 1) Do you consider it absolutely more good to have voted for candidates of
> four different parties, than to have voted for candidates of only three,
> two, or one party?
I consider it better than voting straight ticket, anyway; my impression
of "straight ticket" voters is that they depend on a political party to
make all their decisions for them. I know that isn't fair, as many of
them vote in the primary.
Mostly, I find it eclectic.
> 2) Did you mention this because you expect people to look more favorably
> upon you for having voted for candidates of four different parties?
More an announcement that you can't stick me in any sort of political
box and expect me to stay in it.
> I'm really not trying to be rude - but am trying to make an honest
> assessment of your value judgements.
>
> >If you are registered to vote in the US, be sure you vote on Tuesday
> >(unless you do early voting like I did). I don't care about *who* you
> >vote for; even if you're in my precinct (which I don't think anyone is,
> >unless there's a lurker living close by), or just in my state, and you
> >vote against every single candidate I voted for, you should take
> >advantage of your right to vote and have some sort of say in who
> >represents you in your government.
>
> Allow me to second that with a reservation. If you live in the United
> States, please take the time to learn about the candidates in Tuesday's
> election and vote. And if you live in the United States have learned
> nothing about the candidates in Tuesday's elections by Tuesday, please do
> not vote in the elections.
One of the reasons my voting was so varied was because I looked at all
the candidates, their records, their positions, and found that I was
most in agreement with a Green in one or two cases, most in agreement
with a Democrat in a number of others, most in agreement with a
Republican in some others, and most in agreement with a Libertarian in
one or two.
(The write-in was in the governor's race. I'm disgusted by the whole
campaign to date; later, I heard on the radio that both major-party
candidates had pulled their really negative ads, maybe because they were
backfiring, and had only run positive spots today. Well, they blew it
as far as *my* vote went -- since people are voting early in record
numbers around here this year, they should have pulled the negative
stuff sometime *last* week when the trend was starting to become
apparent....)
> Yes, I asked certain people not to vote.
>
> JDG - Who really isn't trying to be a contrarian just for the sake of
> being a contrarian.
Most of the people with whom I talk government/politics here try to
educate themselves at least a little and go vote. The major exception
to that is someone who has looked at various candidates and formed
opinions, but has said she probably won't vote. (She didn't get the
address change to the county the last time she moved, and doesn't know
where her voter registration card is.) I've run into a number of people
over the years, though, that complain about how government is run, have
definite opinions as to what *ought* to be done -- and don't vote! I'm
sick of bellyaching from people who refuse to cast the ballot that might
make at least a *miniscule* amount of difference, that's why I encourage
people to vote.
Also, a number of people don't even bother to register. If they're not
going to bother to *register*, even, then yeah, they're probably not the
sort to educate themselves about elections, and so probably shouldn't
vote anyway. But they've already taken care of *that*. :)
Julia
who doesn't want to hear a damn thing more about Perry or Sanchez for a
couple of days, but will probably fail to avoid their ads :P
sorry if that was too verbose
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