- Was I eligible to vote in the last election?
- Did I vote?
If the answer to the first question is "yes" and the answer to the second question is "no", then consider shutting the fuck up until November, 2022.
However much you think your vote doesn't count, it does. 80 million Americans were eligible to vote in 2020 and, for whatever reason, couldn't be bothered to do that one act of citizenship. An act of citizenship that people have been killed over. An act of citizenship that a majority of Americans were once forbidden to perform, either by intimidation or by the law (and still are, in more and more states).
But you, you special snowflake, couldn't get off your dead ass and vote.
Note that I'm not making this contingent on for whom you voted. Regardless of what I think of Der Drumpfenführer, those who voted for him are mostly honorable citizens (neo-nazis notwithstanding) who exercised their rights as citizens.
To those who could have voted but didn't: Your opinions on political matters are without value.
You didn't vote.
Shut the fuck up.
8 comments:
While my vote in the presidential contest wasn't as crucial as, say, someone in Ohio, my down ballot choices did help legalize pot here, and send Barbara Lee back to congress with 90% of the vote in her district...
-Doug in Oakland
Preach it, sister.
Yes. Yes.
Now, as for those who didn't despite being able to, I have a better solution. Any statement they make MUST be preceded by "I didn't vote but". That way we can skip the bullshit if we wish, or read their drivel, if we want amusement. After a while, they'll get tired and quit posting till they don't have to do that.
As for real solutions. Voting should occur over a week long period. Early voting for any reason, up to three weeks before the election. Any polling station that has more than an average 30 minute wait over the election shall result in a fine for the responsible governmental entity. No ID, sign a statement swearing to your eligibility, not on the rolls, the same. Punishment for lying, community service, one hour per thousand dollars of income, with a 10 hour minimum, for the first offense. Second and after to have increasing punishments, including mandatory jail time. Paper trail on all votes required. That'd be a start...then we start thinking about fines for not voting, but...
CP88, won't happen. Not so long as we have a major political party which has embraced voter-suppression as a tool to prevail in elections.
I so agree. Those that didn't think it important enough to vote in this election are what has doomed the rest of us.
Even if tRump had still won, a full half of our country needed to stand up and add their vote.
What do we need?
w3ski
Amen, with one quibble: Here in VA, state elections are in odd-numbered years. Please no mention of 2018 until after we've chucked those Cro-Magnons out of Richmond.
There's a revealing map showing what the presidential election results would have been if "did not vote" were a choice that was counted. "Did not vote" would have won an overwhelming majority of states and electoral seats.
I agree with CenterPuke88 that opinions from people who could have voted but didn't bother should be preceded by "I didn't vote but..." -- they have far less moral right to complain about the results.
Radiolab recently had an episode about both false (as passed along by Ann Landers) and TRUE stories of cases where one vote made a difference. One of the true stories was about the final ratification of the 19th Amendment, recognizing women's right to vote nationwide; it came down to the one vote by Tennessee legislator Harry T. Burn, who had been wearing a red rose (signaling intent to vote against suffrage) but changed his vote, going along with his mother's advice.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/one-vote/
Sorry, but my vote doesn’t count. I voted for Sanders in the primary, and 45 got outvoted by me and 3 million others. I still have the right to sound off and complain if I stay home this November, thank you.
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