Voting in America

[BigPete]

Since we always find our way into this topic, I though we could have a new thread for it. So bring up any argument you want about how we vote, why we vote, what happens when we don't vote...etc.



Here's some historical background and a good jumping off point: (from wikipedia - Voting rights in the United States)



When the country was founded, in most states, only white men with property were permitted to vote (freed African Americans could vote in four states). White working men, almost all women, and all other people of color were denied the franchise.

 

[supraman]

Country went to hell when we gave women the right to vote



/purple

 

[Variable]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeMGqTwWA6U[/media]

 

[MassHavoc]

I find this to be complete BS and pompous. Ohh I'm better than you because I actually vote so I matter and you dont' because you don't vote. Bullshit. If there was a magical time where you had to vote for eithe Hitler or Hussein and I chose to not vote for eith one of them. You are telling me that I am wrong to not vote and should keep my opinion to myself and just shuf the **** up and blindly vote like everyone else. Bullshit. It would be worse for me to vote for a candidate that I don't like and waste that vote reinfocing an entire system that is defucnt and corrumpt than it would be to not vote as just as much my right as an American as it is to vote. And guess what, not voting has just as much meaning as voting because you have to earn that vote not just show up and be the lesser of two evils. I'm so tired of people saying that becuase I didn't pick one douchebag over another that my opinion on who the bigger douchebag is doesn't count. **** them all. There is a reason that votership is down, and it's not just that we are getting lazy, it's that many much like me are disencharted with the entire process. /rant, not enough sleep, too much coffee. Need to shit.



At the end of the day if I don't like the guy in office and you don't like the guy in office. We are both not going to vote for them. You are trying to distinguish your ideals as being better because I didn't vote the same way as you did, even though we both didn't vote for the same person.

I can see that and I didn't mean for my response to come at you in anyway I'm just tired of being told that I don't matter because I refuse to vote for someone I don't believe in even if it means that I don't vote. People who tell me that my opinion doesn't matter because I don't vote I usually just ask them if they tell illegal immigrants to "shut the **** up and get back to work, men's is speakin" too? HAH.

 

[jakobeast]

If You do your research, and find no candidate you can agree with mostly, then yes you shouldn't vote. So long as you go on beyond the Dem/Repub folks, you should be able to find a candidate that you agree with on a mjority of the issues.



You will almost never find anyone you agree with 100%. For instance, the LIbertarian party has some ideas I ain't exactly crazy about, but for probably 2/3rds, I do agree. That is the most out of all the candidates I have found.



A vote cast in ignorance, cast in without knowing who that candidate is and what they stand for, or just for a guy that isn't someone else, in my opinion, is a wasted vote.

 

[BigPete]

So you bring up a good point Jako, "a vote cast in ignorance". Can anyone really say that they believe the websites or pamphlets or speeches or debates or anything else that "speaks to a candidate's platform"? Anytime I have looked at a GOP candidate's platform in the last two presidential elections they are virtually all the same. I am not just picking on GOP candidates, I just use them as a really good example.

Because I see little to no differences in these people, I am forced to vote for whomever that party presents as the candidate. See the issue? Maybe I don't like Romney, but I like a lot of Santorum and Paul's ideas. Well Romney is the last guy with a seat when the music stops. If I want any of their promises to come true I have to hope that he will do what they or the GOP have been saying during the election run up. Right?

 

[IceHogsFan]

If You do your research, and find no candidate you can agree with mostly, then yes you shouldn't vote. So long as you go on beyond the Dem/Repub folks, you should be able to find a candidate that you agree with on a mjority of the issues.



You will almost never find anyone you agree with 100%. For instance, the LIbertarian party has some ideas I ain't exactly crazy about, but for probably 2/3rds, I do agree. That is the most out of all the candidates I have found.



A vote cast in ignorance, cast in without knowing who that candidate is and what they stand for, or just for a guy that isn't someone else, in my opinion, is a wasted vote.

Or like I was recently told, "But my family has always voted for X party".