Not Bothering with a Write-In Vote

Ron Paul — who I still believe would make an incred­i­ble Amer­i­can pres­i­dent — has stated that he does not want to be vot­ers’ “write-in” can­di­date, feel­ing that write-ins are a waste of time.

Per­haps — nay, prob­a­bly — Dr. Paul is cor­rect; do write-in votes mat­ter? If they are counted, then the writ­ten in names are seen by local precinct work­ers, but who else sees them? I con­fess I don’t know much about this process, but it does seem as though sort­ing through all the votes for fam­ily mem­bers, fic­tional char­ac­ters, and other prob­a­ble write-ins would make the whole thing fairly worthless.

My dad ((“Senior” in var­i­ous com­ments on this site — yes, I know, he really needs his own site for me to link to in ref­er­enc­ing him.)) has his own idea about how to show dis­sat­is­fac­tion in the choices of can­di­dates given to us.

If you don’t really like Obama or McCain, for whom do you vote? How can you let the par­ties know that the choices they are giv­ing you, well, suck?

Far too many peo­ple set­tle for the lesser of two evils. Hon­estly, I don’t we should have to be set­tling when we express our polit­i­cal views through our vote.

Not vot­ing doesn’t really tell the par­ties any­thing either. You may very well be stay­ing at home because you dis­like the can­di­dates, but they won’t know that. Too many peo­ple stay at home because of apa­thy, and you’ll just blend into that crowd if you just don’t vote.

So vote. Show up. Sign in. Get in the vot­ing booth. And then what?

Vote for the dog catcher.

Seri­ously. Dis­sat­is­fied with the choices for pres­i­dent or gov­er­nor or any of the higher offices? Find the low­est office and vote only for that one.

Your vote will be counted. You would have showed up. Orga­nize this with oth­ers in your com­mu­nity and get friends from else­where involved as well, and par­ties may start to take notice, at least on a local level. And as Obama is fond of point­ing out, if you can affect the local pop­u­lace, you can affect a state and a nation.

Vot­ing for the low­est office on the bal­lot — you care enough to show up and to vote, but you show that you are dis­sat­is­fied with the big names.

The par­ties cer­tainly want your votes. If it starts becom­ing appar­ent that car­ing peo­ple are not giv­ing them their votes because the wrong peo­ple are being nom­i­nated… well, things may start to change for the better.

But then again, it’s going to take a lot of peo­ple to make some­thing like this effective…

…just like every­thing that’s worth­while, I suppose.