Don't Vote

Warning: If you are an informed and educated individual who knows who they will be voting for and exactly why, please disregard the following. The rest of you (that's most of you, by the way), pay close attention.

As I am sure many of you know, it is an important day today: Election day. Not the presidential, true, but just as important. Everything from your state's congressmen to local school board positions are up for grabs, and it is your civic duty to get out there and make and informed decision on who should be running the government. For most of you, I have this message:

Don't vote.

You see, I am all for Democracy (though our representative government isn't a true democracy, but I digress). However, it only really works if the people voting have any damned clue what they are voting for. Do you know what your township trustee does? Did you even know your township had trustees? There are countless local positions that you almost never hear about, and honestly probably aren't even aware of until election day rolls around and you gander at your ballot. 

Do you know what any of these people do?

But your ignorance doesn't stop at the small timers does it? Do you have any idea what the candidates for congress in your state plan to do with their positions? What is their platform? What interest groups are the looking to appease?

And no, the ads you get bombarded with don't count as education on the subject. All anyone ever does with ads anymore is attack their opponent, digging up skeletons and taking quotes well outside of context. On the rare occasion where they do talk about their plans, its something vague like "create jobs" or "lower taxes". Any idea how they are going to do that?

Turns out, to make an informed decision, you need to inform yourself. That's right, you might actually have to do work for this one. Do some research: check out the candidates history, what their plan is, see what kind of stuff is in the news about them. Its not too hard, a few minutes on the old internet can provide you with the bulk of this info. 

But you didn't do any of that, did you? No, you were going to go in there and vote for the candidate whose name you heard the most, or you were going to pick a political party and just run with it down the whole ballot. Fuck you.

So, here is the deal. If you can't make an informed and educated decision today, stay home.

And Don't Vote.