Vote for you

I voted last week.

It was the first time in 12 years that I have looked upon a ballot. The very appearance of the ballot was a big change. I was given a digitized card that I stuck inside an electric machine. The machine read my card and gave me the options that were placed before me. I read the names of candidates that were, just that, names. People who may or may not be good leaders, but in the end, they were not my choice.

It is my opinion that voting for a candidate that does not represent your interests is the worst way you can throw away your vote. Why give up your right to self-governance simply because a candidate was capable of winning the popularity contest required to participate in our modern politics? Voting does not change things.

I hadn't voted in 12 years because I don't believe in the system that it props up and believe that serious social change is due and requisite for progress to continue.

In the hopes of full disclosure, I did vote for a couple of candidates. Namely Jill Stein of the Green Party, because the two party system is a joke and we need more voices in the debate. Voices that represent the rest of us. And I threw my name behind a couple of local politicians that I think can make a difference in local matters.

And then I wrote myself in for every other position.

I may have won the contest of the single person that received votes for the most positions. Yes, it did take a while to type my name in that many times on the touch screen of the digital machine.

The idea of voting for you, is pretty simple. The candidates placed before us don't represent our interests. They don't represent our needs and we will not give them our vote. In essence, it is a vote of no-confidence.

Can you imagine what would happen if the majority of citizens woke up, went to the polls and wrote themselves in as their choice? Without the consent of the citizens, the very claim to sovereignty of our nation would be called into question. Once again the people would have the power, we would all have the candidate of our choice.

I encourage you to get out and vote for you.

"Be the change you want to see." - Ghandi.

However, it is not voting that gets things changed. Regardless of the outcome of today's elections, the status quo will not have changed. It will represent a simple shuffling of faces.

If we want to truly see change, a change that we can all believe in, voting is the least effective of the tools at our disposal.

If you look back through history, no real change has occurred thanks to voting. There is always some act of disobedience, rebellion or protest that foments the minds of the masses to create something new.

"And I may remark here that political action is never taken, nor even contemplated, until slumbering minds have first been aroused by direct acts of protest against existing conditions." -Voltairine




The real question is not for whom we will vote, but rather how we want our world to be. And when that has been decided, we must directly act to bring about that change.

Vote for you!

http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/decleyre/sp001334.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action