Welcome to U.S. Election Day!  I hope everyone gets out and votes today.  If you choose to not vote, just remember the words of Rush’s song, Free Will:

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

The choice you make by not voting is to accept the outcome of those who do vote.  Being Americans, that does not mean quiet acceptance necessarily, but it does mean acceptance.

If you do vote, acceptance is still a requirement.  As Americans, we should understand whoever we are, there’s some minority (usually several minorities) we belong to.  On election day, the candidate we vote for may not get elected, or the ballot measure we want to pass or not pass may fail or succeed in spite of our wishes.  We must accept this and move on.  Again, this acceptance need not be quiet.

I hope everyone who votes today is voting for people and measures, not against them.  The latter is a little tricky; measures stand on their own.  Ballot measures do not run against opposing measures.  I think they should, as I think it’s part of what leads to all the negativity in campaigning.  It would be simple enough to set up.  Each measure would have the pro wording:  Should the State Constitution regarding Matter X be changed to read “Y”?  There would then be an opposing wording:  “Should the State Constitution regarding Matter X be left unchanged?”  This would make the measure clearer, I think, for people voting.  One could more easily understand what option leaves things unchanged.  Sometimes, and often deliberately, the wording of a measure is phrased in such a way that voting against the measure makes a change rather than voting for it.  This would lead to less anti-ness.  That is, campaign groups would (hopefully) focus on getting people to vote on option A or B instead of for or against Measure A as is the current standard.

Less campaigning against measures would, I hope, lead to less campaigning against candidates.  This is how most ads run these days:  Candidate X will bring about doom and damnation.  Some don’t even mention the opposing candidate, often because the opposing candidate has nothing to do with the ad.  The group sponsoring the ad doesn’t want Candidate X in office, but rather than supporting the opposition, they oppose Candidate X.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not against people or are against other people or things.  That would be a contradiction.  Being anti-something is fine as long as that something has nothing to do with the way somebody lives and so long as an alternative is proposed.  These are two separate conditions of great importance to me.  Don’t offer an alternative way for somebody to live–being straight instead of gay, for example–and expect me to accept it.  Don’t support a measure if that measure does not offer a viable alternative to its opposition.

Let me make that last part clearer.  I ranted a few weeks ago about the anti-tax initiatives a fellow named Doug Bruce keeps getting on the ballot.  Mr. Bruce would like to see taxes taken away, but he does not offer a workable way for the government to pay its expenses.  His anti-tax measures are not viable alternatives to their opposition.  Sometimes he suggests the local government will make up the difference by getting money from higher government–city/county gets funds from state or state from federal–but this is not viable because the higher government isn’t offering those funds now and there’s no reason to expect it will just because there’s a local shortfall.

In summary, get out and vote today, and vote for what you believe in, not for what you oppose.  See you tomorrow.