How do you vote?

13 Nov 2016

Well... I now vote with my husband... as in... we go to the polls together. We also did early voting because we could & we didn't know what his schedule for Tuesday would be.

Where I live, we have the "None of the Above" option on our ballot. I voted because there were questions (or propositions) on the ballot that I wanted to give my opinion. Sadly, the one I opposed passed anyway... such is life and elections.

Hillary Clinton lost.
Donald Trump won.

Such is life and elections.

13 Nov 2016

My body begged for release and for more; for a perfect moment, a sublime stalemate held

Tori and Mr Renshaw (Part 1)

December 2017

13 Nov 2016

Here in the Netherlands we don't need to register to vote. We get an invitation, with a voting pass send by mail. I don't really understand the need to register to vote. You don't need to register to pay taxes either, right?
Anyway, at the voting station one has to show a valid ID, which they need for many other things anyway, along with the voting pass. With the voting pass one can vote in any voting station in their municipality. If one wants to vote in another municipality, they can apply for another voting pass. One's voting pass allows them to pass it on to someone else who can then cast a vote for them (provided they can show a copy of their ID as well), whereby one person can do so for max. two other people.
Employees have the right to take 2 hours off of work if they are unable to vote outside of working hours, but I never heard of anyone who made use of that.

For municipal elections, non-Dutch resident of voting age (18 years or older) who have been in the Netherlands legally for at least five years may vote as well. For elections for the regional Water Board (they handle regional water management, not waterboarding) any resident of voting age can vote.

I recently saw in some US media outlet a comparison of the low US turnout with a 90% turnout in Belgium. This is not a fair comparison as in Belgium turnout itself is mandatory, while the actual voting is not. There's a pretty low barrier to vote is you have to sign off anyway though.

I vote Pirate Party when they're on the ballot (they never made it to one seat yet, but I'd like to see them getting a chance to prove themselves), and otherwise GroenLinks (GreenLeft).

=== Not ALL LIVES MATTER until BLACK LIVES MATTER ===

13 Nov 2016

As a firm believer that Congress has a controling influence on the president I vote for who I think is most suited to the times. If Sanders had been the nominee I would have voted Democrat. If Kasich had been the nominee I would have voted Republican.

But I always vote. This time was for an independent candidate. True, no chance of a win until people quit looking at that as throwing your vote away.

I always research local and national candidates through both liberal and conservative sources.

I also believe in the electoral college. As Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers, The electoral college can correct the popular vote if a candidate who is completely unsuited for the office and is detrimental to the interests of the United States manages to exploit an emotional chord in the general population. The supreme court (1952) upheld the states rights to require an oath to vote with the popular count, but could not violate the 12th amendment allowing the electors to vote their conscience.

My asshole, excuse me, opinion is that 2016 satisfies all these conditions.

Please be kind.

14 Nov 2016

Quote by seeker4
Voting is a bit different in Canada. You vote for the local rep in the House of Commons (Member of Parliament). Whichever party gets the most seats in the House then gets to form the government with their leader becoming Prime Minister. There is no separate vote for the PM and our Senate is unelected. So, you can either:

Vote the local candidate (and I have done so on occasion when there was a strong candidate who wasn't from my usual party)

Vote the party (more common these days I think, and certainly how I tend to vote when I don't really know much about the local candidates)

People often vote based on the leader but because you don't directly vote for PM, this ends up being the same as voting for the party. This can be a bit of a mistake in our system since the PM is really just a leader chosen by the party and can actually be changed mid-term by the party without going to an actual election (cf. the recent change in 10 Downing Street from Cameron to May in the UK, which uses basically the same system).

One by-product of this system is that we have viable third and even, at times, fourth parties. I've been voting Green in the last decade or so (who are just barely viable in that they have had one or two seats in the House) but have also voted Reform (which is now part of the Conservative Party), Liberal and NDP. I tend to actually read the platforms and then vote based on which one seems to align at least somewhat with my positions. Local candidates are a factor, too. The one time I voted Reform was because the Liberal incumbent had resigned over a broken promise, then turned around and run to replace herself, which kind of ticked me off.

Just to supplement the above excellent description, Canadians can also sometimes have a "minority government", where one party does not own half of the seats in the House of Commons. This allows for some interesting times, as the party with the most (but not over half) seats gets to try to set policy, in the hopes that some in other parties will agree. Sometimes they work with one of the other parties to stay in power, and that other party could be fairly small, but because the small party are supporting the party with the most seats, they are said to hold the "balance of power". Sometimes, this allows some of their small party pet policies to get supported and adopted, in part at least. Minority governments can actually get a lot done. It is amazing what can be done when people compromise a bit; I think the U.S. could learn from that.

Any Canadian government is subject to an occasional important vote, referred to as a "vote of non-confidence", on a critical issue, like on a spending budget for example. If that vote does not pass, the party forming the government is expected to resign, and call an immediate election. An election that is mercifully short (compared to the U.S. endless process) should then take place within a few months. Thus, elections could occur just about any time, but in the case of a majority government being in power already (one party has over half the seats, and thus can fight off any "vote of non-confidence"), they can govern for up to five years before an election must take place.

The elections are just for the House of Commons, not for our Senate. Senators are appointed at present, though someday they may be elected if proposed reforms go through. The real power mostly rests with the House of Commons, and the Senate remains a place for "sober second thought", only occasionally asking that the House go back and tune up their proposed legislation some.

The simple beauty of a Canadian election is the use of nothing but paper ballots to take the vote. There is no chance of hacking as with electronic ballots, nor any "hanging chads" when counting. All votes are verifiable by a judicial recount, if the results in a riding are close, say within 50 votes. Voter fraud is virtually non-existent. Voter registration is fairly straight-forward, and if you can produce picture ID with your name and address, you are all set to go, with no fuss. The process is also simplified because we are not also voting for District Attorney, Judge, County Clerk, or Dog-catcher, on multi-page ballots.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open one's mouth and remove all doubt" - Mark Twain (or Lincoln, or Confucius, or...)

15 Nov 2016

With complete CAUTION an FINGERS CROSSED.

15 Nov 2016

**shrugs**
Here goes, I vote after researching the candidate, and discovering their platform and how intelligent the platform is. I do not vote how someone talks, 90% of the time when research is done upon how the candidate votes on various issues it is not what they claim to support.

I have zero qualms on making it clear I voted for Obama twice and that while the healthcare IS a dismal failure, there needs to be things done to make it affordable. I do not believe nor support the pharmaceutical industry because very simply the drugs can be made more affordable for those in need.

And everyone has heard of the scams where prices on drugs have been made outrageous just because the company has control of the production and the market of it. The fact those companies have governmental support in how their control of the market was made, and the CEO's of those companies move out of the US to avoid lawsuits and monopoly/trust suits by the government also inspire Me on how to vote.

***seriously frowns***

I have zero trust in the government or governmental control of any issue and those who do support that stance will always find Me in opposition to them. Nominally when I'm told to do something I tend to go the other way first.

My universe may not necessarily agree with your's, but you have every right that you live happily in both.
Respect mine and I will respect yours. I fought and risked death for the right to be whom I am, even if I am clueless as to whom that may be.
I do not like the dark spots in My brain, but the spider webs are even worse.
Combat Veteran covers a vast arena, third degree burns from friendly fire with a disgruntled shipmate, stab wound from someone who felt is was permissible to hit a Lady with a twelve pack of alcohol; hit by a pickup truck by an individual on heroin. Was very quick to disabuse them of those ideas. Its all about control, only need physical contact in approximately 7 points of the body to enact terminal velocity upon those vermin.

21 Mar 2017

I'm a proud moderate independent who does his research on each and every candidate before voting as I have a civic duty to be a well informed voter otherwise the democratic process is nothing but a popularity contest. Wait, it is a popularity contest now since the population seems to be filled mostly with uniformed stupid people voting.