I Don't Like Voting For You Because You Always Break My Heart

Every single election cycle I hear the same message from Gay Inc.: you have to go vote, and you have to vote Democrat. Anything else, apparently, would lead to utter disaster. You simply can't vote for an evil, bad Republican, and voting for a third party… I mean, who even does that? Third parties are totally for hippies, nut jobs, and tin-hat wearers, amiright?

Every. Single. Year. The same exact message.

And you know what? The message is wrong. You should vote for whomever you think will best represent you. Period.

Vote (dem) Or Die

It's funny to me that every time I mention in a group that I want to vote for a Green Party or (god forbid) Socialist candidate the whole group gasps and stares at me with bewilderment. How could I vote for someone other than a Democrat! Everyone knows that if I vote for anyone other than the Democrat, I'll be "wasting" my vote and then the evil, vile, blood-thirsty Republican will eat me in my sleep. Seriously, everyone knows that. Just ask your average LGBT person at the gay bar, they'll tell you all about it.

But here's the thing: your average Democrat doesn't represent my beliefs. Most Democrats don't support full marriage equality, the unequivocal repeal of DADT, the inclusion of LGB and T folks in the civil rights bills, completely universal health care, stronger, larger government enterprises regulating more business and industry, free higher education, publicly subsidized political campaigns, etc. They simply don't support those causes. Occasionally Democrat X or Y might support one or two of these, but never more than that. Why should I accept that my representative only represents a tiny, tiny portion of what I believe in?

It's All Fun And Games Until The Conservative Wins

So then we're told that if I do go and vote for a third party candidate, I'm wasting my vote and hurting the candidate that is at least left-leaning. I've got two questions about that: why does that barely leftist candidate deserve my vote? And, will she really represent me better than the slightly right-leaning candidate? People that make this statement also assume that I would vote for the Democrat in the first place, which at this point is no longer the case. If the Democrat does not support my views, I will find a candidate that does and vote for them. So it follows that ultimately that vote that I cast for my non-mainstream candidate does not harm the mainstream candidate's chances.

It Ain't Easy Being Green

Was I under any delusion that a Green Party candidate or other far left party candidate was going to win this last election? No. But I do believe that me voting for the candidate that I truly support will send a message that Democrats cannot count on my vote any longer until they are willing to support my views.

"But they can't do anything if they aren't in power," some say. To which I reply "Oh really? Look what the Republicans did the last two years!" Not only did they halt the government, but they went back to the drawing board and reassessed their platform. They listened to the far-right in their party and they assimilated that platform. And you know what? It worked for them! For now at least… it'll blow up in their faces in a couple years, but they won in the short term.

If the Democrats want my vote, they need to earn it. Stand up for me, fight for me, pass the legislation you said you would pass. Until then, I'm throwing my weight behind someone who will do those things.

Voter Suppression: The Biggest BS Of All

One of the most interesting thing I noticed this election cycle was the huge, exhaustive effort the various groups employed to essentially suppress voter turn-out. Voter suppression is a tactic as old as voting itself. The idea is to get your opponents supporters to not vote by any means possible. While out-right suppressive techniques are illegal, less obvious tactics are in a bit more of a grey area on the legality scale, and with nameless corporations and "super PACs" now able to spend endless money, these murky techniques are starting to show as the new par.

No Votes En Nevada

The most obvious voter suppression effort this election cycle happened in Nevada. A group posing as concerned Latino voters spent a good amount of money on a campaign to convince other Latino voters to simply not vote. Their supposed philosophy was that since none of the candidates had done anything to actually help Hispanic voters, voters should not support the candidates with their votes. Sounds reasonable enough, right? I mean, why vote if you don't think any of the candidates will help you?

Perhaps that would make sense if the vast majority of Hispanic Nevadans were not registered Democrats on course to vote Democrat again. And maybe it would make sense if the organization behind the push wasn't run by former members of various different Republican campaigns. When put into that light, it becomes a bit more disturbing. This organization was blatantly trying to convince Latino people to give up their right to vote because with less people voting Democrat, the Republican candidate would have a much better chance to win the election.

The truly amazing thing about it? There's not a damn thing that can be done about it. Per the Supreme Court, this private organization has the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on the campaign, regardless of the former ties to any related campaign and regardless of their obvious attempts at voter suppression.

Ooops... Did I Give You The Wrong Address?

What else did I see? A new way to vote was introduced this year to many Illinois voters: vote by mail! No need for absentee ballots, this was billed as another convenient way to due your patriotic duty. Here in Chicago, one particular organization was passing out information to people downtown with registration cards that you could quickly fill out and mail in to get registered. It was even postage paid, how easy is that?! Except that the address on the included envelope was not the correct address for voter registration… minor details.

Potentially thousands of Chicagoans sent off their "voter registration" so they could vote on their own time, but they never received their mail-in ballot. Many of those likely did not vote at all because they just never got their voting information. This all could have been just a mistake on the printing organization's part… but it's not likely. The organization claims they were receiving the registrations at their office so they could enter the voter information into their database and then forwarding those registrations on the the correct office. Right... I'm sure every one of those registrations made it to the correct office in time...

No Homo... Seriously

Something a bit more close to home was a campaign that "organically" popped up just a few weeks ago. Many gay blogs, and national news media outlets, were floating the idea of not voting at all as a protest to our Democratic overlords for not acting on enough of our causes. I use the "" because there's pretty much no reason for this argument to come up, particularly on the politically focused and active blogs I read. Yet there it was: Gays shouldn't vote because none of the candidates are supporting us.

It's very interesting when you see the statistics that LGBT folk, by and large, vote 75% Democrat. Yet all of the sudden, people within the movement were advocating a non-vote. Hmmmm...

Is this sounding familiar?

Stop Whining And Frackin' Vote Already

Were there Liberal groups doing this same thing to the Conservative base groups? Were churches hearing that they shouldn't vote because neither candidate was supportive of their causes? I honestly have no clue. I don't live in right-wing land, and I'm not a Conservative, so I'm not in a position to know, but I wouldn't be surprise. What is clear to me is that the large machine behind the parties were convinced that the best way to win an election was not to offer up a compelling case for your candidate, but to just stop your opponents supporters from expressing the voting rights. That is really, really sad.

If there's any take away from this it is this: If someone is telling you not to vote, you should question their motives. If someone is telling you they are considering just not voting, you should question their decision-making process. Your vote is the ONLY actuall chance you have at affecting policy. Sure, you can write angry letters to your Senator, or protest in front of your Governor's office, but NOTHING is more effective in showing support or disdain than showing up to your polling place and casting your vote. Yes, it's only one vote, but your one vote is your only real voice in this democracy. Don't let someone else suppress your voice simply because it doesn't agree with their opinion of the world.

Time To Move To Canada...

Fuck you, all you stupid fucking ass wipe twits that thought it'd be fun times and happiness to repress gay people in Maine, and subsequently all of the US.  Why don't you pieces of shit just go ahead and put together the lynching mobs already? 

Oh, to clarify, Maine voters decided that marriage equality wasn't a good thing.  In fact, they decided that LGBT are simply dogs in the streets not worthy of any basic human rights at all...

Voting Problems Starting To Surface

If there is one person in this country that you don't want to screw up their voter information, I'd say it's probably the out-spoken Tim Robbins. Just throwing it out there that he could be the worst person to have his name "accidentally" fall off his polling location's roster. Oh, and making him stroll downtown to find a judge who can certify that he's allowed to vote at the same location he's voted for the previous 10 years? Yeah, I'm guessing that wouldn't go over well.

The good news here is he's rich and can take the time to go see a judge to square things away. But if that happened to you or I, would we have the luxury of that? Well, no, because Election Day is just another day in the business world. Us peons should be at work, working on work things and such, instead of out voter for liberals! Yeah, yeah, tin hat blah blah blah….

Anyway, CNN is reporting other issues as well. Given that I was told that I had voted too much this morning (??) before I had the official examine my ballot and verify it, and that there were a couple cases at my polling station of ballets being filled out before voters had touched them, and that we still rely on people that are hanging on to their last facilities to run polling stations, I'm starting to get a bit worried. I don't think I can deal with a third election being held hostage by shady tactics.

Looks like we'll have to wait a few more hours to really start to get a feel of how things are flowing.