Saturday, October 25, 2008

civic duty

I exercised my right to vote the other day (we have mail-in ballots in Oregon). I decided to vote for one of the two main party candidates for president. (Betcha can't guess which one, based on my blogs! And the fact that I've been tempted to buy one of those "1.20.09" bumper stickers for oh, nearly 4 years now...). Although it's frustrating to have only two choices and neither of them perfect, I am much more in favor of a slight change over no change. So...here's hoping!

For state offices I voted for some Pacific Green Party candidates if they looked good. The Pacific Green Party advertises its candidates as a "Peace Slate." So that's encouraging! But I buckled to the pressure of the "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" mentality that perhaps cost the election in 2000, if we don't count the possibility of malfunctioning (read: tampered-with) voting machines.

At any rate, I hope whoever is the next president deals with foreign policy in a way that is cooperative with other nations in areas of ecology, economy and (I couldn't think of another e-word) "terrorism," and avoid being a terrorist nation ourselves.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like your thinking, Cherice. On my desk above my head is pasted "1/20/09 The end of an Error". Sounds like we agree, if I didn't know already. Also, for exactly the reasons you give, I didn't vote for Nader or Green Party candidates. I can argue with myself that my one vote won't elect my favorite of the two major parties and therefore my vote will be more noticed if I vote "Green", but I just can't bring myself to it!

Gr. Ralph

Robin M. said...

In California, Nader is running on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket, which makes him even more irrelevant in my opinion. Cynthia McKinney is the Green Party candidate. I voted for her in the primary. I have clipped the Green recommendations for our state & local propositions into my calendar.