beatrice_otter | (Reply)

I know that, when I was in my twenties, I didn't vote in local elections mostly because I never knew when they were happening. It was the early 1990s. We didn't have a TV, and we didn't get a newspaper, and we didn't have the internet. I don't know if the younger folks now have barriers to finding out about those elections or if they're just not paying attention. I kind of suspect the latter. It's so very easy to find out who's running and what the ballot initiatives are and all of that.

At this point, I vote in every election that I can. I missed one August primary about three years back because my sister suddenly came in from Georgia (two weeks notice, not long enough to get an absentee ballot) and dragged me off to see our grandmother who I hadn't seen in a couple of years. I missed last November's election, and that... Well, I was going to get an absentee ballot because I knew that I was going to be too sick to get to the polls (surgery in August, radiation in October and November), but when I checked the ballot online (I love having that option!), there was one candidate running unopposed for city council and nothing else. I'd voted for her in the primary and was quite content to see her get elected.

My main reason for liking Bernie Sanders is that I think he's pulling Hillary Clinton to the left just a bit. I like the things he talks about as what he wants to do, but... I never expected him to win the nomination, and if he did get elected, I very much doubt that he could implement all of these ideas. I'm pretty confident that, if Hillary embraces some of those goals, she will at least stand a chance of making a start on them. I consider her, as a candidate, to be more likely to be in a position to have an effect on down ticket races.

I agree with my mother and some other folks who I've seen point out that nobody has really pulled out Sanders' dirty laundry yet, and a lot of that is stuff he's said and done as part of the public record. Clinton's has been raked over and over and over. I don't think that there's anything hiding in Clinton's closet that will suddenly burst out and make new people hate her.

I'm on a ton of political mailing lists. There are some I'm not sure I should be on because I can tell from how things are said that the writers are assuming that everyone they're sending to is part of a particular minority group, and, well, I'm a white, cis, het, middle class woman. I don't feel comfortable signing, for example, a petition for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who support the Black Lives Matter movement. I have no clue how I got on that mailing list or how I got on the Latina activists lists or why my state's teacher's union thinks I'm a teacher or...

I'm also pretty dubious about the usefulness of me signing-- this one has come through about four times in the last two days-- a petition demanding that Donald Trump denounce right to work laws. I'm not keen on right to work laws, but I also think that trying to get Trump to do anything of the sort is a waste of everybody's time. I think Hell will freeze over before Trump does anything pro-union. (I would sign something like that to my governor and state representatives and such. They might actually pay attention. Well, the governor probably wouldn't because he loathes unions, but still.)