Offensive content

This edition of my blog is designed to offend. It is meant to provoke you, to annoy you, and perhaps even to inspire you. It is about that most offensive of subjects, politics.

Worse yet, it is about voting.

I'm not going to discuss the possible vote-rigging that may be built into electronic voting machines [1]. Nor am I going to take a position "fer or agin" any particular piece of legislation or political party. All I am going to do is to urge you to go our and vote. But please don't vote unless you are going to do it intelligently.

In other words, I want you to think before you go into that little booth [2]. Know who your representatives and senators are, and what their positions and votes are [3]. In this information age, you have no excuse for not knowing these things. None. And just to make it abundantly clear how simple it is to get the information, I'm going to provide you with the four strongest tools available for finding them out:

The US Senate's list of senators

The US House of Representatives list of representatives

The guide to legislation in the Congress (Thomas)

The official voting records for the US Senate and House of Representatives

However, whatever you do, don't rely on the official sites of any of the parties. They all lie and distort the positions to make themselves look good. Only an idiot would believe them, just as only an idiot would be a "yellow dog democrat" or a "elephantine republican" and vote a straight party ticket just because it was the party he's a member of. And don't rely on the soi disant independant sites, such as the Swift Boat Veterans. Most of these are hatchet jobs, dedicated to bringing the dirty tricks of the 1920's into the internet age. Newspapers are slightly better, if you have the time to read more than one. But the best method is still checking out the information for yourself.

Now, if you are still too busy watching "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" to spend twenty friggin' minutes looking up who is in and how they've voted, here's an easier way to vote. I had it from Mark Twain, and give it to you, gratis. Simply check to see if the candidate is currently in office. If they are, then vote them out. Assume that they are corrupt, and misrepresent your needs for their own benefit. 90% of the time you will be right. And at least 60% of the time, you will be voting in a lesser bastard than the one you are voting out [4].

Now, with those two alternative, you really have no excuse not to go out and vote. So do it - or suffer my relentless smugness over the fact that I did and you didn't for the next two years...

John

[1] For a discussion describing exactly how the new machines can be hacked, see John Stoke's report on
"How to steal an election by hacking the vote". For examples of how paper votes have been hacked, see the history books (start with Tammany Hall and work up from there).

[2] You can't get any more offensive than that, can you?

[3] When in doubt, trust the way they have voted. Words are cheap, and deeds can be expensive. A vote is as close to performing a deed as most politicians get, so look at their voting record - and look it up yourself! Why? Because politicians lie. There was one slimebag in Oklahoma who sent out a mailer bragging about how he had killed a bill to "kill unborn babies for experimental purposes". When I looked up the bill, it was actually legislation sponsored by the March of Dimes aimed at getting more and healthier babies to be born by operating on birth defects in vivo. So much for his honesty and his "pro-life" position.

[4] Notable exceptions do exist, of course. Katherin Harris in Florida springs to mind.  But, as a rule of thumb, it works reasonably well.