It’s election day, and it’s time to get out and vote. I loved the comments from this "Disgruntled Republican", though, on why the uninformed should sit today out:
You should not let anyone shame you into voting. You should not vote unless you are real informed and confident in your decision. It is unpatriotic to cast an uninformed vote. What if you vote the wrong way and the person you vote for does something to really screw up the world? Do you want that responsibility?
Voting casually without being certain of your vote is wrong. Casting your vote should be a sober decision. Casting an unsure vote is sort of like driving drunk. So, if you don’t feel certain that you are qualified to vote or have adequately studied the issues; please don’t vote. If you get most of your news from Saturday Night Live and The Colbert Report, please do not vote.Some people will tell you that if you don’t vote you have no right to complain. That is just not true. By not voting, you are not giving up the right to complain.
I don’t want you to vote. You see, if you don’t vote, my vote carries more weight. If only 33% of the people vote, it is like I am voting for three people; if 50% of the people vote it is like I am voting for only two people. I don’t want you to dilute my vote. Let me vote for you.
I have a slightly different take. I say get out and vote. But please, vote responsibly.
And when the morrow comes, I should try to show some sympathy for those who have won a near impossible responsibility.
Nah … time to go fishing.
Igor says: lousy
We only have two real presidential choices to choose from. To even suggest that voting is shameful is to me unpatriotic.
The paragraph following (that didn’t get reproduced here) reads:
“You do know that if you vote, you will probably get called to jury duty? Also, I understand that this year immigration officials will be at the voting places looking for illegal immigrants. There are always a lot of police at the voting places too. A lot of outstanding warrants are served on Election Day. Voter registration records are public records so the police know who will be voting where on Election Day so it is easy pickings to serve warrants. I have heard that officials also stake out the voting place to look for people who are behind on their child support.”
Classy.
BeerdedOne,
Truly classy! But not as classy as the reports on universities where young democrats have been told that to avoid long waits they are extending time and you can vote on Wednesday. And even better……somehow a vote for Obama will limit your ability to receive financial aid for the following semester. Every four years the intimidation and scare tactics come out, but I don’t beleive it will matter today. And getting your info from The Colbert Report is no worse than Limbaugh show. Obama wins today with 382. God Bless all and go vote (regardless of for whom)!!!!
AZSULUKI, you’re dreaming. You shouldn’t pay so much attention to the smear sites. You shouldn’t insult todays college students with that garbage. The tracking polls showing Obama up by 7.5% is ludicrous. Sit tight. I know you’re desperate. It’s going to be close. I love the loonytunes already talking anarchy if Obama loses. Real classy
freemonster,
care to take a stab at final number????????
AZ, 284-274
freemonster,
ummmmm…….there are only 538 total electoral votes? anyhow….good luck…..we’ll know soon enough.
just kidding or bad arithmetic. It could be down to colorado. there are scenarios of an electoral win for mccain or even a 269-269 tie. but whoever wins they at least deserve respect for running this great nation. keeping the bad guys away should be job #1. respecting a president that you don’t agree with really tests your grit
Far be it for me to point out how horribly, absolutely, completely wrong freemonster is…
… but this reminds of of something that was once said about CIA analysts.
The quote could apply to anyone who lets their personal biases trump their actual knowlege… “They never learn a d*mned thing. They believe in their own ideology, and cannot accept reality intruding on it. So they keep making the same stupid mistakes, over and over again.”
Yos, spoken like a completely unbiased observer. Way to go
well i missed MT, ND, and MO but i was pretty close (and maybe one in Nebraska where they split up their 5……i had Obama takin one of those….but they’re still counting that district). I can take no credit for my “guess” though. It was REAL easy. The media tried to convince us it was close because of the ratings (just like with hillary); Obama outperformed ALL BUT ONE STATE’s polls against Hillary; and the pollsters’ lack of reaching the cell phone only generation (which was overwellmingly for Obama) were just a few reasons that this race was over the day Obama was named the democratic nominee.
AZSaluki -
Pollsters (and fraudsters) leave Canadian cell phones alone, presumably because of the possibility of distracting someone while driving. I don’t know if this is true in the US, but I have heard that this is poisoning the well for the stats collected by phone-out pollsters. This can only get worse.
John-
Unsolicited cell phone calls are illegal in the U.S. because often we are charged for incoming calls.
I tried an experiment with a couple of the polls. When I read in the paper that “Blah-blah” was reporting an X% lead by Obama, I went to the company’s websites in search of methodology and margin of error.
I didn’t find it. I only tried it a couple of times, and with polls that weren’t big ones, but I rarely see margin of error reported or methodology.
I don’t have much faith in polls when for all I know, they only called a couple of dozen of their friends.
twist -
The Maritimes is phone support heaven (Atlantic time and bilingual work force) and one of the M clan is working for a phone support contractor. Without disclosing anything specific they remarked that they were phoning out for a major news service, and the question set was comprehensive and professional. However, without a path into a large and growing component of the target population heaven only knows how they can adjust for the systematic error — my guess is put in some fudge factor reflecting errors in their earlier poll results after the the fact.
John and Twist,
I guess they were pretty close (polled 7.5% and he won by 6%) nationally but I was looking state by state and it became clear that the “leaning mccain” and “tossup states” were actually “leaning obama” and “blue states.” Many of them anyway. Not sure how they can get polling done with more and more of my generation dropping the lan line. I guess maybe some of them build in a number that considers this fact. I also think that in 2012 there will be MUCH MORE internet polling as more people spend more time here.