Use your Vote Responsibly

Vote with a full deck.

Why your vote counts

 It can be easy to get sucked in to the idea that your vote doesn’t matter. Some people go as far as to say that elections are rigged from the start. But when it comes right down to basic third grade principles, those who don’t participate get left behind. The 2010 election cycle saw the republicans make a record setting comeback to holding the congressional majority. In past years the democrats have done the same. So what can we learn from the fact that who is in power now will not necessarily be who is in power tomorrow? I think the most important lesson learned from massive takeovers in the house is that when people come together and vote there is nothing a politician can do but wait to see if they still have a job tomorrow. 

Sometimes it's true

What to watch out for

With such power in your hands as to change the direction of your country, it is important to make a decision you can live with in the morning. It is the politician’s job during an election however to appeal to as broad a section of the population as possible. This is why they never fully answer questions and tend to speak in generalities. There are two tactics used by politicians’ to gain your vote that can lean very heavily toward the wrong side of the truth. The first thing is they will form coalitions. A politician will only form a coalition with a group or organization if there are votes in it for them, and you can rest assured that no vote was ever given for free. The second potentially dishonest tactic used by politicians is the use of hot button issues. While there are hot button issues that really matter to our country such as healthcare and spending, there are many more issues that only seem important because the amount of emotion involved makes everything else cloudy. There are some things a politician can say they stand for or will fight for that is meant to invoke an emotional need for you to vote for them.

How to make your vote count

Now that you have a small idea of what you’re up against what can you do to make sure a politician is on the up and up with their coalitions, and how can you stop from being sucked into an emotional vote? When it comes to coalitions you can start on a candidate’s website if you just want to see what they’d like you to know. But all too often we must dig deeper in order to see what lies beneath. One way of doing this is to type link: directly followed by the URL of their website into your Google or Yahoo search box. This will display all the URL’s of people and organizations who are sending traffic to the website in question. By clicking on the links you will be taken to the page linking to the candidate where you can see why they are sending the candidate traffic and what they think of the candidate. Rest assured that if your candidate says they are for small business but are hiding the fact that they are in coalition with a union, they might just have a conflict of interest.

Not getting sucked into giving an emotional vote is much more personal, and although I am pointing out some of these hot button issues this is not the forum to discuss them in great detail. One such hot button topic designed to evoke an emotional vote is abortion. While it might seem good to vote for someone who is on your side of the fence regarding such an issue you have to ask yourself if there are any other reasons to give them your vote. A good sign that a candidate is trying to get your emotional vote is that the things they are running on create heated debates where no one person can ever win. Many of these topics in one form or the other have been argued for thousands of years and will continue to be debated so long as we are free.

 Possible hot button topics

• Abortion
• Pro-Life
• Global Warming
• Gun Control
• Welfare
• Capital Punishment
• Sanctity of Life
• Embryonic Stem Cell Research
• Separation of Church and State
• Same Sex Marriage
• Poverty
• War

These hot button issues often provoke highly emotional responses in the average voter and are used to gain votes without providing further substance. It is dangerous to hand your vote over regardless of a candidate’s views on other subjects, but that is the aim of any candidate running on an emotional ticket.

It’s up to you

In the end it is up to you and you alone who you vote for. And no one should ever tell you who to vote for. It is not always possible to know exactly who you are voting for. It is however possible to educate yourself sufficiently as to not get caught up in the distractions a candidate might through your way. I challenge you to use the tactics I have suggested the next time you get ready to vote. I challenge you to never vote a straight ticket. I challenge you to learn just one thing about a candidate that they might not want you to know before voting. And I further challenge you to get your children involve in family discussions about how important there vote is. If we all learn to pay better attention to who we are voting for we will no doubt end up electing stronger candidates who are there to do our bidding not their own.

I look forward to reading your comments on this topic. I am especially interested in knowing what other hot button emotional topics you think candidates use to cloud voters judgment. If you have any tips on what to look out for that would be appreciated as well.