Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Super Tuesday! I Didn't Vote

My generation is lazy and for the most part don't vote. It annoys me and I try to make up for it by voting for them, but apparently that's not allowed. Today is the Florida Primary and I was actually excited to vote. After past election snafus, I had made sure that I was registered and good to go.

Back in 2000 I voted absentee in Florida for the general Presidential election. I had just moved to Vermont so I am ashamed to say that my country quite possibly "lost" my vote along with many other absentee ballots that year. This is not conjecture. This actually happened to some of those ballots. My vote may not have counted.

In the 2004 election I was registered to vote in Vermont and fully planned on voting in the presidential primary, but Vermont holds it very late in the primary season and by the time the election rolled around, 35 other states had already decided the outcome and my vote was useless.

While I feel the primary is important, this is a perfect example of why all of the primaries need to be at the same time. Why do other states have a greater opportunity to impact the general election?

It happened again today on Super Tuesday. I proudly walked across the street to Precinct 33 to vote. My name wasn't on the ballot. The septuagenarian quickly accessed the voter registration file via wi-fi on her laptop and told me where I should be. 3 miles away. Stupid. So I head there - I'm directed to a voting booth. I'm taught how to use the touch screen. Vote on the Amendment and it says "Congratulations". Apparently I was done.

I wasn't offered a choice for presidential candidate. When I moved back to Florida a year ago, I didn't choose Republican or Democrat as my party. And by not doing so, I wasn't permitted to choose one of "their candidates". Florida has a closed primary. So once again, my vote does not count.

I didn't even want to vote Yes or No for the amendment. Basically it says that if you own property and want to defer tax credits for non-school district properties and you haven't done this before and you've lived in Florida for over 12 months but don't have kids or dependents and you might be moving but you're not sure and you'd like to carry over and tax relief credits from a previous property that was more than $500,000 but was in an area that's more than 60% zoned commercial you can do so if you are married and have never inhaled.

I'm not stupid but it made no sense.

YES
NO

That was my option.

Ultimately Florida lost all of its 210 Democratic delegates for allocating delegates outside of the Democratic National Committee-approved time frame. So my vote was useless anyway. Thanks!

I really don't know how to end this. I'm full of rage. There's so little voter education. It's no wonder my generation is apathetic. I vote WHATEVER.

1 comment:

  1. Well, next tuesday I'll be voting. I registered as a democrat, so i could vote in the primaries, but my state is "open" so I guess you can vote no matter who you are. the person i was going to vote for is no longer an option. AGH!
    Fire flower

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