Having Your Say

Since we just had an election, in which I certainly hope everyone voted, I greatly enjoyed this timely piece from Lowering the Bar about Susan B. Anthony's arrest for voting in 1872. That shows real dedication to the idea of participating in the political process.

As the piece notes, 'the "B" stood for "Badass."'*

There's a nice summary of her grave offense, arrest, trial and sentencing.


*Not really: it stood for 'Brownell,' which is less awe-inspiring but perhaps more dignified.

Go Forth and Be Counted

Oh, we have an election tomorrow. Hm. Better go exercise that franchise.

There's that whole presidential primary thing, I suppose, if you're into that.

But mainly, here in Massachusetts, we also have some ballot initiatives, like medical marijuana, assisted dying, some business regulation, and something about the public schools.

I am all over that. If you're in a Super Tuesday state, better go be all over it too. The democratic process needs us!

Yay! Also, Boo!

Faithful readers may have observed that I'm generally full of sunny good cheer when it comes to the idea of voting.

Go vote! It's a party in our system of government and every citizen who registered to vote is invited! Don't think of it as your civil duty: think of it as a civil privilege! Exercise the franchise! Yay!

It's enough to make you sick, how sunny and cheerful I am.

And then every time there's an election coming up, it gets to the point, right about now, where I really, really, cannot wait for the happy day to arrive, because I am totally sick of campaign ads.

Shut up and get off my television, campaign ads.

But go vote, everyone. Soon! Mercifully soon!

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Staying Out of the Process

LISNews passes on the word (from LJ) that Molly Raphael will be the next ALA president, and wonders:

Question for ALA members: Why does such a significant majority of members abstain from voting??

Apparently only about 20% of eligible ALA members voted, which is indeed pretty low. I can't answer the question as to why so many members don't vote, though. I did, and I don't even consider myself particularly involved with ALA (MLA is more my focus). I mean, voting was easy--you can do it online!

But if I were to hazard a guess as to the reason for the low turnout, I might say that a lot of people, like me, may not feel that intimately involved with ALA, so might not feel very invested in the election results.

Me, I didn't know much about either of the candidates, and they both seemed perfectly capable, so in a way I really needn't have voted because I didn't especially care who won...whoever's elected will probably do a fine job, so I'm cool either way. Why not let people who actually care do the voting and pick the leaders?

In a way, refraining from voting is just expressing trust in others, who may be more invested and know more about what's going on, to set the agenda. I know the 20% who vote will take care of us!* I don't need to think about it.

This works in all kinds of elections, too, not just ALA.


*Or, since I did in fact vote, you should know that you can trust me to take care of things. Oh yes, you can trust me! Don't mind the sinister cackling.
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More Voting

Not only did I get to vote on Tuesday with my fellow citizens of the U.S., but now I got to vote today (or anytime between yesterday and December 8, but I got to it today) with my fellow members of the Medical Library Association.

I'm just bristling with exercised franchise.

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Techno-Elections

Waiting for election results was a lot more engaging last night than it has been in the past. 

Not only were we flipping through the different TV channels (if you show a commercial, you're out!), I was also obsessively refreshing NBC and CNN online, and checking in on Twitter and Facebook for NPR updates and notes from fellow observers.

It was fun to see the comments on Facebook status lines and the Twitter updates, showing how people reacted as this or that state was called. Sharing the night with all those people, as well as the people physically in the room with me, added an element of broader interactivity.

Love those tech tools!

I Trust Everyone Voted Today

That is all.

Vote!

I hear today is the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment. Nice! 

I've always liked that amendment.