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No Vote

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Clarissa

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I just realized something really weird. In the 17 years I spent on this continent, I never voted here. Ever. For somebody as interested in politics as I am, it’s pretty bizarre.

First, I didn’t have citizenship in Canada, so I couldn’t vote. Then I got citizenship but there was no election. Then I left and again wasn’t a citizen. Then I cane back but there was no election. Then I left and wasn’t a citizen.

The only elections I ever participated in were a couple of fake elections back in Ukraine in the 1990s. North American democracy, however, has slipped by me.

I now feel kind of deficient over this.

20 responses to “No Vote”

  1. Dreidel Avatar
    Dreidel

    “I now feel kind of deficient over this.”

    Well, with the U.S.’s mostly winner-take-all electoral vote system, your vote might not have mattered that much in your state, anyway.

    Back after the 1972 election, an (older and far more liberal) friend lamented over drinks the fact that he was turning 40. He said that adulthood was overrated — that all it got you was the right to vote and to drink.

    Then he described his voting record in the Presidential elections between 1952 and 1972: “DEFEAT – DEFEAT – DEATH -DISGRACE- DEFEAT- DEFEAT,” and added than on the whole he’d done better drinking.

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  2. Editor (Retired) Avatar
    Editor (Retired)

    Don’t despair, elections are like buses. If you miss one, there’s always another one just around the corner.

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    1. Dreidel Avatar
      Dreidel

      I don’t have a webpage, or I’d “Like” your comment. But I did give you a thumbs-up. 🙂

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The problem here is lack of citizenship rather than lack of elections. 🙂 I’m failing to live in the country of my citizenship.

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  3. David P. Bellamy Avatar
    David P. Bellamy

    Is it not possible for you to vote via absentee ballot in Canada?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It’s possible but I think it is morally wrong to vote in a country where you haven’t lived for years and are not planning to live ever again.

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      1. David P. Bellamy Avatar
        David P. Bellamy

        “It’s possible but I think it is morally wrong to vote in a country where you haven’t lived for years and are not planning to live ever again.”

        I see your point.

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  4. Jones Avatar
    Jones

    You could simply buy your politicians the way we do …

    Who wins, who loses … who cares?

    Just buy them again after the next election! 🙂

    [yes, you too can be corrupt in a pragmatic way]

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    1. Dreidel Avatar
      Dreidel

      Actually, you can bribe politicians in America, but in general you can’t buy elections — regardless of all the Katzenjammer from the far left about the death blow to democracy from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

      Prominent example: Ask the Koch brothers have much $$$$$$$$$$$ they spent getting Scott Walker the Republican nomination.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        I agree. I was one of the people who were going nuts over Citizens United and I still believe it was a bad decision. However, I have to recognize that it’s had no effect on anything. Money definitely doesn’t buy elections in this country. Trump hasn’t had to spend almost anything in this campaign and look at the results. And Bernie is spiking in the polls because of several things none of which is money.

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        1. Stringer Bell Avatar
          Stringer Bell

          While that may be true for Presidential elections, I don’t believe it’s true for local and statewide elections.

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          1. Stringer Bell Avatar
            Stringer Bell

            In addition, money may not buy the candidate of your choice but it can buy the policy of your choice. Who cares if it’s a democrat or a republican rubber stamping the bill when you wrote it yourself?

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      2. Jones Avatar
        Jones

        Heaven forfend that I would be able to use great heaps of filthy lucre to get in the way of the election process!

        Besides, I always buy my politicians after they’ve won. 🙂

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  5. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    “Prominent example: Ask the Koch brothers have much $$$$$$$$$$$ they spent getting Scott Walker the Republican nomination.”

    Not sure this example illustrates your point. So he flamed out in the big leagues and was shown to be a complete idiot.

    But then you’d have to ask if he were such an incompetent idiot with zero charisma how did he get to be governor of a decent-sized blue state? Must be some force propelling him, no?

    Citizens united was such an awful decision.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      He was elected for the same reason people of Illinois not only elected but are now still supporting Rauner. The same people who are being denied medical care because of his personal whim are passionately supporting him. I’d love to believe that money is somehow involved but things are much, much worse. Bluntly put, people are idiots.

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        In the end I have to wonder, then, why do corporations send so much money on elections if money doesn’t matter? Wall Street, an industry devoted to the idea to making money somehow wastes millions of dollars on elections for no good reason? Why do candidates spend so much time fundraising and dialing for dollars if money isn’t important?

        Isn’t this a simple Occam’s razor situation? If money weren’t important in elections, we wouldn’t see money in elections. I can’t find a more convincing argument than this.

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        1. Dreidel Avatar
          Dreidel

          “why do corporations send so much money on elections if money doesn’t matter?”

          Because it (money) matters if the candidates that they supported happen to get elected.

          You actually answered your own question in your next post: “While money doesn’t buy elections, it does buy politicians, whether they intend to be bought or not.”

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        2. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Oh, there is a million reasons. You know all these “charitable organizations” where people spend $10,000 a plate at a charitable dinner to help battle starvation in the Kongo? They know very well that not a dime will reach the starving but they are happy to pay because it’s a matter of prestige, of marking the belonging to a certain circle, a way of showing up an acquaintance, etc. It’s the same as when I buy handbag #20 but on a grander scale. The point of the handbag is not to put things into it.

          None of this cancels the fact that Citizens United was a bad decision.

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  6. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Nice article that echoes my point.

    http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/02/09/soros-there-is-no-idyllic-pre-citizens-united-era-to-return-to/

    While money doesn’t buy elections, it does buy politicians, whether they intend to be bought or not. Anyone who has tried to sell a product, or otherwise asked someone for something, understands the subtle pull these interactions have. If politicians were immune to that pull, former Representative Barney Frank noted, they “would be the only people in the history of the world who, on a regular basis, took money from perfect strangers and made sure it had no effect on them.”

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  7. Jones Avatar
    Jones

    I offer this whimsical parody in verse form that “echoes my point” by way of The Beatles making a walk through the City of London en route to Canary Wharf … 🙂

    Money buys me laws, laws
    Money buys me laws

    I’ll make you a corporate retirement thing
    If it’ll buy your vote tonight
    I’ll name you the head of anything
    If it’ll buy your vote tonight
    ‘Cos I don’t care if it’s too much money
    For money can buy me laws

    I’ll give you the support you’ll need
    If you give to me your vote
    I may have a lot to fuel your greed
    And a stripper for your boat
    I don’t care if it’s too much money
    For money can buy me laws

    Money buys me laws
    Everybody knows it’s so
    Money buys me laws
    Make it so, so, so!

    Say you don’t need my sponsorship
    And I’ll be scandalised
    Tell me you want some honest tips
    And I’ll make sure you fry
    I won’t care if it’s too much money
    Money buys me laws

    Money buys me laws
    Everybody knows it’s so
    Money buys me laws
    Watch ’em go, go, go!

    Try to do me with a guilt trip
    And you’ll be penalised
    Throw our deal in a nearby skip
    And the press will flay your hide
    I won’t care if it’s too much money
    Money buys me laws

    Money buys me laws, laws
    Money buys me laws …

    [to the tune of “Can’t Buy Me Love” from some of the original “tax exiles ’round the corner”, known as The Beatles …]

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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