Participatory Democracy in the United States

11/14/24 Here's an idea. What if every person who voted asked for a copy of exactly who they voted for from the place they voted, so they could take home the paper, see "who they voted for," and compare and contrast with friends and strangers? Like comparing graded tests after school. This would provide a little more security about elections. Not a lot, but a little. This is especially important if you honestly don't see any inauguration speech being packed with people unless they were paid to pack the place, because that means it's pretty likely that the president did not lawfully become said president. Think about it.

10/7/23 For my choices for state and national elections and issues for 2024 and 2025 see the Texas section. I will be adding to it with my reasoning. 5/13/24 Suggestion: in order to vote in a large group, no matter who you are voting for, it makes a lot of sense to discuss voting plans with everyone you can within a reasonable time frame before the election itself. This year, that's in late October / early November for the national election. Therefore, it probably makes sense to do this starting at the beginning of August. 7/16/24 Political campaign signs put in people's yards and campaigning from door to door is in my opinion at best morally questionable and at worst evil. It's an attempt to create a mob mentality, not an attempt to further actual improvements in government. You want a yard sign? You want a bumper sticker? Here's one I suggest: Stop voting for idiots. Research who and what's on the ballot before you vote.

Note 2/9/23 it's been brought to my attention that a lot of folks believe city, county, city, and local government don't matter because they'll be overruled at the state and federal levels anyway. That is wildly inaccurate. Yeah, they'll be overruled on the stuff that makes the news, sure. But in my experience it's at this level of government you will find the local good ol' boy network parasitizing their communities without any oversight. Try something if you can, right now. Look up YOUR city's website and its legal ordinances, and spend some time clicking around for the rules they draft. Do you like what you see? Being realistic here, also, the place you can have the most impact and make government the most transparent is at the local level. It also is in my experience even more ugly and corrupt than state and federal governments combined, often because wherever the city government allows the community to see what they are up to, no one pays any attention. Collaboration at the local level of government, and even for each neighborhood, heck or apartment complex or street, simply does not exist anymore. That has to change or frankly we are all sunk.

2020 really drove home one thing: if you are over 18 and not a felon, you are to blame for who is in charge, especially if you didn't vote. The responsibility for selecting the right leaders and judges and political officials is yours. That's a lot of power, and it takes a lot of work to pull it off so that you don't hire the wrong person. Personally I researched the people I voted for over the course of two months. Also every ballot measure, and I looked through the legal cases of every judge on the ballot before I voted. I looked at every website I could for every politician on the ballot, even the local dudes. Wikipedia, OnTheIssues, Reuters, all kinds of news sources, their campaign websites, followthemoney.org, every place I could find even a scrap of info. Seriously anyone telling me to "do my research" ever again is getting a big fat middle finger.
So apparently many people either don't vote at all or vote blindly based on red vs. blue and in-your-face propaganda, aka whoever is wearing the right colors and makes them feel good. If people, including you and everyone you know, would start voting for each candidate and issue on the ballot based on good background research as well as individual qualifications, to hire only those with the most merit for the job, things would change. Relatively quickly. If this idea catches on and the two-party system bites the dust sooner rather than later, then I believe things will change for the better in this country sooner rather than later also. As in, we could have most major problems here solved by 2025. But you, and everyone you know, all have to vote, and spread this idea, in every single minor and major, local and state and national, election until then. That's a lot of elections. That's a lot of research. It still beats what our soldiers go through to give us this right, and it sure as hell beats trying to gain rights through civil war and violence.
A website that helps you register to vote Turbovote
How Elections Work: USA.gov/election
A comprehensive guide for how to get involved Instructable Guide
Sample ballots: Ballotpedia Vote-USA BallotReady
Federal Elections Commission – candidates for public office are required by law to disclose where they get their funding, and you can find at least some of that data here FEC
Follow The Money – a nonprofit website that details where candidates get their funding. Generally more detailed than the FEC Follow The Money
On The Issues: summarizes candidates’ viewpoints On The Issues
VoteSmart: another website that attempts to summarize candidates’ viewpoints; a little clunkier and harder to use but still valuable VoteSmart
Note 1: just like communicating with a business or company to provide feedback, you can email, call or write letters to the public officials who represent you, including judges, Senators, members of Congress, Governors, and of course those in the White House. I have actually seen changes happen in my life that were possibly thanks to this so don’t knock it.
Note 2: Without a sample ballot, it’s nearly impossible to figure out who will be on it without something like a week’s worth of research. They usually aren’t complete, so you have to look at multiple sample ballots unless you’re a mail-in voter and have the luxury of a few days to look at your real ballot.
Note 3: The Democrat and Republican internal political machinery are in charge of which candidates get the most publicity and funding. There is little to no oversight or transparency for both parties. Therefore, it is wise to do your own research about candidates instead of blindly accepting who these parties choose to endorse
Here are a couple of my personal tricks for knowing who to vote for and why: 1. use a process of elimination. Skim the websites, Follow The Money, and other social media presence of the candidates to find things that you find 100% unacceptable, and then rule out those candidates. Saves a lot of time. 2. upon trying to look at judges and vote for them, actually look at their records of court cases and see if you accept their rulings. This is the worst, really, but it is also arguably the most important stuff on the ballot. 3. Break up the workload so you only look into a total of five to ten different candidates per day starting a couple of months before the mail-in ballot arrives or the election date.
2/4/23 USA Jobs is a government website. If you are really p'o'd enough to talk about how much you want change in this country then like, seriously consider working for the government. Don't just consider the openings on that website but also what in your local area needs doing. Usually local politics are overlooked by the people that live there, and then they wonder why things are shitty. They're every bit as shady and underhanded as the stuff at the state and federal level if not more so. Look closely. And if you don't like what you see consider being part of the change. Nothing is going to happen without courage, sweat, and quite a bit of strategic action.
8/29/23 If you really think about it, just about every major problem in the US boils down to a hiring problem. Think of it like this: we are all the human resources department. We vote for city, state, and federal officials, right? But how many people vet the candidates properly. How many do background checks. What sort of credentials do we ask of our elected officials, especially the ones with the most temporal power? We're human resources but we ain't doing our job right. That is why the most profoundly under-qualified people wind up in the situations and places which have the toughest problems. Then we wonder why everything gets f'd. Huh. It would be a good start to vote for people with more college education in the relevant fields, and less charisma. One very specific example of this is teachers: if any given place tripled teacher salaries while also voting in people with Masters degrees and Doctorates in the entire local and state education system, in about ten years that place's economy would no longer stagnate. Nor would it have a poor quality of life. If you don't believe me, take a closer look at the places that are moving in that direction right now and take a glance at them from time to time over the next ten years.
5/20/24 Voting is apparently a little like the 3 Rs of being eco-friendly: an expandable definition. As reduce, reuse, recycle has become refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, refurbish, repair (etc.) voting involves more than meets the eye. You can do more than you think you can. So here are the ways I can think of: 1. You can vote for national, state, and local offices and issues; everything on every ballot. As long as you're not a felon. 2. You can attempt to vote with your dollars for everything you think is ethical and good enough to buy. Including and especially financial stuff like banking, rent, bills. 3. You can vote with your feet for the place you decide to live in, if you have the choice. 4. You can flood the Internet with reviews on review sites for everything you think is noteworthy enough for it, such as struggling but very good local businesses. 5. You can vote for the corporations you support with your stocks or other direct investments such as angel investing (mutual funds and ETFs are more vague; you don't know what's in them). 6. You can choose your friends and who you decide to associate with and support in any way. 7. You can choose your workplace, career, job, or anything that kind of meets that criteria; at least in some cases. 8. You can choose your lifestyle, and as I've mentioned previously, you have a lot more control over this than you seem to in a lot of cases. A lifestyle has a lot of areas that you can customize. If you have a choice in any small aspect of it, you can choose as you like.
9/15/24 If you really want to make an impact as big as possible, then here's a way you can research political candidates and other stuff on the ballot before voting. Get a notebook and a pen, or something similar, and as you research, write down (summarize as much as possible) the reasons why you vote for each candidate or issue and why you won't for the others. Imagine that you are going to show this to all your family and friends, because the idea here is that this way you easily can. Ask each if they want to see it first. Then take a picture of it on your phone and send it their way, or type it up and send out copies via email or even snail mail, whatever. This way you don't need to blab at them for hours, and whoever in the family or friend group is the best at researching can dig up all the dirt for everyone else. This is not, however, a substitute for each person needing to do their own research on everything on the ballot! Consider the ethical ramifications of not doing this and how many people have literally died for democracy over the years, and the kind of life you'd live in a monarchy or dictatorship, and you'll see why it's important to vote as well as you can.

Big Brain Time

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