Participatory Democracy in the United States

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.

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.

Big Brain Time

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