US Elections: Should You Vote for the Party or the Candidate?

The US election season is in its final stretch and both political parties, along with their supporters, are doing everything they can to convince those who have not yet voted to throw their support behind that party’s candidate. The basic assumption is that most people vote along party lines because it’s easy and simple to pick a party and then just check everyone down one standard line. It doesn’t take much thinking or time, five minutes and you are done making your contribution towards the destruction of our country. This party-line voting attitude does make a certain amount of sense since most people are like sheep and most sheep like to walk in a straight pattern as opposed to a zig here and a zag there. However, if a voter is interested in making a positive contribution to the country’s political culture, then being sheep is the dumbest thing they can be. I fully admit that it can be tough to convince sheep to not act like sheep because sheep rarely think of themselves as sheep because sheep have such a bad reputation, even in the generally tight-knight bovine community.

In addition to the general inclination of people to be lazy, voters also get a bunch of information thrown at them showing the benefits of voting along party lines. Douchebags such as Rush Limbaugh and, particularly, Mike Gallagher (who is such an idiot he singularly disproves Darwin’s theory of evolution) spend hours every day convincing the sheep that they should follow one path instead of thinking outside the box. (By the way, I did try to think of influential liberal media personalities but I cannot think of even one whose influence comes close to matching that of their conservative counterparts.) Finally, the actions of political parties who tend to vote together on issues – the Republicans are particularly disciplined in this – also dissuades people from voting for individual candidates.

However, as I noted above, voters can only make a positive impact if they do their research and vote across party lines. For example, I am voting for both Democratic and Republican candidates because I firmly believe in voting for a person and there are good and smart people in both parties. This choice is not easy to make because it takes a lot of work and involves doing primary research on the candidates and their positions, and not basing the vote on the ratings given to candidates by the various political and lobbying organizations. The reason for this is quite simple, every political and lobbying organization has its own agenda and everything they put out is skewed through the filter of that agenda. The candidate’s policy positions may be closer to a voters and an understanding of that position can only come from our researching that position. On top of which, if we – as voters and citizens – want to affect positive change in the political system, we have to take responsibility for affecting that change instead of depending on someone else to do it for us. It’s your vote, it makes an impact, take it seriously and don’t be a candy-ass!