Go Vote! (The Naked Ballot Post)

I did it! I cast my ballot, I exercised my right as guaranteed by the Nineteenth Amendment. I cancelled out my father's vote and hopefully made my feminist grandmas and great aunties proud!

For the first time in my life I could have easily colored in the oval for the straight Democratic ticket. Seriously. Now this is not to say that I haven't voted mostly democratic in the past. I have voted for the dems in every presidential and gubernatorial election I've ever voted in. For the lesser seats I'll often try to find a green or libertarian to vote for but damn it people, I'm in Michigan! Our right to choose what to do with our own body is on the line here in very a big way! I may be done with my child bearing but you never know, what if I were raped and I got pregnant? Would I want to carry that child? I don't know. We need pro-choice votes we can count on. So that's the main reason why I voted straight dem this time.

It was easy to vote for Granholm, Mchigan has enough dicks, we don't need one in the governor's office.

Regarding Debbie Stabenow in the senate race, I have not been entirely happy with her performance and voting record but I agreed with most of her decisions and I suppose that's really the best one can hope for, at least she is staunchly pro-choice if not staunchly anti-war enough for me.

Were also voting for Secretary of State and Attorney general, I'm not sure how I feel about Mike Cox as a person, but he's a Republican and a white man, therefore he should be replaced with Amos Williams, a charming and well qualified African American gentleman from Detroit.

In our house race, I'm disappointed in Pete Hoekstra's opponent, Kimon Kotos. Pete has had quite a bit of visibility in the last few years and yet the dems send up this guy no one has heard of for the second time in a row! Now maybe I'm just suffering from my gerrymandered state. No, seriously, that's not just a pun, my township is one of four in this county that are in district 2, the city of Grand Rapids is district 3. I was trying to be real fancy with these pictures I pulled off the web and put a "We Are Here" arrow on it but it's getting late and I just don't have time for that fancy ass crap. You will have to believe that this is the map I'm referring too. And don't hurt yourself there, that's a pdf. Hey, wait a minute, let's try posting it as an image link...naw, blogger says yes but it lies. Sigh.

Anyway, one reason I'm very proud myself is that I really did my homework this time on the ballot initiatives. I've walked into too many elections feeling great about who I was voting for only to exit despondent and admonishing myself for not knowing about half the stuff on the ballot. So I checked out all five of our initiatives this year and I voted against all but one of them.
Here's a link to the actual initiatives at michigan.gov The local independent media folks over at Media Mouse do a much better job of summarizing these then I can, so check them out for more details.

Personally, I only voted for one of them and you can be damn sure it wasn't the proposal to eliminate affirmative action! That's proposal 2, for those who are keeping track. Oddly enough, I didn't even support the school funding initiative. I know! The arguments against include that it was poorly worded, it could have been used to fund private and parochial schools and it was just another form of the voucher proposal they tried to pass a few years ago.

No, the proposal that I actually voted for was sleeply little proposal 4 and it's libertarian slant towards protecting the rights of the landowners from government interests trying to take their property by emminent domain, and then turning around and selling it to developers. I had to vote for that, anything that puts the rights of the little people (us, in case you haven't been paying attention) ahead of big business is my kind of proposal!

If you don't have any idea what I'm ranting about or you want to find out more about why voting is NOT a right it's a responsibility try typing suffrage in your favorite search engine and check out the links on Wikipedia and Answer.com. I was particularly entertained by the following snippet appearing here regarding the women's suffrage movement when, oh hell, I think I know how to do block quotes, let's give that a try:

Opposed by a well-organized and well-funded anti-suffrage movement which argued that most women really didn't want the vote, and they were probably not qualified to exercise it anyway, women also used humor as a tactic. In 1915, writer Alice Duer Miller wrote,

Why We Don't Want Men to Vote

• Because man's place is in the army.
• Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.
• Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.
• Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms, and drums.
• Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them unfit for government.

Good stuff, eh? Well there's plenty more to be had! If, after reading all that you're still not sure if or why you are a feminist, I urge you to begin reading here, here and here immediately!

Call me when your head explodes. I didn't name this blog morbid fascination for nothing you know!

Yes, I'm a feminist instigator and I'm proud, say it with me ladies! I...am...a...FEMINIST! There, there...that wasn't so hard, now was it?