The 2008 political season must be starting to crank up in earnest — I’m starting to get email from addresses I haven’t heard from in about two years. Although you’ve probably been hearing more than you’d like about the presidential election, that’s hardly the only game in town. Allow me to suggest a few ways to increase your voting power.
If you are a voter that feels that voting isn’t quite enough, I encourage you to contact your local party office of your choice (and if you haven’t picked a party, allow me to recommend something in blue). Tell them that you’d like to volunteer and they should be able to find myriad ways for you to participate. Trust me: elections are so much more interesting when you’re really behind a candidate or two.
If you happen to be a Texan, and you already lean towards Democratic candidates, I encourage you to vote in the state party straw poll. It closes on Friday night, with the results announced the following Monday. Straw votes aren’t binding, but they are a tradition that help identify the support the various candidates have. It’s surprising how many of these ‘early, non binding’ votes can have the effect of hundreds, if not thousands of votes during an actual election.
I gladly show my support for Kucinich at every opportunity because he stands for the platform I most agree with. The more electoral representation he can muster at state or national levels, the more visible his platform becomes. At which point issues and ideas from his platform are adopted by the leaders in the race and become part of whatever administration takes the White House. When I represented Kucinich at the county in ‘04, my vote was worth 500 regular votes. At the state level, my vote was worth 25,000 regular votes.
This year, the Dems are lucky to have three superstars running for the national ticket. Any two on the ticket would be certain to win on election day. Not only has the GOP shot itself repeatedly in the foot over the last year, none of the announced presidential candidates have the name recognition better than the Democratic second tier. The real game, for those who care to play, will take place during the Democratic National convention.
At the convention level, votes start to take on real weight. Votes made during state and national conventions become supervotes –literally worth thousands of regular election votes — because each voter represents some percentage of their county or state.
The last state convention encouraged me to get more organized in time to have even more fun this year. Yes, I said, “Fun”. Fun, in this context, is representing a coalition that can bring about specific change at the county, if not the state, level. The math is pretty simple: if a dozen allied people from a dozen precincts show up at their county convention, they’ll likely all be able to advance to the state level and would mostly, if not entirely, represent their county. If allies from various counties manage to pull this off together, they can generate a remarkable amount of leverage at the state level when they combine the effects of their supervotes.
It’s a representative democracy, so if you’re there to represent, you get a say in your government. If you don’t represent, then you don’t get to complain that you have to pick between Tweedledum and Tweedledee in November ‘08.
If you or anyone you may know (Austin-area) has indicated a general dissatisfaction with the political system and perhaps appears motivated to take some responsibility into their own hands, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know. I’d like the opportunity to enlist cohorts for my little conspiracy to put as many of my allies into the state convention as possible. We would work through a number of other organizations for maximum effectiveness. If we get organized right now, we’ll be in a great position to help out local candidates who support our position through the primary season and into election. The more precincts we can represent, the more of an impression we can make. What’s the position? Cannabis legalization, naturally. So who wants to play?
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