Vote in Your Own Interest

Voting in Your Own Interest

My purpose here is to advise voters, especially young voters, on principles that will help citizens to vote to protect their own interests. This is what voters are supposed to do.

Voting Principle #1: Vote for candidates who believe in science. Young voters especially need to vote to protect the natural environment that they will inherit. The situation is serious. Action must be taken to stop environmental harm and restore what has been damaged. Do not add to the irresponsible behavior of your parents and ancestors by allowing environmental harm to continue. Your elders can deny their errors as old age approaches, and minimize their sense of shame because they will be gone when the consequences of pollution become more extreme and more difficult to repair. Vote to protect your own future. Walk the Earth as though you are related to everything that lives, not only because that is ancient wisdom but also because modern science has proven that you are related to all that lives.

Voting Principle #2: Vote for candidates who have a trustworthy resume. Here is a simple scientific test to measure the trustworthiness of a candidate's resume: Use two sheets of ordinary plain paper. On one, write down what the candidates says: write down a list of policies and laws that the candidate has said, orally, he or she supports, including general statements about supporting social or economic goals. On the second sheet of paper, write down what the candidate does, write down the laws and policies the candidate has actively supported, such as by voting for such laws or by proposing such policies and laws, or by actively supporting policies, laws, and government programs that one can reasonably expect to achieve the candidate's stated goals. Then look at how the two lists match. Are the candidate's oral statements consistent with what the candidate has actually done? If there is a good match, then that gives the candidate a "good" rating for the trustworthiness of their resume. If there is an excellent match, one hundred percent, then that candidate has earned an "excellent" rating for trustworthiness of their resume. If the candidate has a poor or bad match between what they say and what they do, mark a line through their name and never vote for them. It is always against your own interests, and against the national interest, to vote for a candidate who lies to you in order to steal your vote from you.

Voting Principle #3: Referring to the same test you used in Voting Principle #2, examine the statements and actions of the candidate in terms of whether the candidate's viewpoints and goals are supported by sound social science, or economic science, or physical or biological science.

Voting Principle #4: Be careful to avoid being conned. We are all emotional and can be attracted to a candidate because of their personality and the appeal of slogans or comments about their own religious beliefs or commitment to moral principles. People who are attracted to serving in public office are often motivated by egotism and a desire to obtain political power for their own self-serving purposes. A candidate for office may be a con artist, a person who believes it is acceptable to lie in order to get what you want. They may say that they are devoted to moral principles or religious precepts, but every citizen who desires a real democracy must keep in mind that we do not elect government officials to tell us how to live, or to force us to resolve moral dilemmas by the imposition of rigid doctrines. Moral dilemmas such as (A) what to do about an unwanted pregnancy, or (B) what to do when a relative of advanced age has a terminal disease or condition or has irreversible brain damage, are defined as moral dilemmas exactly because these decisions are personal decisions, or family decisions, and they require the weighing of conflicting feelings and moral goals. The laws in a democracy will allow the greatest possible freedom for individuals and families to choose their resolution of such personal dilemmas, and not have such personal decisions imposed by law. Especially with regard to unplanned pregnancies, they occur because of understandable mistakes and not due to a deliberate act of carelessness. Males have sex for purposes other than conception of a child, and in order for a society to support a reasonable standard of social and political equality females must also be free to have sex for purposes other than conception. If we really wanted to impose sexual abstinence or chastity on our entire society, that would require sexual abstinence for both men and women.

Voting Principle #5: Vote in support of economic conditions that promote fairness in the world of work and in the marketplace. There is no evidence that people who operate a business or a corporation know what is best for the entire society. Any business can make a profit simply because they know how to exploit human labor. Society is not a factory and not a corporation. A nation, a state and a society have social goals that are not the same as the rigid devotion of businesses to monetary profit. Corporations have aggressively defined themselves as organizations that exist exclusively for the monetary profit of their stockholders. They argue that they have no social or political obligations to help achieve fairness or justice in society. Our Constitution does not assign rights to businesses or corporations, but only to persons and to officers of the government. Unfortunately, our Constitution does not identify economic rights for citizens, and that is why we often get results that are unfair economically and we have been burdened by economic debates and discussions since our beginning in 1787. Until our Constitution is revised and corrected to include economic rights, citizens can only vote for policies and programs that promote fairness in the workplace and the marketplace.

Voting Principle #6: Give serious consideration to always identifying yourself as an independent voter. Avoid participating in surveys that appear to identify how you will vote or who you will vote for. It would be best for the election process if the two-party system could not predict how the majority will vote in a particular town or city or region or state. They use this destructive method of predicting election outcomes in order to avoid running for office on the real issues. By laziness and cowardice the two parties are destroying our country. Voter identification by party loyalty destroys the will of the people, because it allows the candidates to avoid serious discussion of the real issues, and enables them to run for office by manipulation, by conning the populace, instead of by engaging in serious debate about what specifically needs to be done. Conceal how you will vote, and make the candidates tell you what they believe must be done, and how they will use their political office, if elected, to get it done.