One of the reasons we are given to vote is that it's a personal responsibility that you have to yourself and to those around you. My position is that the system is set up to absolve voters of any responsibility for their vote from the moment they cast it, by giving voters total anonymity for their choices, thereby absolving them of all responsibility for decisions made by the person they voted for. That being the case, the idea that voting is some sort of a responsibility that people have seems like a complete fallacy.
When you vote in a national election, you are casting a vote to influence the lives of millions upon millions of other people. If I vote for a man who will send your son to fight in a foreign country that poses no threat to our nation and your son ends up dying as a result, do you not think you should have some right to at least know who I am? If I vote for a man who decides to fix a current financial crisis by committing your unborn children to a lifetime of debt, shouldn't those unborn children one day have the right to at least know the names of the millions of people who voted for these debts to be placed on them before they were even born?
Interesting, I never looked at voting in that light. But the problem remains that candidates tell their supporters what they want to hear even though they know there is no way they can accomplish what they say they will do. They knowingly lie and the people eat it up. Then many, many times I heard when the promises were brought up that went unfilled, TV news analyst say that was just a campaign promise, they don’t mean anything. Apparently those news analyst are right, we the voters sure do not hold our elected leaders accountable when they fail to keep their promises. We just shrugged it off as if expected and listen for the next promise we want to hear in the next election and re-elect him once again.
I do not think most voters care if their candidate sends someone else’s son off to die in a foreign war, if their candidate racks up trillions in debt to be paid by future generations, if their candidate is honest or not, if their candidate works for the people or those faces who give him millions upon millions to finance his campaign, and on and on. After all he is their candidate and belongs to their party. Now let someone from the opposite party do the same thing as theirs just did, they are up in arms and hollering, ranting, raving all over the place. Never mind their candidate had done the exact same thing.
So here is the problem, if the candidate or president, congressman, senator is mine, we don’t care what they promise, what they do, how they act, who they take care of, what wars they start or continue, what legislation they pass or sign into law, he is ours and we back him 100%, good, bad or indifferent. Now if the person is of the opposite party, we raise holy hell regardless if that other person of the other party is true to his word or not, does what is best for the country or not, is overall good, bad or indifferent. We don’t care, he is automatically bad. My politicians are all good, the other party’s politicians are all bad, they are evil, and they are not mine.
Bottom line, voters never hold themselves responsible for anything.
