US Presidential campaigns...

Ugggggh. Kasich just dropped out too. Republicans, please, for the love of fuck, look at who you're hitching your cart to. Is Trump really a guy you think will represent your interests?

 

I so want one of them to run as independent. Even if it's Cruz, who cares, that'll split the vote. Because Hillary isn't sure to win against Trump, she's given as winning the general election but it's within the error margins. Meanwhile, Sanders wins by a landslide in all scenarios.

 

oof. good luck. at least she's not voting for Trump, though....

 

I'm surprised at how many conservatives are voting for Trump. His program is literally fascist, and that implies being against most conservative talking points.

 

My roommate who profess to hating racism, is going to vote Trump because he virulently hates Bernie and believes all Democrats are Communists and/or fascists. He actually compared Bernie to the dictator who decapitated and hung half of my family whom I was forced to watch. To my face. In those words.

If you haven't read my inrto post, guess what race, age and religion he is. Horrifyingly stereotypical.

 

Honestly, as much as I will fight tooth and nail to keep Trump out of office, look at it this way: even when Democrats were the majority in the Senate, somehow the Republicans managed to drag their heels on policy and make it night impossible to get anything done.

The likelihood that Trump is going to get actual congressional support is low, because the party he's running in hates him almost as much as the party opposing him.

Also given the sheer number of closed primaries, I think that things might not be so dire come the general election-- at this point it's a matter of not getting disenchanted and accepting Trump as "having already won." Pretty disappointed with the sheer number of otherwise perfectly intelligent people who bought into the celebrity status though, because it's gotten to the point where I'm asking if they'd vote for Snooky as well.

edit: Fixed a word I'd used wrong, whoops. :x

 

...I can't even vote. ;_; I've been trying to get my citizenship for fifteen years now. I know 4 people who are not voting even though they were given that birth right. *tries not to feel bitter*

 

I still do not understand what the fuck is up with US apathy regarding voting, but Bolivians are very gung ho about our right to vote. Still, it strikes me as ridiculous when a country that vociferously claims its pride to be a democracy and who pretty often seeks to bring democracy to the rest of the world has such exceedingly low voting turnouts.

I registered as democrat just so I could vote for Bernie. TBH I'd have stayed independent if I didn't feel like Bernie is a chance I want to support.

I'm hoping Bernie wins the primaries despite the difficult outlook, apart from my general support of Bernie's platform, because of the polls that show that an election between him and Trump would result in a Bernie win.

Don't forget to research the other authorities you guys have to vote for, btw, like Senators and more local positions. They're really important too :X

 

Voting is compulsory in Australia.

Also I need to register for postal voting oops

 

Not a citizen here, too. What's the holdup on the citizenship? (if you want to tell)

 

*koffs* Okay, so, all excuses and Asian smarty-pants stereotypes aside, I've never had problems with history/language tests, so I didn't think much of the actual citizenship test itself. I paid some 6 or 700.00 USD for all the fees. I was reeeaaally young, okay. Like, around 18 or 20 yrs of age, and at the time my family was filthy rich. I also was in Accelerated/Advanced Placement US History and World History in high/secondary school. So I thought, "No biggie. I got this."

The judge said I missed half the damn answers.

Wow.

I've never failed so hard before and it was slamming into a glacier in the Antarctic doing Mach 1. Fastforward to age 26. This time I prepared by going to English Second Language after school programs to ace this bullshit. I also paid for the testing out of my own pocket. Ouch. Got a lawyer and everything. I got the same judge. To this day, I swear up and down and sideways and on everything ANYONE holds sacred, that I got all the answers correct. But no. Of course, I didn't. I was only A+ in every single one of my history classes forever and a day.

The only thing I can remember from that day because I was so angry, I think I just blacked out, was the weird, "What is Lyndon B. Johnson's middle name?"

All I can remember was, "WTF? What's that got to do with US History? Whatever." I said something like Brian or Bryce, and forgot about it.

Strike two! Have been working up the nerve to try this a third time, ever since.

Oh, it's "Baines", FFS. Ugh. That judge. To this day the fastest way to piss me right off is to say her name.

 

-flops- I'm so sad about elections. I feel so uninformed and I don't live in the area I'm registered to vote in because I'm in that stasis of second half of college where you have no clue where you're going to live at all ever and then my parents also moved, so where I am registered to vote I have spent ~2 months of time in, I'll maybe up that to 4 months by the time it comes to election. l: so I think just out of respect of letting people who are actually affected by the legislation have their voice, I'm not going to vote on anything more local than statewide.

That said, I'm voting democrat for the national. Neither of my parents want to vote for Trump.. my dad said the only situation he would is if he approved of every single other person trump would put in his posse, or however you say that formally. My mom told my she was considering not voting for president this year if the bill is hillary vs trump, because she didn't think either of them were good people to be president
so -shrug emoji-

 

As a citizen of the European Union, I might be laughing, because... The EU is, uhm, there's a fuckton of bitching about responsibilities and synching the laws and who takes all the refugees from the middle east, and paying debts, and several countries have threatened leaving the EU.
And, here in Germany, there's currently a political party rising. That party is the AfD, "Alternative für Deutschland", "An Alternative (party) for Germany". In the beginning (!), they were criticising the EU for inefficiency, and offering alternatives (!). Their original leader has since left because the AfD is basically NSDAP 2.0 but without the stigma of being the NPD, and a lot of people missed that memo. Trump would be right at home in that party.

But yeah, technically we need a huge structural reform, but there's a lot of people digging in their heels.
...
I can kind of understand how IDW Megatron felt.

 

I got my sample ballot for the primaries in the mail today. I'm registered as No Party Preference, and NPP voters are allowed to vote for certain party candidates (relevant example: Democratic candidates). But apparently you need to ask for a specific ballot (e.g. the NPP-Democratic ballot) in order to do so. If they just send me the NPP ballot, I won't be able to vote for a presidential candidate at all, only for local elections. To let them know what ballot I want, all I need to do is send them this card that came with the sample ballot -- simple, right?

Except! That I'm also registered as a permanent vote-by-mail voter, and I'm not allowed to send them that card if I am a permanent vote-by-mail voter, because that card is also the card you send in if you want to be a permanent vote-by-mail voter. They make it very clear on the card that they don't want me to send this in, they've got "You are a PERM VBM Voter" obscuring the area where I'd have to sign it, if I tried.

The ballot also has some phone numbers I can call if I have any questions, except that apparently they are all lies because I tried to call the voter-questions hotline and got a robot that only gives out basic voting information. I'm a bit of a corner case, here, my question isn't covered by the automated machines.

Ultimately I just reregistered as democrat, just now, for this one election. This will be the third time I've registered to vote in about two months (the first time I accidentally registered as Independent, because surely that means the same thing as "no party preference", right? Wrong. It turns out the Independent Party is an actual political party.)

I'm fairly democratic anyway so it's not that big of a deal, I'm just opposed to parties in general. It's the principle of the thing.

 

Speaking of, vlogbros also have videos on the tax plans of sanders, clinton, cruz, and trump (tho i guess cruz is irrelevant now) that are about as unbiased as politics can get that I found super helpful & informative

 

Meanwhile, the saddest U.S. Green Party member lies down on the floor, curls up a bit, and whispers 'Hillary's fine. She's fine. I'll manage. I'll find a way. It'll all be okay.'

Here's the lady that the Green Party wants to be president, but who no one will consider because Green Party. WEEP.

Don't forget that local elections are very important, that the elections for congress and senate seats are very important, because, as has been infuriating in the past, if you vote in people to lower seats who oppose the president, you can very much incapacitate them. (And it does feel nice to type 'them' in reference to presidents.)

Who's up for a Presidential impeachment in our lifetimes?? : D

 

Yeah I've had a friend riding hard for Jill Stein since before the primaries, and I really do like her. I wish it was easier to break people out of dual party thinking, but it's so frustating and hard to do it especially with the electoral college sitting on it all like a horrible little blob monster.

 

I'm not too bitter about it. I realize that this is the way the country works and there's no realistic way to get a third party in office. I just want the country as a whole to look at their life, look at their choices, and realize that they have set up a system that makes even the consideration of candidates like these impossible, because it would take away votes from the tolerable moderate trying to keep the racist fascist out of office.

 

i'm not sure if i should laugh or cry.

 

Oh my god, I'm definitely laughing. Very nice. I'd still rather Bernie, though.