Anticlimax anyone?
I'm too tired to write much tonight after being hyped up all day for the primary returns tonight just to be greeted with basically a tie between Clinton and Obama. It will be interesting to see where the rest of the delegates fall tomorrow when all the votes are in. In any case, both candidates seem to be willing to stay in the race after today, meaning people in the later primaries will get a chance to have a say in the nominee (which I guess is good). I would prefer it if Obama had a clear lead though. As a friend told me tonight, though, it is encouraging to see how far Obama came in the past month despite the expectations so if he keeps up this pattern, he can easily win the nomination over Clinton.
As this nomination process is far from over, I would like to point out two pet peeves with American voters.
1. Just because Hillary Clinton is a woman does not mean that all women must vote for her! Just because she is woman does NOT mean she will do what is best for all American woman or even the women abroad caught in the middle of military conflicts! Yes, I would like to see a woman elected. However, I REALLY do not want to see Clinton elected because I believe it will backfire on the chance of women getting elected in the future.
2. Hundreds of thousands of people voted for candidates in both parties who have already WITHDRAWN from the race! If John Edwards says he no longer wants to run for president, VOTE FOR SOMEONE ELSE! In New York, for example, Edwards, Richardson, and Kucinich each got 1% of the vote. I understand people want to show their support to these candidates in some way but I believe it would be more productive to channel that energy into voting for a second choice so that at least the third choice won't get elected! I know this could mean more votes for either Obama OR Clinton but I don't care! I think it is irresponsible (in terms of our civic duty) to vote for someone who has pulled out of a race instead of making considered judgments about who would be the next best person to represent the party. This does not apply to the general elections when people vote for third party candidates. Although it annoys me that sometimes third party votes means my favored candidate does not get elected, at least the third party candidates (such as the Green Party and Independent candidates) are still running for president!!!
Do those objections make sense to you? What do YOU think about the above issues?
In a more positive note, I loved my voting experience today! The polling place workers were really cheerful and encouraging. They were even joking with voters they knew about coming back to vote in November, saying things like "I'll have you a steak here when you come back in November!" It was a nice feeling to be part of such a friendly neighborhood.
Labels: Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, Obama, pet peeves, voting
posted by AnaliaRose at 2/06/2008 12:21:00 AM
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6 Comments:
I agree with your arguments - particularly concerning women voters and the huge number of people who voted for Edwards in CA. I was appalled. Do not vote for candidates who have withdrawn from the race, people!! Argh.
On the other hand, support for Obama seems to be increasing at an almost exponential rate :-)
Re: the Edwards votes in CA, I have a theory (helped by Jon's comment earlier) that the absentee ballots already received were counted first. Thus the first results shown for CA gave nearly 10% to Edwards. If you look now (with about 48% reporting), it's down to 6%. So while some of that is definitely people still voting for him, I think a lot of the perceived imbalance there is the absentee ballots, who couldn't have known he withdrew by the time they voted.
That said, I do think it's odd that there were ~8 candidates on the democratic ballot here in CA, of which all but 3 had already withdrawn (if I recall correctly).
In any case, while I've had my vote in, it's nice to see that states further down the line are going to have more pull than usual. Plus, I don't mind watching the republican party have a major schism on stage. :)
Good point about the absentee ballots. I realized this morning that there is also the issue of "early voting." In Illinois, people have been able to go to special early voting sites to vote for the last month. Therefore many of the people who voted early would have had ballots with more candidates.
I am all for absentee voting since that was the only way I could have voted for the last four years without changing residency. However, I am not sure I like the idea of early voting for people who live in the area. I'm sure it helps cut back on lines at polls and such but it does skew the results in many ways. If all the people who voted early for candidates who have pulled out had waited until yesterday, their vote could have counted for something more than just taking away votes from the other candidates. People who vote absentee would not have had any chance to vote without absentee ballots which is not true in the majority of the early voting cases I'm guessing.
my theory about the absentee voting may be incorrect, as CNN is reporting that there are a ton of absentee ballots in CA remaining to be counting, which is why the reporting % isn't completed. Regardless, since my last post, the % for Edwards is down to 4, and the actual vote count has barely changed. So either the initial districts polled had most of the votes for him, or it has to do with when some absentee ballots got counted, as it barely changed (~3k votes) from 48% reported to 90% reported, etc.
Anyways... I think (in general) that they need to implement preference voting, which would fix this problem: those who voted for Edwards, when he drops out, their votes would then go to their 2nd choice, until there were only 2 candidates remaining in that field (or whatever number is appropriate, for a primary, it may be best to narrow the field to 2-3 for the convention, for actual presidential elections, you narrow to two and proceed as normal). This eliminates a lot of issues with voting for 3rd party candidates, and could lead to more parties. I think this has been extensively discussed elsewhere though, so I'll leave it at that. :)
Oh, re: early voting, I don't think that happened in CA, at least I didn't hear/see anything about it. Our precincts were REALLY small, too, literally I was in a different one from Mike/Tim, and they are only ~6 blocks away. There wasn't a line that I saw during the day, but that may be different for other areas in LA.
Going back to the overall results, I think it was a slight win for Obama overall. The last count I saw today had him with MORE pledged delegates after the day than Clinton. That's a very good sign, as the only gap currently is in superdelegates, and that has the potential to get even better as I think he improves with exposure to the areas yet to vote in the primaries. Obviously it's not a guaranteed win for either group yet, though.
I thought I was done commenting for the moment, but I guess not. Re: women voting for Clinton just because she's female, I can see both sides of this after extensively reading the thread "Maybe I'll Flip a $@#! Coin" on Bitch PhD. I respect the author's opinion as a feminist and as an intellectual and they have valid reasons for being conflicted, and the issue you mentioned is brought up in the comments thread for that post.
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