Posted on 11/09/2012 4:51:01 AM PST by LD Jackson
Perhaps I should have changed the title of this post to "The Americans Who Stayed At Home". That's really where this all lies. In the aftermath of the election, I was reading some posts on Facebook and came across one from someone I am related to. He and his wife shall remain nameless, but what they posted troubled me greatly. They basically congratulated President Obama for his victory and then wrote that they were proud of the fact that they did not vote. I could not believe what I was reading. How can any American citizen not have the desire to exercise the voice granted us by the United States Constitution? How can any American citizen not have the desire to vote in our electoral system?
I couldn't let that pass by (probably should have), so I commented that they should be ashamed of themselves. You know, with my usual discrete tactfulness. I was quickly informed that it was not an obligation that Americans vote. That if it were an obligation, it would not be freedom. Of course, they are technically right. It is a freedom of choice, whether we choose to vote or not. I responded that they were throwing away the sacrifices already paid so we could have that freedom and they said it was still their right and we would have to agree to disagree. I left well enough alone and did not respond, but my mind has been rolling, trying to get a handle on the attitude I saw displayed.
We all know many elections have a very small turnout. In an election of such importance, one would think that Americans would want to voice their opinion in the most powerful way available, but that is not the case. Mitt Romney received fewer votes than did John McCain. Barack Obama received fewer votes than he did in 2008. Do the majority of Americans simply not care about the direction of our country? I do not know the percentage of Americans who are actually registered to vote, but according to voting statistics that were certified early this year, there is a gap of 60 million people between the number of Americans who are eligible to vote and those who are not registered. There is a difference of over 15 million people between the number of Americans who are registered to vote and those who choose not to vote.
Some of these people are not doubt, disillusioned by the system. Many of them probably believe that it does no good to vote. Some of them probably do not care, as long as they are not troubled from their busy schedule. Almost 18% of those who choose not to vote cite conflicting schedules. With the number of ways we have to vote in America, that is a shame. There are also those who did not vote on November 6 because they did not like the choices. That is their privilege, but it does not take away from the fact that many of them chose not to make their opinions known by voting.
Where does that leave our country? I firmly believe America would not be in the shape it is in, if the people who should be voting actually exercised that right and voiced their opinions at the ballot box. We can complain about the system all we want, that it does not good to vote, but it would make a vast difference, if more of us came out to vote. For that, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Spot on. And to all those out there who were stuck on pride and decided they couldn’t pull the lever for Mitt Romney, I wasn’t asking you to vote for Romney - a man after God’s own heart - because of what he did ten years ago. All I needed you to do was to vote for Romney in order to cancel out an Obama voter.
Evidently, not everyone stayed home:
http://www.punditpress.com/2012/11/what-luck-obama-won-dozens-of-cleveland.html
http://www.punditpress.com/2012/11/fraud-in-pa-obama-got-over-99-of-vote.html
“Perhaps I should have changed the title of this post to “The Americans Who Stayed At Home”.”
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Why is there so little, if any, question as to to whom we are referring to as Americans?
(Maybe we really mean AINOs.....)
Remember Karl Marx itself first came to America via horace greeley and the NYT around 1851 or so....the indoctrination has run its course, doncha think!
Semper Watching!
*****
Pree-Cisely. This was not a low voter turnout, it was FRAUD.
From early Tuesday, I was reading reports here of high voter turnout. I saw it with my own eyes in three polling places. I do NOT believe that Romney lost fairly. This election was stolen.
We now have the thieves in charge of things. How do we fix this?
>>Spot on. And to all those out there who were stuck on pride and decided they couldn’t pull the lever for Mitt Romney, I wasn’t asking you to vote for Romney - a man after God’s own heart - because of what he did ten years ago. All I needed you to do was to vote for Romney in order to cancel out an Obama voter.<<
Too many math-challenged idiots (well, at least 3 million of them).
Every time I see one here I will remind them obozo’s second term is on him/her.
Not a few posters here self-righteously declared that they refused to vote for R/R no matter what.
Pray for them. They gave us another four years of the America-hater.
I don’t buy the premise. I personally know of two people who never voted before that voted to oust Obama. This election was stolen.
I just don’t get it either. The Republican and the blue dog Democrats were mobilized as never before and it seemed as though more voted than ever before yet they tell us less voters showed up at this election than in 2000 in the Bush / Gore race?!! It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense! The numbers have to have been fudged.
I’m not one of them, I voted against Obama.
The arrogance of the GOP leadership who foisted Romney on us, and told us that he was the only electible candidate are to blame for those who could only see that a President Romney, who has never apologised for Romeycare, would do no more than slow the handbasket, if that.
I voted because Obama needs to be stopped. I can understand the opinion that it would do little good to do so.
:: they were throwing away the sacrifices already paid so we could have that freedom ::
and here is your disconnect, LD.
You harken back to the sacrifices our forefathers made and even recently our own sons and daughters.
Your relatives are looking at the sacrifices made involuntarily to keep millions of freeloaders in a sustainable lifestyle through confiscatory welfare policies. To this attitude, I sympathize.
Someone suggested that in the final weeks of the Republican primary and the weeks before the Republican convention when Romney officially got the nomination, Romney was being smeared and attacked by the Democrats endlessly - but because he wasn’t officially the Republican nominee, he couldn’t spend money to counter the attacks. The Democrats had months early on to put him in a bad light, and he was only partially able to counter that during the televised debates.
So a lot of people who saw 100 attacks and 3 OK debates decided not to vote for either evil.
not exactly right, how about republican votes not counted and resutls not adding up.
If some want to think that millions of republicans were not excited after these 4 years and what we have seen around us ten I really do dispair at the sheeple of the country
Voter fraud BUMP
I never thought GOP voters staying home November 6 would be our doom, but it was forecast in the low turnout in the presidential primaries. Even our own party is practically hopeless.
Don’t confuse apathetic, marginal voters with the people who are politically aware enough to participate in forums such as Freerepublic. You can hate those guys if you want because of their lack of interest, but they are a reality of modern politics. Obama had many more no-shows this year than Romney, but he had a much bigger margin for error. His marginal supporters were not energized like 2008, but marginal Republicans were not energized like 2010. Romney needed to put the fear of God into them about the coming fiscal doom and he decided to play Mr. Nice Guy. He had an opportunity to bury Obama after the first debate and he let him off the hook.
If people have the right to vote, they have the right to NOT vote as well. I imagine most people who did not vote for Romney did not vote for Romney because they didn’t want to vote for Romney. It is counter to American ideals of liberty to try to bully someone into voting at all, let alone for the candidate YOU choose.
You want to win elections? Quit blaming the people who reject your candidates and start running candidates people won’t reject.
I respectfully disagree, at least in part. I do agree that it’s sad that more people don’t take this solemn responsibility seriously.
The real problem is that too many idiots vote. A main cause is that our public schools turn out people who are completely illiterate in terms of economics, personal finance, and our form of government - a good understanding of each discipline is vital to one’s ability to vote wisely. They believe that government creates wealth, has a paternal role in our lives, and exists to help ensure that each person gets his fair share of the pie. The fact that Christian values, including personal responsibility and individual charity, have been spat upon for generations improves the abiity of our slavemasters to foist this canard on the sheeple.
The other cause is that the family, in general, does nothing to challenge or supplement what the school system does in teaching our children. That’s not because of economic poverty; rather it is due to moral, intellectual, and spiritual poverty. The family as we once knew it has been virtually wiped out by our welfare system, and the problem is almost impossible to solve because it is multi-generational. Too many children don’t have fathers and find their family in gangs and associates who tend to be low-life. Positive examples and role models are becoming increasingly hard to find, and the rats use this dynamic to their advantage by running vile, class-warfare, race-driven campaigns that cater to man’s vile nature, such as envy and selfishness.
This problem comes to a head because the rats are experts at turning this riff-raff out at the polls. I’ve worked as a poll watcher in a small Alabama town and was appalled by what I saw, i.e., people, appparently pulled off of the streets, brought to the polls by the carloads with pre-marked ballots. I can only imagine what goes on in big cities. I believe it was Jefferson who said, “If we pile ourselves in cities as Europe has, then we will become as corrupt as Europe is.”
Once upon a time, voting was a privilege, not a right. We once had barriers such as literacy tests, poll taxes, land ownership requirements, clean criminal record, proof of church membership, proof of citizenship, etc. Those days are widely looked upon with disdain by our enlightened masses. I’m not sure they were so bad. However, I am absolutely certain that having ignorant, government-dependent people vote is the death-knell for any republic. And that goes without even considering the rampant examples of fraud.
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