MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
13 May 2008
I just voted. . . at the kitchen table→[More:]. I love vote by mail. The 3 of us agreed on the main things, although none of our ballots were identical.
How differently, if at all, do you vote, than your spouse/partner/SO does, if there is/was one?
Bill Clinton has been doing small towns in Oregon and whining about vote by mail, saying it's impossible to campaign when a lot of people have already voted.
If I could vote... mr. g and I are broadly very similar, but if we were going through the issues, he is more centrist than me both socially and economically, and I am more socially left-wing and economically right-wing than he is.
We have early voting here, which is awesome. I can vote at the library on Saturday or Sunday, when I'd be there anyway! Yay!
When we first started dating, MuddDude and I were pretty dissimilar - I was Libertarian, and he was some sort of Reactionary Socialist. But as we get older, we get more alike in our views - we generally talk over propositions and initiatives and agree before-hand.
However, we picked different candidates in the primary, and we'll see what happens in the general.
I can't trust what my family members say about how they intend to vote. They act shifty when asked and contradict themselves from one conversation to the next. It's probably because each one of us has threatened to contradict the vote of one of the others at one time or another.
We did a straw poll on Christmas Eve at my aunt's house, all ::counts:: 12 of us, by secret ballot. It was a total spread, votes for almost every candidate in the race at the time. My mother stole the ballots and brought them home to show my Dad (who was at home recovering from surgery) so we could figure out what bozos in our family were voting for candiates we disapproved of, lol. I think politics should be banned at any future familiy gathering.
I don't ask. We agree on most basic principles, but I think we have diverging opinions on how to reach them. Which I respect, and which is actually how I think the system should work, so I try not to court trouble beyond that.
Because, to me, the "agreeing on basic principles" is the part that matters to me. Everything else is commentary.
I convinced all the parental units (including a stepdad and stepmom) + my brother to vote the way I was voting in the presidential primary. I also managed to get my mother and brother to volunteer for the campaign.
This is the first time this has ever happened. The political about face my brother has done in the past 10 years has been a thing of beauty to witness. He used to be the biggest Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly fanboy out there. Now he's practically a socialist.
My brother got heavily involved in his district and he's going to Denver.
Vote by mail sounds really convenient. And green! We had early voting here, too. I convinced 3 people to vOte, one of which had been a registered republican all his life. All eyes on OR and KY next week. Let's get this namby pamby thing out of the way and get to the real fight. and things younger than john mccain cracks me totally up.
My wife and I always sit down at the kitchen table and talk about how we're voting. We agree on most things, especially the big races. Occasionally for the really useless races like "Commissioner #2" we'll passionately argue over who has better hair, or nicer teeth, or a better college degree. Whenever we get confused about a ballot measure, or if we can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing we'll agree to offset one another's vote (unless it sounds important enough to read the voters guide).
The mister and I can't vote in the same elections - yet. I vote by mail since I don't live in the States. The mister goes to the polls. I don't know if mail in voting is available in Canada. I really need to get off my arse and work on getting my Canadian citizenship.
We pretty much agree on everything except the death penalty.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
