{"id":164,"date":"2004-11-02T05:59:01","date_gmt":"2004-11-02T09:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=164"},"modified":"2004-11-03T06:37:45","modified_gmt":"2004-11-03T11:37:45","slug":"why-are-you-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=164","title":{"rendered":"Why are you here?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why are you sitting on your ass reading this site?
\n<\/p>\n

Don’t you know what day it is?! Go out, and go vote!<\/p>\n

Remember to bring your ID with you. God forbid our friendly government allows Al Qaeda to vote, y’know. Or worse, democrats and minorities ::gasp::<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Don’t think you have enough time? Most employers offer time off to vote<\/a>. Ask about it.<\/p>\n

Don’t know where you’re supposed to vote? Check your polling location, based on address<\/a>. It’s important you show up at the right place.<\/p>\n

And if you get turned away at the polls, get intimidated or harrassed, or are otherwise denied or compromised your right to vote, don’t just give up and walk away. Get free help<\/a>, and get back in there.<\/p>\n

Four years ago, too many people let their rights slip away. Too many people just went home when they were falsely told they couldn’t vote. And way too many<\/strong> people didn’t bother to go and vote at all. Remember what happened afterwards? <\/p>\n

Too many people were apathetic, and together we all said “Feh!” And look what happened. A race too close to call. An election deicided by courts. And hanging chads.<\/p>\n

Granted, if we had better candidates, maybe things would have gone differently, and one candidate would have garnered enough of a margin to make the hanging chads not matter either way. But maybe, just maybe, things would have also gone differently if a lot more people let their voices be heard.<\/p>\n

I’ll be honest. I’ll gladly accept a Bush re-relection if<\/strong> it’s clear that people clearly want him over Kerry. None of this win-by-court-decision. None of this splitting hairs over recounts. If there’s a significant turnout, and a statistically significant margin, chooses Bush, I’ll accept it becuase it was a fair, clean win and not the result of statistical trickery. I’ll probably start to seriously consider ways to move my butt to New Zealand and get citizenship there because obviously the American people aren’t my<\/em> kind of poeple, but I will accept it. \ud83d\ude42 Likewise, I won’t be incredibly happy if Kerry barely eeks out a win.<\/p>\n

I’ll stop my ranting now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Go out and VOTE!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sociopolitical-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}