{"id":67299,"date":"2026-06-21T17:24:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T21:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=67299"},"modified":"2026-06-22T11:36:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T15:36:03","slug":"i-voted-early-heres-what-i-didnt-vote-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=67299","title":{"rendered":"I voted early. Here’s what I didn’t vote for"},"content":{"rendered":"
Not “who” I didn’t vote for, but what.<\/p>\n
As always, innundated with campaign brochures — my Congressional district has lots of people on the ballot — I developed a way of absorbing and evaluating certain attributes and ideas of candidates who want my support.<\/p>\n
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Glamor and\/or good looks<\/em>. Not to knock ’em; they look outstanding coming out of my mailbox or on my TV, and the person I vote for might be hot but that’s not why I filled in the little square on my ballot.<\/li>\n
Charisma<\/em>. It’s stirring but you’ve got to have more than this to win my vote. And the meaning of the word has been so shredded by bizarre subjectivity, I don’t even know to whom to apply it. But I love good oratory, although a candidate has to give me more than soaring verbiage about believing again. Et cetera. This is no longer the time for sentiment and poetry.<\/li>\n
Age<\/em>. I don’t care. Neither youth nor antiquity automatically equates with political and governmental wisdom, not to me. I don’t vote for someone who promises to disrupt “the system” by shoving anyone older than 35 or younger than 35 out of Congress.<\/li>\n
God and its accessories. <\/em>I don’t accept this package as shorthand for “I am a moral person.” He who claims godliness is often traveling with satan in tow. I also don’t believe in satan.<\/li>\n
Gender.\u00a0<\/em>I vote for candidates of every gender but don’t vote for a candidate because of gender.<\/li>\n
Money. Big money.<\/em> If you have become massively wealthy running a business and have decided to take up government service as a grand hobby because, hey, you believe your glorious experience in business shows you can run government…go away, you dilettante.<\/li>\n
Endorsements.\u00a0<\/em>Maybe a bit uplifting, but in essence you want my<\/em> endorsement.<\/li>\n
Negative campaigning,\u00a0<\/em>especially the darkened look and sneery narrative. I tend not to believe it, but primarily I know it’s a cut-and-paste job which extracts a curated “truthiness” without going into the complex reality around it.<\/li>\n
Charter schools.\u00a0<\/em>If I had a single issue, it could be this, because this isn’t a single issue. (1) The charter magnates con unsophisticated parents into believing their kids will be getting a first-class, sort of private school education; that con is despicable, especially when these parents are made to wear t-shirts with that charter school name, put into buses, and used to demonstrate in our state capital for more money for more charter schools. Makes me want to vomit. (2) It’s thievery of our tax dollars which are ripped out of public schools to fill the pockets of aggressive and pretentious people who think they know more about education than the sort of dedicated teachers I had when I went to public schools. (3) Which reminds me, the core purpose of charter schools is to kill teachers’ unions. Any attack on labor unions, especially teachers’ unions, is an attack on me and my fellow citizens, whether they know it or not. (4) If you support charter schools, you’re telling me you’re not smart enough to figure out this con job, or you’re in sympathy with the thieves.<\/li>\n
Someone like me. <\/em>Because I am unsuitable for government service in almost every way. Ergo, I don’t want you as my best friend and drinking buddy or Doppelg\u00e4nger or godlet. What I want is your intelligent, ethical, idealistic and realistic representation in our government.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
What I do vote for, I’ve written about many times. You don’t need me to explicate those principles. I bet they’re much the same as yours.<\/p>\n