Comments | catalina_voice: courage

catalina_voice

courage

Sep 17, 2004 10:34

I don't recall if I've mentioned to anyone who might read this that I'm going to red states for the entire month of October to campaign for Ralph Nader. I had this idea months ago. It came up as an idea of political strategy -- compromise with the Anyone-But-Bush-ers. Well, not compromise. I disagree with them too entirely for that. It's more an ( Read more... )

Comments 4

bravo ninevolt September 17 2004, 14:43:20 UTC

that actually sounds kind of like a political roadtrip

you will probably have a good time :)

nader is the green party right? hmmm what does green stand for?

i really don't like the best of two evils thing i don't think that's right... i don't think the rich and connected should be the only ones ever able to run for president... and jell biafra once suggested that on the ballot there should be a "none of the above" choice... in which case he said homeless people would live in the whitehouse because no one would get voted for :) sounds good

Re: bravo catalina_voice September 17 2004, 15:13:49 UTC

Thanks!

The Greens issue is sticky. Despite having the support of 73% of the Green party members who voted, the Green party national convention gave the nomination to a guy who had less than 30% support. Basically, we were taken over by the Democrats and have to get our party back. There's already a caucus building within the Greens for this. The leadership explicitly went against its own 10 key values in order to do this -- namely, "Grassroots democracy" and "Decentralization" - so Nader represents the Green party better than the official GP candidate does.

The support for Nader comes from support for his platform (including immediate withdrawal from Iraq, repeal of the PATRIOT Act, a ranked voting system, no income taxes for people who make less than $50,000 per year, an end to corporate welfare, and other lovely things you'll never hear from the Republicans or Democrats). This support was formerly more correlated with the Green Party, which is supposed to represent the same kind of agenda, but this year it's more a coalition. In ( ... )

Corporate media control sucks. ninevolt September 17 2004, 15:21:52 UTC

I think... people should take surveys online about various issues and what degree of yes or no they feel towards these issues then have their results measured against the results which would correlate to the candidates and what they represent in order for them to see who they ought to vote for that would support their opionions.

If they could actually create a secure, untamperable online voting system, AND show the source code to people so they could make sure it is unhackable, just leave it on slashdot.org and let 10,000 nerds have a go at fixing it... it doesn't have to be very complicated. Anyway, and if they made this online voting system they could add this survey system to it and also inform people through direct information links so that they know what they are voting for.

I think you don't have much to worry about as far as your convincing powers and vast political knowledge on this road trip :)

wow... catalina_voice September 18 2004, 18:04:32 UTC

I think you don't have much to worry about as far as your convincing powers and vast political knowledge on this road trip :)Thanks so much for that. I actually started shaking for about 20 minutes after I read that -- this big release of emotion from being validated in that way (regarding my competence for this task). Funny, I don't necessarily get support from the places I expected it, when it comes to this particular issue, but I do seem to get it in unexpected places sometimes ( ... )