Over the last several weeks the governor’s race has been a reliably interesting topic of discussion among my friends. Many (including me) started October undecided. We’ve thrashed through debates and issues over email, over dinner, and over beers. I think three different candidates are getting votes from my friends (sorry, Grace). When it was said and done, some of my friends had a hard time understanding how I can choose to leave my ballot blank in the governor’s race.<\/p>\n
For me, voting is a personal thing. When I cast my vote, I’m putting my name behind the candidate. I’m endorsing them.<\/p>\n
I think of voting in much the same way as economics. When I pay money for a thing or a service, I’m asking the provider to keep doing it. It’s what keeps Joe Pizza and Amazon in business. When I vote for someone, I’m rewarding them for what they’ve done and asking that person to follow through on their promises. I’m encouraging their behavior.<\/p>\n
On this year’s ballot there are 4 candidates for governor. Two of them I strongly disagree with on issues. A third one I agree with on key points, and disagree with on other key points. The fourth is running a campaign of innuendo and slime. When your ballot looks like that, how do you choose which one to vote for? Who do you endorse? Whose behavior do you encourage?<\/p>\n
Think about it the ballots that you have cast in the past. Did you fill in every single line? Did you ever look at a race and see only one candidate, dislike that candidate, and leave it blank as protest? Or maybe, did you ever look at a race, realize you didn’t know anything about the candidates, and leave it blank?<\/p>\n
I will do my civic duty tomorrow with my head held high. I’ll cast votes on the ballot questions and several of the races. But for governor: none of the above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the last several weeks the governor’s race has been a reliably interesting topic of discussion among my friends. Many (including me) started October undecided. We’ve thrashed through debates and issues over email, over dinner, and over beers. I think three different candidates are getting votes from my friends (sorry, Grace). When it was said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-massachusetts","category-personal","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}