Hatch the Vote

So I have to walk into the polling station tomorrow and force myself to vote once again. I used to look forward to election day. I've only missed one or two of them since I turned 18, and those were minor local elections. So I'm going to attempt to explain my strategy for tomorrow.

Keep in mind that at heart I'm really a Libertarian without all the crazy "gold standard" and "kids should make all of their own decisions" crap. Essentially I'm a fiscal conservative and a liberal on many social issues. It all boils down to the fact that the government should be involved as little as possible with our lives, though. Unfortunately, there are no candidates for me to vote for to that share my beliefs.

My first rule for voting tomorrow is to vote AGAINST all incumbents. Let me state this clearly. If you vote for candidates, especially in Congress, who have already served before, you're just one of the jackasses who is keeping things exactly the way it's been for too long now. It doesn't matter what party they're in, if they've been there before they've been part of the worst and most corrupt Congress we've ever had in this country. Now let me make one exception to this rule.

Tomorrow I have to cast a vote for the Governor of Tennessee. This one is fairly easy for me. Phil Bredesen has done as good a job as anyone else could, so I'll vote for him to have another 4 years. He's mostly harmless I think, so the real deciding factor is to vote against the Republican candidate. Don't get me wrong, I despise both parties, but the Republicans have been in charge lately, and have the most to answer for, so rule #2 is to vote against Republicans when rule #1 doesn't apply.

For U.S. Senator, there is no incumbent. Normally I'd go with voting against the Republican candidate, but the Democratic candidate, Harold Ford, Jr., leaves a lot to be desired as well. His family history is not so great, but the biggest thing is that he reminds me too much of Al Gore in the sense that he didn't really grow up in Tennessee, but in Washington, D.C. I don't really have anything bad to go on with Bob Corker, but he is a Republican, so it's going to be a difficult decision since they're both bad candidates. I still haven't made that decision, and I will probably end up flipping a coin when I'm in the booth tomorrow.

I'm also going to vote NO on Amendment #1. I'm sure all my church friends are going to be shocked, but it has nothing to do with gay rights or protecting the family in my mind. It has to do with letting the government get involved in things it has no business being involved in. Marriage should be viewed as a contract between two people. The state had no business getting involved in marriage in the first place except to record the contract like it would any other legal document.

Of course very few people are going to see this the way I do. The herd is going to moo about "gay rights" or the "sanctity of marriage" while those of us who actually bothered to pay attention in history class know what the consequences of letting the church get in bed with the state are. Everytime something like this passes we take one step closer to being the "bad guys" that our ancestors left Europe to get away from.