Did you vote?

Still knitting on the sweater so no interesting pictures today. Hold on for another rant . . .

This past Tuesday was Election Day and I was glad to see it come and go. I get so tired of seeing the signs on the side of the road and getting bombarding with commercials for different candidates during the evening news. None of that affects who I'm going to vote for and I can't figure out why they spend so much money on it.

Each year I determine if I'm going to be in the area for Election Day. Last year I had to submit an absentee ballot because I was traveling for work. It's super simple. This year I was here so I just printed out a sample ballot form from my County Board of Elections website so I could decide who to vote for. I took about an hour to look up each candidates website, find out where they stood on the issues that matter most to me and then decide which person I liked best. Not exactly rocket science.

I took that ballot form with me to the polling place and used it to vote. Took less than 5 minutes to actually place my vote and that includes eating the chocolate they had out for people. I even stopped to talk to one lady who was knitting a basic garter stitch scarf to pass the time.

I feel pretty strongly about voting because I consider myself to be an informed voter. I don't just vote for people that I've heard of or like their last name. With that in mind I refuse to listen to someone complain about the government if they didn't vote. People actually died to give us the right to vote for our representatives. Women, minorities, people who didn't own land - all couldn't vote without a fight. All of us have rented at one point in time.

How can you criticize any elected official if you didn't cast your vote in that election? It doesn't make sense to me. With the Internet now there's no reason not to be an informed voter.

On a side note: Some candidates didn't have websites and with no debates or articles giving me information on them how could I possibly vote for them. One guy had a simple one page site that outlined where he stood and that worked for me. I don't need fancy sites, just an accessible place for me to learn about the person to make an informed decision.