Please Don't Make It Easier For People To Screw You Over

To what is my title referring? Why to the election of course.

It's been pretty well documented that there are lots of intimidation efforts to keep minority groups from voting. This year, there are especially heinous commercials out there targeting Latinos and homosexuals asking them outright to not vote.

I"m not sure in what world not voting gets your voice heard...

But in America, we are a melting pot and a progressive culture. That means there are always new minority groups to insult with the exact old techniques under the guise of doing something new. America may have a short memory. But I have a long one and history lessons from my elders. They can kiss my ass if they think I won't exercise my right to vote.

Who is the "they" I'm talking about? People who are against my ideas for the direction I think the country should go. People who use libertarianism as an excuse to lose common decency and concern for mankind. People who think low taxes are the solution to everything (those are the shortest memory idiots). People who prefer to legislate to the benefit of corporations. People who are so close-minded that they actually believe other cultures are out to get them and education, science, and history are evil. They suck!

Moving on. This morning, I went with my parents so we could vote before they headed to work. For some reason, our polling place was stocked with poorly trained volunteers. No one committed any violations of polling place procedure, but they certainly exhibited a poor understanding of those procedures.

They didn't explain voting well. They fumbled when someone messed up their ballot and had to get rid of that one and get a new one. They didn't have good answers for someone who had recently switched their voter registration address. Luckily, there was an older gentleman there who knew the rules.

But situations like this make it far too easy for someone to come in and find problems. Then suddenly our polling place loses the validity of the votes simply because the people there aren't trained well. I live in a predominantly African-American community which is almost 100% Democratic. Knowing that our opponents are looking for reasons to scream voter fraud, you would think we would avoid any and all behavior that could help that process along.

Okay, I'm through complaining, I just hate to see people help themselves get screwed over. Go vote! Especially if you live in Illinois because we could use the extra votes if any other polling places in the hood are even worse than mine.