Your Vote Matters

As the race for the presidency is aflame with the two candidates heading to the finish line on election day Tuesday, November 5th, 2024, the one thing that they want from us is our vote.

Our vote is the only thing you or I, whether we are rich or poor, only has one of when we go into the ballot box. We get to speak out during this moment, and in this moment neither has a louder voice than the other.

And yet, there are still people sitting on the fence saying they won’t vote for this one for that reason, or that one for this reason, or it doesn’t even matter because nothing changes. This is one time when sitting out, and letting someone else make the decision for you really isn’t an option.

It is too clear that if our votes didn’t matter, you would not have rich people trying to use their wealth to manipulate the system by enticing people with dollars to sign a petition with the chance of winning a million with the hope that people will be swayed to vote for the candidate this man is endorsing. Yes, this is a kind of back door move of trying to buy your vote. And it appears that the winners are people who have turned up at the former president's rallies. That's not a random lottery, that's a scam. https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28...

As I said, the one thing you have is your vote, and even a rich man only has the one vote. Don’t give it away, don’t sell it, and don’t let go unused.

This election there are many things at stake that are crucial, and one of them is whether we even live on this planet at all. I am NOT talking about aliens; I am talking about Global Warming (some people want to call it Climate Change), but the bottom line is that the planet is heating up, and we need a leader that is willing to address this crisis directly and decisively, and not one that, when he was the former President in 2015, pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-exits-paris-climate-accord-after-trump-stalls-global-warming-action-for-four-years/ We don’t have a whole lot of time left to make the necessary changes that will avert catastrophe. We are already seeing storms we have never seen before. We need a president like our Vice President, who has already helped pass the largest investment into climate energy initiatives and grants to recover from extreme weather events https://www.washingtonpost.com.... This is no time to sit on the fence on a matter of principles because soon there won’t even be a fence.

Most particularly, if we don’t get this right, we could lose the rights we have to even vote. We now have fewer voting rights than we did in 1968, with the Voting Rights Act in full force, that prohibits racial discrimination when voting, which has been weakened by the Supreme Court in recent years. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/restoring-voting-rights-act People literally have died so that everyone can have the right to vote. So, this is no time to sit on the fence and let someone else decide for you.

We also had the former president asking the former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper when there was unrest during the George Floyd protests, asking him about shooting the protesters. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-defense-secretary The former president has openly called domestic opponents as the “enemy within” and said that he would use the National Guard or the military against them. Well, you might consider yourself to be on the former president’s buddy list. But friendships of that kind are fickle because they only serve the side that has the gun or military power. So, this is no time to sit on the fence because if not today, then tomorrow you might be considered the “enemy within.”