Voting

Nope. This is not the chapter about being a good little citizen and voting on the first Tuesday in November.

You have heard the quip, “Vote early and often.” The din and whine of voter fraud was nigh intolerable during the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. Some people did not get to vote, or others voted more than once, allegedly. Absentee ballots from the armed forces were invalidated, allegedly. Each citizen gets exactly one vote in every election, no more, no less, and any deviation causes veins to start popping on foreheads, nationally. Spit and hair flying, and that’s just the ladies on CNN.

Have you heard of the poll tax? That was a device in use to prevent non-whites from voting in the US, and it has been used to control the electorate in other countries as well. It was abolished firmly only in 1964 by the 24^th amendment to the Constitution. (Isn’t that surprising?)

That’s all fine with me, because the polling place should be color blind, but I would like to see something similar: The Poll Test.

There would be three simple questions about the structure of our nation on each ballot, questions like, “Who was the first President?” “What year was the Constitution ratified by the States?” Simple stuff. We should publish the question pool and their answers on the Internet and post the questions and answers in each polling place on election day – let’s make this easy for everyone. But once you are in the booth, miss a question and your vote is quietly deleted!

That would eliminate a lot of bus trips to the projects to gather voters who are worried about getting back to the television before the commercial break is over. “Hey! When do I get my cigarettes?”

Like most of my great ideas for societal change, that one will never see the light of day.

Scott Adams puts forth a great prediction of the future in his book, “The Dilbert Future.” It goes like this:

“In the future, the value of your vote will become less than zero. That happens when the amount you pay in taxes to have your own vote counted is less than the value you get from the vote itself.” ^[33]

With all the counts, recounts, recounts of recounts, hanging chad recounts, swinging chad recounts, dimpled chad recounts, disadvantaged and discriminated-against chad recounts, I’m-too-dumb-to-follow-simple-touch-screen-voting-machine-directions recounts, etc., I think we passed the negative vote value finish line several years ago.

Simply put, our votes in the current political system are practically worthless.

Producer, you are welcome to vote the once or twice a year when you get the chance. But don’t think that’s your only opportunity to vote. Let’s turn the poll tax around and pump it up a few notches.

Put your hand into your pocket or purse. Got any green? Every dollar in your possession is not just a dollar, but a vote! And you have not one, but thousands. Every green vote determines in small measure the direction of our country.

How do you vote intelligently, since you have so many votes to cast every year (you now realize)? You have to direct your votes toward organizations and people who are helping Producers, not dumbing us down, and not fostering Paraducerism.

In my town there’s a busy intersection, and one corner lot was stripped, with construction of a new CVS pharmacy following shortly. That lot sits right beside a small family owned pharmacy that has been in the neighborhood for decades. The two buildings are literally within spitting distance. Someone spray painted the “CVS Coming Soon” sign at the construction site with the complaint, “BUY LOCAL.”

I must agree. Buy local as often as you can. Those local stores are run by real people, real Producers, without a legal staff, and without the price of endless paper shuffling built in. The owners built those businesses with their bare hands, stocking shelves and taking inventory. They stayed open late because a mother called in a prescription for her kid with an earache. Those are our neighbors.

Now I don’t have anything specific against CVS, and in fact I know one of their pharmacists pretty well. But seeing that situation is causing me to redirect my dollar votes to the small pharmacy. I remember the late 1990’s build-out of a huge number of Eckerd, Walgreens and CVS pharmacies, sometimes across the street from one another. A failed Eckerd here in town is now a Goodwill Store, and sits across the street from a Walgreens. If the superbox drug stores cannot survive, how can your neighbor’s pharmacy?

I simply cannot support the Paraducer bean counters at CVS Corporate, so I vote against them.

In the case of larger corporations, you can actually determine their political orientation online and vote according to your well thought out preference. Of course, Producers will choose to vote against outright Paraducer businesses, locally and nationally. I dealt with one attorney/CPA and thought that I was getting the best of both worlds, but he botched a tax return that had me answering nastygrams from the IRS for months, so no more green votes to him.

Don’t burn up hours creating a list of “approved vendors,” just think vote every time you pay for something. Your votes will start flowing to the right people, other Producers.