Yesterday was spend working the polls (and unfortunately getting a sunburn). Some of the candidates I supported won, and some lost. However, I learned a few things. If the American voter really wants to get rid of the political class, there are three steps they can take that will get results. It will take a year or two, but it can be done.
The first obvious step is to get informed. You need to know when you are being lied to. Until we have informed voters, we will have a political class. When people begin to pay attention two weeks before an election, a lot of what they hear is simply distorted or not true. There was a situation locally where a candidate’s party affiliation and ethnic background were misrepresented in a flyer aimed to get the votes of a particular ethnic group. Because the lies were believed, the man got the votes. The voters involved were not informed enough to know that they had been lied to. It will be interesting to see what happens if they ever meet the man. First hand information is always the best, and since change will begin at the local level, being locally informed is fairly easy. Go to the meetings of the various official boards in your community. If you can’t go, talk to the people who do go. Don’t believe everything you read in your local paper or hear on the news–investigate for yourself.
The second step is to share your knowledge with your friends. Your immediate circle of friends may not be as informed as you are, and there is nothing wrong with telling them the things you have learned. I had a number of friends come to me with questions about the primary election, particularly the state offices that are somewhat under the radar. I had information that was useful to them and in one case changed someone’s idea of how to vote on a particular issue.
The third step, which I saw in action yesterday, is the most effective. There were a few private citizens at my precinct handing out information about the conservative candidates. In that precinct, all those candidates won. It is possible that all my neighbors think like I do, but I find that highly unlikely (and not necessarily a good thing). It is also possible that many of my neighbors went to vote for President and saw a bunch of other offices on the ballot that they had not planned to vote for. Those that wanted conservative candidates had the information in their hand about the candidates, and the voters looked at their papers and voted accordingly. Those voters who did not want conservative candidates also had the information–they simply voted for the people not marked as conservative.
If you are happy with the political class continuing to grow the government and demand more of your money, then there is no reason to get involved or informed–they will continue to run things until the voters stand up and say ‘no.’ If you are ready for change, the three steps above will bring change.