The Sun's not yellow it's chicken

JTEM’S ADVICE TO VOTERS

#1.  Vote your best interest.

Don’t vote for someone else’s best interest, don’t vote for what you think your best interests might be in a few years, vote for what is best for you right now. Which brings us to…

#2.  Don’t vote against others.  If you and your kind are all voting to keep other people from having abortions, or stop your gay neighbors from marrying or even to take welfare away from someone in need then who’s looking out for you?  The goal is to benefit you, not hurt others, and you can start by placing the focus on yourself.

It’s not up to you to decide what others should or should not be getting from the government.  There’s no room for any “Stand on Principle” here.  The courts decide those issues.  Your job is to be an advocate for yourself.  if you honestly think that means voting against others than you need to do a lot of growing up.

#3.  If it wasn’t an issue for you a year ago, it probably shouldn’t be an issue for you now.

Campaigns hunt for issues.  They look for hot-button topics trying to lure you in or distract you.  Unless you’re very rich, jobs are always important to you, as are wages.  Housing is very important to you.  Education is very important to you, for both yourself and your kids.  Healthcare is very important to you.  You need it.

Social Security, retirement should also be very important to you, as the only way you can avoid them is to die now before you get old.

You never cared about what was going on in Egypt a year ago, and chances are you won’t care about it a year from now.  So if you’re voting on what you think someone did and/or said about Egypt, you’re sacrificing your needs in favor of mindless electioneering.

#4.  Stop worrying about winners.

It doesn’t matter who you think will win.  Voting isn’t a guessing game, there is no prize for correctly guessing who you think the winner is.  Vote for the candidate that best serves your interest (instead of best hurts the people you don’t like).  do this without regard for who you think might win. Anything else and you’re voting against yourself.  You’re voting against your best interests trying to be “Right” instead of trying to be smart.

#5.  Always vote.

Strategically, you always benefit from voting.  Even if there seems like there’s no difference between two candidates, there’s always something — no matter how small — that sets them apart.  Find out what that is and vote appropriately.

It’s more important than you think.

See, if you ask a candidate to move a full 180 degrees on an issue there’s an excellent chance he will tell you to go pound sand.  Change occurs very slowly (if at all) in a zero-tolerance scenario, where voters demand that candidates give them absolutely everything “Or Else.”  If you always vote for the candidate closest to you, on the other hand, no matter how small the difference…

If you ask a candidate to budge a little — just a tiny bit — in the direction of your views, chances are he will do it.  if that’s what it takes to win, heck, why not?  You’re only asking him to move just a little bit… just enough to set him apart from his opponent. 

But the same is true for the opponent.  He’s got to move just a tiny bit more than the other guy (who admittedly isn’t moving very much himself) to win your votes, win the election.  And so on & so forth…

By asking candidates to move a little bit — even a tiny bit — you can actually bring about more change, and do it quicker, than demanding that candidates move on over to your side all at once. So don’t be a “Give me everything I want or else” douche bag.  Always vote.