It’s been somewhat amusing watching the various political parties and lobbying groups carpet-bomb my mailbox for the last month or so and I’m pretty sure the next seven weeks will be more of the same.
I can’t even imagine how much postage the Republican Party or their surrogates has wasted sending near-daily advertisements with the occasional “survey and personal appeal” from President Trump (actually, it really comes from the Republican National Committee) who seems more interested in an emergency (and massive!) political contribution than actually showing any interest in what I think and an amazing level of condescension if I don’t swear absolute loyalty to their group-think.
Whoever writes these stupid donation demands disguised as “surveys” might want to cut way back on the “believe totally as I believe or you’re an evil liberal trying to destroy the USA” when sending these things to moderate/independent voters.
It’s certainly orders of magnitude more than the Democrats and their surrogates have spent on me…other than the odd mailer for Cal Cunningham whose underlying message seems to be “Tillis: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!” (which may occasionally be true, he IS a politician!), I’ve really not heard much from them. But then again, it’s not an odd-year municipal election which tends to bring more DonkeyMail ™ to the box when the carrier feels like schlepping it!
What amuses the hell out of me about this whole stupid arms race between both parties to fill my postbox with material that doesn’t make it past my shredder is that I’m registered INDEPENDENT and have been for the past 16 years (and in terms of actual political leanings, pretty much ever since I got the vote)!
But there is occasionally one of these mailings that does pique my interest such as the one that came today from the official sounding “Center for Voter Information” complete with a blank absentee ballot request and envelope addressed to the county Board of Elections.
First off, that name and the fact that these people are scraping the voter rolls comes off as a bit scary if not ironic when the letter says in bold “Your privacy is protected” (sadly, your voter record in NC is actually a public record open to pretty much anyone). Next thing we know they’ll be mailing us order forms from the Ministry of Peace (Minipax) or GOSPLAN!
A little digging into the background on this organisation shows they actually got busted by the State Board of Elections a couple of months ago for a previous mass-mailing that contained forms that were pre-filled with the voter’s information. Apparently that’s illegal…so another 1.8M letters just got dumped on the USPS from them that apparently now has NC’s blessing as to being on the right side of that new law!
But then it turns out that whilst this organisation goes out of its way to proclaim they are non-partisan in their activities, the movers and the shakers behind it do tend to be registered Democrat or liberal leaning which is not disclosed anywhere in the mailing.
The truly hilarious thing is that supposed this mailing was targeted to unregistered voters comprising of “women, young people, and people of colour”…and I am precisely NONE of those and the letter even notes that my voting record is “above average”.
So why they thought I needed this letter twice…or frankly at all considering I’m actively registered which should have been obvious is a mystery to me.
But here’s the key takeaways from this bit of an amused rant, my friends:
- I have not, nor will I EVER consider anything advertising a politician or a political campaign to have any relevance whatsoever to how I vote.
That’s rather the beauty of being politically independent and a voter who was Bill McCollum’s worst nightmare. 🙂
I get the sample ballot, I research the candidate’s voting records (if they have one) or their behaviour and make the most informed choice I can with whatever credible information I have available.
Often whilst holding my nose…
- I am registered independent and have been for many years for a reason…I firmly believe that both entrenched incumbent political parties have completely lost their way and are being run by their respective extremist wings.
These people are not the least interested in understanding the problems to be solved or actually put in the work to solve them. They are only interested in gaining or retaining political power and screaming their talking points at the top of their lungs to anyone within earshot.
When the political parties decide to vote their extremists off the island and take their microphones away and start getting serious about solving the serious problems that face our nation, then they might have something I’m interested in hearing.
Until then, I’d just as soon they shut the hell up and leave me alone considering I’m living in one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation where the politicians have been allowed to pick their voters rather than the other way round with district maps that have been repeatedly found to be an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
I will say one good thing came from all of this fuss…whilst checking my voter registration, I noticed I’ve been gerrymandered back into the NC 2nd Congressional District and away from the 4th where I had been packed to neutralise my vote as a safe district for David Price (bleeeeecccch!).