<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
On 6/4/2016 2:56 PM, Dan Carscallen wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:189C64D4-90F1-401F-887A-DAB33AEFD776@moscow.com"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
<div>Sure would be nice if folks (candidates included) would tell
me why I should vote for a particular person instead of why I
shouldn't vote for a particular candidate.</div>
<div id="AppleMailSignature"><br>
</div>
<div id="AppleMailSignature">Just sayin'<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
You should vote for Bernie Sanders, or those people who will
enable and implement Bernie Sanders' policies and ideas, so that we
can collectively gain more control over who actually makes the laws
under which we must live, and make those individuals more
accountable to the electorate. Campaign finance reform is the first
step, and beyond that electoral system and voting geography
selection and management reform should follow. (Yes, I really do
suspect that you know how to spell gerrymandering, but it's such an
old-fashioned, and fundamentally corrupt, word).<br>
Remember, 2020 is only four years away, and that means another
national census, and reapportionment and redistricting follow. We
need to be much better prepared for these not-very-far-away
exercises not only for their usual details, but also for the
structures within which they operate. Significant structural
reforms toward more voter awareness, education, and understanding,
and better structural electoral involvement can take us away from
purchased and produced elections and toward participatory democracy.<br>
Your first voting preference should be for Bernie Sanders for
these reasons and many more. If Bernie Sanders does not achieve the
presidential nomination directly, then he must be selected as the
vice-presidential nominee. If he is not selected as the
vice-presidential nominee by the presidential nominee, then the
delegates on the convention floor should vote to remand to
themselves the power to select the vice-presidential nominee, and
then they should vote the vice-presidential nomination to Senator
Sanders.<br>
Your second voting preference should be to elect those
delegates to various positions of party authority to make these
preferences happen.<br>
The fact of the matter is that the Democratic Party, and the
American nation, need Senator Sanders' sound policy judgement
readily available for the next presidential administration. Should
it come to pass that the first female American president is not able
to complete her first term in office for whatever reason, having a
Vice-President Sanders is as good a backup president as the
electorate may expect, and perhaps better than it sometimes
deserves. So, we must all do what we are able to do to ensure
Senator Sanders is in one position or the other of the 2016
presidential ballot, and we should vote for that ticket to provide
public service of the best quality to all of us.<br>
Beyond the national executive offices, we should vote in favor
of those federal candidates most likely to support the Sanders
policy positions.<br>
At the Idaho state level, it would be nice for all of us if we
would vote for educated, competent, non-embarrassing candidates who
understand that we live together in a society that includes human
beings in various family combinations, as opposed to various fantasy
creatures from economic and political imaginations.<br>
Here's a thought. We might vote for state legislative
candidates who are willing to raise state legislative pay to levels
that allow a legislator to be employed full-time as a legislator,
instead of relying on semi-financially independent people who have
reached stages in their financial wealth accumulations and career
development (meaning semi-retired), and many of whom can, and
apparently do, ignore, disdain, and turn unseeing eyes toward the
voters who elect them. Were legislators paid enough to allow more
diverse candidates to run for those offices, perhaps the nature of
the legislature would then be able to better reflect the population
of the state it is supposed to serve.<br>
<br>
<br>
Ken<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>