President
Four of the six presidential candidates on the Washington state ballot want to push for a bigger and more oppressive government. This leaves Trump and Jorgensen. Trump has crossed way too many lines, so I don't want to be connected to him in any way.
If I had to choose between the two major party candidates, I admittedly would have to go with Trump. Education is an important issue for me, and Biden maintains definitively anti-educational values.
Some might not like third party candidates, but I truly believe that the political duopoly is contributing to these horrible candidate selections. In a sense, voting for Trump would have been a vote to maintain the duopoly. We need change. I ended up voting for the only one of the six that I didn't automatically disqualify, Jo Jorgensen.
If I had to choose between the two major party candidates, I admittedly would have to go with Trump. Education is an important issue for me, and Biden maintains definitively anti-educational values.
Some might not like third party candidates, but I truly believe that the political duopoly is contributing to these horrible candidate selections. In a sense, voting for Trump would have been a vote to maintain the duopoly. We need change. I ended up voting for the only one of the six that I didn't automatically disqualify, Jo Jorgensen.
Governor
In many ways, Jay Inslee was the biggest reason to vote this year. This last year under his leadership has been completely inexcusable. I have already written about why we need to vote him out. This was never meant to be a comprehensive list, and he keeps finding additional ways to drive me away. For example, he was involved in a debate where he defended everything that has gone wrong at the state level on his watch on Trump trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It was one of the worst debate performances I have ever seen.
Attorney General
Bob Ferguson is another good reason to vote. Through his first term, he has looked for any excuse to get himself into the news. This has primarily been in the form of lawsuits against the Trump administration. I might have given him a pass if he would have focused on the legal side of things. Instead, he would hold all sorts of press conferences where the actions he was fighting took a backseat to who he was fighting. Every one of these lawsuits he made about himself. He is egocentric and has allowed his hatred of an individual cloud his judgment. More importantly, he has made it very clear that his number one priority is exploiting the position to further his career. He is not representing the people of this state. He is representing himself. He has to go.
Superintendent of Public Instruction
Chris Reykdal posted an open letter to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (which appears to have been removed from his website). In that letter, he pushed numerous argument that I find to be completely inexcusable. His ideas included strengthening the flawed and inequitable concept of credentialism, ensuring that families with limited means can't pursue educations away from government intervention, and the age-old and repeatedly disproven argument that we can fix the problems by throwing more money at them. This letter alone guarantees that nobody who truly cares about education will support him. The good news for him is that a vast majority of Washingtonians takes education for granted. He's another politician who needs to be removed electorally from office.
Endorsements
I'm not a fan of because-I-said-so politics. I will never vote for a candidate because I like their endorsements. For a number of reasons, this doesn't mean that I ignore endorsements. The big difference for me is that endorsements are more likely to lose my vote than gain it. This includes judges, who I will not support if their endorsements appear too partisan. These positions should be non-partisan.
To shift subjects a bit, I grew up in schools controlled by the anti-educational Washington "Education" Association (WEA). These schools were dedicated to systematically destroying the minds of Washingtonian youth. I have been known to refer to the process as mental genocide.
I try to be fair. I will not automatically dismiss a candidate who has been endorsed by the WEA. I will give them an opportunity to distance themselves from that despicable organization. If they accept the endorsement in any way, such as posting the endorsement to their campaign site, that is an automatic disqualifier for me. Nobody who accepts a connection to mental genocide should be serving in a public office.
The WEA helped me with a lot of decision. Since this is a liberal organization, their endorsements are overwhelmingly provided to Democrats. In fact, I don't believe I saw a single Republican with such an endorsement. I can't be entirely certain because they hid their list of endorsements from the public.
This is one area that confuses far too many people. I am not a partisan conformist. While I am openly closer to the Republicans than the Democrats, I am definitely not a Republican. You would not know that if you saw my ballot. There is a big difference between rejecting one party and embracing another party. Because there are so many problems with the Democrats, Republicans essentially win my vote by default. That should not be confused with support for their party.
To shift subjects a bit, I grew up in schools controlled by the anti-educational Washington "Education" Association (WEA). These schools were dedicated to systematically destroying the minds of Washingtonian youth. I have been known to refer to the process as mental genocide.
I try to be fair. I will not automatically dismiss a candidate who has been endorsed by the WEA. I will give them an opportunity to distance themselves from that despicable organization. If they accept the endorsement in any way, such as posting the endorsement to their campaign site, that is an automatic disqualifier for me. Nobody who accepts a connection to mental genocide should be serving in a public office.
The WEA helped me with a lot of decision. Since this is a liberal organization, their endorsements are overwhelmingly provided to Democrats. In fact, I don't believe I saw a single Republican with such an endorsement. I can't be entirely certain because they hid their list of endorsements from the public.
This is one area that confuses far too many people. I am not a partisan conformist. While I am openly closer to the Republicans than the Democrats, I am definitely not a Republican. You would not know that if you saw my ballot. There is a big difference between rejecting one party and embracing another party. Because there are so many problems with the Democrats, Republicans essentially win my vote by default. That should not be confused with support for their party.
You should have noticed
In all of the examples I provided, not once did I say that I was inspired to vote for a candidate. Instead, I voted against the worst candidates. We do not have politicians, even at the local level, that are legitimately earning my vote. I voted, but I still feel left out. I'm sure there are millions of Americans who didn't vote who feel the same.
We have two parties that are fighting to put out the worst candidates that they think have a shot at winning. Even with the Democrats repeatedly insisting that Trump needs to lose, they found a candidate who is worse than Trump. We need to end the duopoly, and we need political parties to start looking for candidates who actually care about the voters.
We have two parties that are fighting to put out the worst candidates that they think have a shot at winning. Even with the Democrats repeatedly insisting that Trump needs to lose, they found a candidate who is worse than Trump. We need to end the duopoly, and we need political parties to start looking for candidates who actually care about the voters.
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