{"id":3490,"date":"2012-11-06T16:24:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T21:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=3490"},"modified":"2012-11-06T16:24:30","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T21:24:30","slug":"election-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/election-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Election Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In case you just crawled out of a cave, today is election day here in the US. Or, as I like to think of it, the last day before all of the awful campaign TV spots go away. At least for this cycle. Just don&#8217;t let Mitt Romney see his shadow or we&#8217;ll have six more weeks of attack ads.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a title=\"photo.JPG by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/8162101746\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8487\/8162101746_6ce65dc2bc.jpg?resize=300%2C224\" alt=\"photo.JPG\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">My Mama voted for Obama!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Or something like that.<\/p>\n<p>I like to think of myself as being rather politically aware and minded, but even <em>I&#8217;m<\/em> sick of this election. Sadly, I&#8217;m sure that there are politicians out there who are already gearing up for 2016.<\/p>\n<p>I brought Lilian with me to vote today. We went a little bit before lunchtime so that we could a) avoid the crowds and 2) make the line just a little bit shorter for the folks who will be voting after work. She is apparently too young to be impressed at the sight of democracy in action (shocking, I know) and she started fussing just when I got into the little stall where I needed to fill out my ballot. I just hope that I didn&#8217;t accidentally vote for Scott Brown in a frazzled mom moment. I didn&#8217;t bother voting for any of the local candidates because 1) I wanted to get the hell out of there and b) they were all Democrats running unopposed.<\/p>\n<p>(Hellloooooo Massachusetts).<\/p>\n<p>I always thought it was crazy that there were people out there who go to vote and have no idea who they&#8217;re going to pick, but I actually had a similar moment myself today. Massachusetts has a ballot question about physician assisted suicide and I couldn&#8217;t decide if I was for it or against it. I&#8217;d heard good arguments both pro and con and I already had mixed feelings about assisted suicide. I tend to want to pick the side of people continuing to live, but I also feel that the terminally ill shouldn&#8217;t have to suffer unnecessarily. I finally decided to err on the side of personal freedom, but I&#8217;m still not entirely sure that I made the right choice. I guess I&#8217;m not so boggled anymore by people who can&#8217;t decide who they&#8217;re voting for. For most people, it probably comes down to who they think is the least biggest douchebag, and that can be pretty hard to tell these days.<\/p>\n<p>I will say this, I was glad that I studied up on the ballot questions in advance. Because reading through paragraphs and paragraphs of legalese while an 11-week-old screams in your ear is not exactly easy. In fact, it&#8217;s almost impossible. It was hard enough to read the opening summary so that I was sure what yes and no would mean. And, even now, I&#8217;m not sure that I didn&#8217;t accidentally vote to give medical marijuana to doctors who assist terminally ill patients.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t have to tell me who you picked, but I&#8217;d sure like to hear that you all voted today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In case you just crawled out of a cave, today is election day here in the US. Or, as I like to think of it, the last day before all&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31,23,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nablopomo","category-politics","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-Ui","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3490"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3499,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3490\/revisions\/3499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}