The Narnia 3 Blog

The Narnia 3 Voter Guide to All Elections

Well, it's a month before the elections so if you are like me you are being inundated with "voter's guides." These are lists from one of the two parties on how to vote on candidates and various state and local issues. At my home those go directly into the recycling bin along with all campaign letters, notes, literature, and appeals for money.

As I was thinking about the election again I thought I would offer my own "Voter's Guide" to this election and pretty much any election. This will apply to candidates more than local and state ballot initiatives, which you usually have to at least read to make some sense out of. But I do have a suggestion or two for those as well.

The first principle for voting for the Christian: PRAY! I'm asked constantly how to pray for elections; the answer is relatively simple; pray that God will bless us with us with leaders from His grace and not from His wrath. The difference is significant and not easy to discern by the individual elected. One thing is certain, neither option, Grace or Wrath has anything essentially to do with either political party. I never and honestly can't ever remember praying that a particular person would win a particular election.

For the Christian the relation to government at any level is fairly simple:

• We are to obey and respect our leaders and laws of the land(Rom 13:1-7; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13-17).
• We also understand that obedience is not carte blanche (Acts 4:19); but remember, when disobeying on the basis of Biblical principles you will likely suffer the consequences, so be certain you are actually suffering for real Biblical principles (1 Peter 4:14-16) and not just being a nusance.
• What Christians should do is pray for their leaders at every level, that we may "live a tranquil and quiet life" (1 Tim 2:1-2). This is directly tied to the spreading of the Gospel. Times of chaos, persecution, and anarchy are generally not good seasons for the advancement of the Gospel.
• Christians have dual citizenship; we are citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom which we represent on earth (Phil 1:27) and we are citizens of whatever country we find ourselves. We have Biblical obligations to both which are not, generally speaking, mutually exclusive.

The second principle is Logic. Check out my handout here on Logical Fallacies. Political advertising, like all advertising, is designed to trick you into making a decision or buying a product based on emotion rather than rational, reflective, reason. The things shown and stated are strewn with fallacious logic designed to confuse you. Stop and think for a few minutes and think about the logic of what is being presented to you and refuse to be tricked.

Sometimes the things you are being told or shown may look like objective, reasonable, information. For instance car commercials will often give you what seems to be useful information about the acceleration of a particular car ("This car will go from zero to 60mph in five seconds"). Well, I was an LAPD traffic accident investigator for a long time, and I can tell you that in almost any instance on a city street going from zero to 60mph (even if 60mph is legal) in that time would be a violation of the unsafe start/acceleration laws, at least in California. It's factual information, but it's still designed to affect you emotionally, because the "facts" are largely useless to real life driving.

The following "guidelines" may sound a little cynical, and they probably are since I am cynical and suspicious by nature; but for the most part I believe that they represent reality (which people generally don't like to be confronted with).

• Vote for one of the two major party candidates, if you don't you're wasting your time. The last time a non-Republican or Democrat even got a whiff at winning a presidential election was in 1912 when the Progressive or "Bull Moose" party of former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt came in second behind the winner, Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt lost by about 4 million in the popular vote and about 330 electoral votes. The last time a third party may have possibly effected a presidential election was the Ross Perot, George H W Bush, and William Clinton election of 1992. But voting for candidates from any of the other political parties, while certainly everyone's right, is historically demonstrable to be a waste of time. If you want to "protest" don't use your vote to do so, believe me no one will notice. Go stand in front of the office of whatever elected official you don't like and scream at the top of your lungs your protests against their policies. You'll bring more attention to what you believe and probably feel much better for the effort. Beyond the presidential elections, non-Republican or Democratic office holders (beyond being historically so few in number as to be insignificant) have never had any demonstrable effect in national or state government policies since the Whigs before the Civil War.

• Abortion is largely a meaningless issue for all elected offices. Look, the only thing that will change abortion in America is a constitutional amendment, which the founding fathers made exceptionally difficult to accomplish and has no possible hope of happening. The only other thing that can change the current landscape of abortion is a reversal or significant modification of the Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade. The only people who can effect that change is the President of the United States who nominate members of the Supreme Court; and the United States Senate, who must vote to affirm those nominations. What a congressman, governor, state assembly member, mayor, city councilman or any other elected official thinks about abortion is largely meaningless. And, unless they are completely ignorant of civics, they know it. Any discussion of abortion outside the presidential and senatorial candidates is nothing but a smokescreen designed to inflame the emotions (on either side) and garner support.

• Understand the actual role of the office or position up for grabs in the election and immediately reject the person running, who makes claims and promises of policy or political change that are demonstrably beyond the scope of that particular office. The person making such claims either knows nothing of what the office they are seeking is actually all about; or is just hoping to use this office as a stepping stone to something else. In either case they probably won't do much in the office they are actually running for that doesn't directly benefit them.

• I largely agree with the philosophy of Dr. Greg House, "everyone lies." They may not know they are lying and may not believe they are lying, but generally they are. That is their perception of the facts or even reality is skewed by their ambition, their ideology, their dislike or hatred of their ideological opponents, or any number of things. Some people are also simply pathological liars, they are almost incapable of telling the truth, even when the truth is to their advantage. While the first group is part of the overall human condition, fortunately the second group is not. Candidates and spokespeople for or against particular issues generally are lying (or to use the more acceptable term, "spinning") about information and factoids (little pieces of facts that are carefully separated from the totality of an actual fact) to put themselves or their cause in the best light. All in all, what people tell you in an election cycle or campaign is largely worthless. Try to actually look at what these people have done in their past that might qualify them for the office they are currently seeking.

• This presidential election is unusual because generally US Senators almost are never elected president; however, for better or worse one will be this time. This will be the first time since President Kennedy was elected that a person went directly from the Senate to the White House (the last one before him was Warren Harding in 1920, widely regarded as the worst president in US history). The reason for this is fairly simple. Senators are generally unqualified in terms of experience to be president. Senators don't run anything (and most senators start as US Congressmen, who don't run anything either). The make speeches and vote on laws; they have virtually no administrative duties beyond their own staff. Actually, in terms of actual executive experience, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska (the Republican VP candidate) is the most qualified. Govenors, Generals (or admirals, although none have ever been president), and people of significant executive experience are generally the best choices for president.

• If a person is running for a new or higher office because they cannot run for re-election in their existing office because of term limits; almost without exception vote against them. These are not people interested in service, they are interested in power and a job that will pay them well and help them move on to something else.

• On ballot initiatives, remember bond measures are not magically free money. The tax payers of a particular state will have to pay that money back with interest. Bonds can be a useful way to get people to invest in important projects, but they have largely now become never ending piggy banks for politicans. So, no matter what the project is or how beneficial it seems, in today's economy (especially in California) my first inclination is to vote against it. About the only exception I make is if it benefits military veterans.

• Pay no attention to newspaper or other "endorsement" lists. The fact that some group, indvidual, or newspaper tells you to vote this way or that is another pointless waste of time. It's simply their opinion, largely guided by their own self-interest. Newspapers and media outlets who give their endorsements via "editorials" are really just trying to continue the illusion of the dispassionate "Fourth Estate" who are only there to serve the public interest. Editorials are driven by the owner of the media entity. The idea of a "Chinese Wall" between media ownership and the editorial board is largely mythological. The media source that presents their endorsement hide behind the phrase, "Paper X is endorsing this person or that proposition." It really isn't "Paper X" making the endorsement, it is the editorial board (or fewer) of the paper who hold their jobs at the pleasure of the owners.

• Update as of 10/27/2008: I was reminded today by reading an interview of one of the four major candidates (by which I mean the two presidential and vice-presidential candidates) of another voting guide principle. This principle is to ignore any and all comparisons of candidates to past historical personalities (either good or bad comparisons). These comparisons are meaningless; personalities and history are far too complex for the simplistic analogies. Past leaders are generally only known to the general public by the mythology that has built up around them over the years than the reality of their overall successes or failures. The comparisons used in current campains are designed to emotively affect the listener by calling to mind the common mythology rather than the reality. Or, worse in the case of some candidates, they actually only know the mythology and are themselves clueless about the reality of the people whose names they are invoking. Which is probably a good reason not to vote for that person.

• Update as of 11/1/2008: Something that corresponds to our basic concept that "everyone lies," is the subtle means of lying effectively in political campaigns and that is by using large, impossible to verify, numbers. For instance, in one add adocating a particular proposition related to energy, the ad stated that passing this initiative would remove some billion tons of pollution from the air. Of course, this is impossible to prove, and the "science" behind such a statement is, to borrow a popular web site's name, is "junk science." In all advertising, especially political advertising, most reference to numbers (especially very large numbers) are pretty much nonsense. Along the same line, you should generally ignore any reference to "percentages" of anything in political advertisements. They are generally nicely contrived lies or percentagage of "factoids" which again are little pieces of an actual fact, which while perhaps "true" do not necessairily represent "truth."
  

Posted by Narnia3 at October 9, 2008 8:53 PM | TrackBack