Don't Let Idiots...

...Make decisions for you. The lawmakers you vote for (or if you don't vote, have people who probably disagree with you vote for) make decisions that affect you daily--stuff like: what roads will be built or improved, what areas of town will end up being strip malls or parks, or what taxes you might pay just for buying a cherry-limeade slushie. Oh, and there's also the big stuff like the war on terror, what public school teachers will be paid, and whether or not we want to use stem-cell science to try to cure chronic illnesses like Parkinson's, etc.

Not voting means, even inadvertently, you've willingly let others, possibly idiots, make these decisions for you. Voting means that you get to express yourself by making the best decisions you can on all these issues.

It only takes a few minutes to register. You can do some of it with a downloadable form online, and in a lot of places you can go to your library, post office, or where you get your driver's licence or car tag. The form is barely half a page, and is incredibly painless to fill out, compared to forms you have to fill out for other official things. I've lived in like 4 or 5 different major voting districts by now in my lifetime, and I'm extremely lazy, and yet every single time I've found this to be the easiest step of my move.

Finally, there are tons of non-biased websites out there these days, like the ones Tiny Robot linked us to below, that will give you district and candidate information, so that you can have some idea who and what the frak it is you actually are voting for. Let's not lie: most people don't walk around with a list in their head of what district they're in for this office or that office, or which judge or councilperson makes what kinds of decisions in your town, so pretty much everybody needs this information before they go to the polls. I made A's in government and civics classes in high school, and I still need this review every election. Once again, it's easy and it only takes a few minutes for you to inform yourself, and it's a lot more important than who the next American Idol is.

Besides, every time you vote (informatively), Tiny Robot gets a shiny new lightbulb, and I, Baby Guanaco, get some fresh grass to munch on, and we all want bright, shiny robots and well-fed guanacos, don't we?