If Only: We Voted on Policy - Not People

If we did, things like *this* wouldn't happen.

How might America look today - November 19, 2024 - if voting ballots were somehow structured differently? If you voted not for a candidate or for a party, but by filling out a ballot full of questions about how you wanted YOUR personal, specific life to look? And the candidates who supported the position that most folks voted for were the ones who took office? And what if your answers to these questions were linked to actual outcomes in your life through a ballot that wasn’t totally secret - a ballot where your answers to certain questions would actually end up applying to you, regardless of who wins the vote?

I have many conservative relatives still living and voting down in Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee. Some of them are even MAGA conservatives (a claim I confidently make based on their facebook posts). In the weeks since the election, I’ve been asking myself, ‘How would things have turned out if they couldn’t vote for Trump or vote for the Republican party? What if instead, one of my aunts on the cusp of retirement from back-breaking factory work had to answer a ballot question reading, “Yes or No: Do you want Social Security benefits commensurate with the cost of living to be available to you when you retire?” How might that have changed things? And what if that aunt knew that her answer was recorded and assigned to her name and Social Security number, and that her personal Social Security benefits would actually be reduced or altogether removed if she answered “no”?

How many conservatives would, in this case, still cast a vote for a party that would undermine their own best interests just because the other party supported freedoms and benefits for populations of people that conservatives hate for abstract, typically hypocritical, and ill-founded reasons?

This is essentially an allegory for how things unfolded in the U.S. presidential and congressional elections this year. People did make those choices, whether they understood it or not. Let me share an example (in three parts due to length) from the depths of my very own facebook feed.

Here’s Part 1:

Now, I’m sure we all have some questions for this person, including but certainly not limited to:

• What exactly are you saying “Enough” and “No more and no further” to?

• How is voting for an oligarchy of billionaires taking back ‘control of our home and our future and our children’s futures’?

• If you’re tired of rationing your food, fuel, clothing, and medical supplies…then why did you vote for the person who was very vocal about tariffs on Chinese goods…which will make a lot of the things you’re rationing more expensive?

• Why do you get to be free from government and oppression…but you’re totally cool with voting for others to be restrained and oppressed by the government?

Obviously, I could go on at great length here.
The left is tired of war.
We’re tired of having money shipped overseas to fund genocide while our property taxes rise to pay for an ever-diminishing quality of life.
We’re tired of parasites who want to steal from us, kill us, rape us, and destroy us…we just have a very different (and actually data-backed) opinion of who those parasites are. (Hint: the call is coming from inside the house.)
We’re tired of having our rights and liberties restricted and threatened, and tired of government regulations (cough cough Roe v. Wade).
We’re tired of our livelihoods being put in jeopardy, like they are when folks can’t afford a home; are at the mercy of corporations; and can be bankrupted by a medical bill that they still have to pay despite shelling out thousands in health insurance premiums every year.

And I’m not even going to get into the references to trans kids and trans folks…that’s an egg to crack another day, bud.

Here’s Part 2:

Ok, homeboy - if you want to talk about the government the way you probably talk about your tradwife when she’s not listening, go for it. Yikes.

But let’s get something straight here: you voted for someone whose sheer unhinged dangerousness can silence some of the richest men in the world into advance compliance - you really think you’re going to tell the government what to do now?

You think “we the people” go where we want, do what we want, say what we want, and live how we want? You think “we the people” have freedom now? How about a woman who wants to go to Planned Parenthood, get an abortion, tell the incel protester in the parking lot to get fucked (but not literally), and then go back to her job that she prefers over baking biscuits for some guy like you every morning?
Why doesn’t she have the “God given right to exercise” her freedoms, and “to pursue happiness in whatever form we the people chose”?

And now, Part 3…which is perhaps the real pièce de résistance.

Do we establish Justice? Or did you make a mockery of it by not holding Donald Trump accountable for insurrection and other crimes against America?

Do we ensure domestic tranquility? Or did you give every branch of government to a party even more warhawk-ish than contemporary democrats?

Do we provide for the common defense? Or did you elect leaders who have floated the idea of using our military against certain American citizens?

Do we promote the general welfare? Or did you empower billionaires to pay less than ever of their fair share in taxes, while simultaneously putting into power a party whose mouth practically waters at the idea of slashing programs designed to promote the general welfare?

So of course, I have to ask this question again: what would America look like if people couldn’t vote for a candidate or a party, but only for statements like “Would you like to allocate federal funding to promote the general welfare of American citizens - yes or no?”

Who could say no? Even this guy apparently couldn’t…except he did - with his vote.

You poor, deluded soul. How do you not see who and what you’ve voted for?
You want folks who oppose America’s beliefs, values, freedoms, liberties, posterities, rights, & Constitution to not let the door hit ‘em on the way out?

Then you’d better cover your ass as you walk through it.