Midterms 2014: Heads Up, Florida

It's after July 4th.  The whole year is downhill from there...

Still, here in Florida we're getting the season kickstarted.  Well, two seasons actually: hurricane season and primary season.  It's a midterm year after all.

The street signs are already dotting the landscape in front of private offices and empty wildgrass fields.

The actual primary voting is set for August 26 - with Early Voting set for just 8 days(!) between August 16 to August 23 - so we're well outside of a month away, but dammit Floridians I want a big voter turnout this midterm so I want you all to PLAN AHEAD and make some time in your personal schedules to GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT.

I don't wanna see a 39 percent voter turnout.  I don't wanna see a 27 percent voter turnout.  If we get anything under 20 percent I swear to God I'm gonna file criminal charges of sedition on every registered voter who didn't show up to do your DAMN PATRIOTIC DUTY TO VOTE.  You made the effort to get registered, people, MAKE THE EFFORT TO GET ENGAGED WITH THE PROCESS AND VOTE.

And if you've got a problem where your districts are all non-competitive districts, I wanna see some petition drives to force the elections offices to put a NONE OF THE ABOVE option on the ballots.

This has been the real scandal of our electoral process: not the ridiculous and disprovable claims of voter fraud, not the genuine threat of the Republican Party suppressing minority and youth voters, not the massive amounts of megabillion bribery known as SuperPAC campaign Quid Pro Quos.  The simple fact that we honestly do not have enough voters taking the effort to actually vote: that we're being represented by elected officials who only get 30 or 35 percent of the people's approval.  We have an apathetic citizenry, one that's allowing the greedheads, the extremists and the con artists to continue rigging the electoral system simply because they show up and everyone else won't.

C'MON FLORIDA GET THE VOTE OUT!

(forthcoming: a review of the state amendment referendum for 2014.)