Dear freedom lovers,
It’s that time of year again, when ordinary citizens have the opportunity to officially weigh in with our votes on the rules governing society and those who make them. Your voice may feel small and mostly symbolic, but it matters. If it didn’t matter, the establishment and special interests wouldn’t be spending untold millions of dollars every cycle to influence your choices. And for all its flaws, democracy is better than the more statist, top-down alternative approaches to governance.
Especially at the local level, in down-ticket races and ballot measures, there is the possibility that a single vote could change an election outcome. Even if lightning doesn’t strike and this rare occurrence doesn’t come to pass, every pro-freedom vote sends a signal to politicians that freedom has supporters, and that those supporters are likely to be alienated and unhappy with them if they support anti-freedom policies.
So I strongly encourage you to cast a vote, if you haven’t already voted by mail or at an in-person early voting location. Despite the campaigns always urging their supporters to vote early (money in the bank for them!) voting on Election Day is generally your best choice unless you know you plan to be out of town or something – elections can change at the last minute, with candidates dying, scandals emerging, etc., and the longer authorities have completed ballots in their possession, the greater the opportunities for vote tampering.
The polls are open from 8am to 8pm tomorrow, and our recommendations on San Francisco ballot measures A-J are up on the front page of our website at LPSF.org.
There are sadly no Libertarian candidates running locally or for statewide office – not enough people voted against Proposition 14 when it was passed by voters back in 2010 (not by an overwhelming margin, 53.73% in favor and 46.27% against) – so until we can get it thrown out, we have a system where Libertarians and other independent candidates in California are rarely able to make it past the primary election and appear on general election ballots. Which understandably discourages many candidates from running at all. It’s a vicious cycle – but for that very reason, our voices need to be heard more than ever via whatever means we have to make them heard.
That includes defeating bad ballot measures, of which there are, as usual, many, on both the local and statewide ballots tomorrow. The Libertarian Party of California’s recommendations on the statewide propositions can be seen at Ballot Propositions - Libertarian Party of California.
Feel free to give me a call if you have any questions or concerns, and if you encounter any trouble with voting or other such issues, you can call the San Francisco Department of Elections at (415) 554-4375.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco
(415) 573-7997