Personal view of October 2011 election, Wake County, North Carolina, USA

This will be a set of reasons why its important to vote in this upcoming election and why it is important to vote Dem.  Of course this is my opinion.  You will do whatever you decide to do or not do.  I consider it highly unlikely that anyone reading this might be disinclined to vote, but perhaps there are undecideds or disenchanteds among the potential readership, or maybe I'll produce a useful turn of phrase that can be used by someone to try to convince someone else to vote who otherwise might go out for a burger with that time instead.

This is a local election for school board, mayor, city council.  The current school board majority got itself elected with a big push in a small election.  Total turnout for the county was about 11% that year, they didn't sweep to power, rather they got modest majorities, a bit over 5% of the registered voters.  No one knows what kind of turnout there will be this time, but I bet you it won't be any 70% like it was in 2008.  Perhaps the right wingers will turn out in droves and the Dems will be weak and they will stomp us good, or perhaps Dems will be riled up too and there'll be a 40% turnout, or maybe more likely it won't quite get to 20%.  If that is the case then truly every vote will count, the winners will win by a few thousand votes.

This is our regional school board candidate too.  It is personal therefore.  If you think what's been happening at the school board is worse than what went on before it is important to try to defeat their candidate. 

Unfortunately there are two non-Ripublican candidates, an instance of party lack of discipline.  The Rips do it too but it is deplorable.  The two Dems: one is a little firebrandish, the other one is nicer-ish, I would vote for either of them if they were the only one, but no, so I'm going to vote for the nice one because that one has more political oomph, much as i appreciate the positions of the other one.  For strategic reasons I will usually go with the moderate, they can more easily be elected.  Kushner.

From my point of view Rips at every level have created mischief everywhere that they have taken power.  There used to be good government Rips but now all they want to do is privatize.  We may not have much input at the national level, or maybe even the state, (though a Wake County win usually carries the state), but we always have a chance of winning in the county and the city and the school board.

Did I convince you to vote?