My Voter’s Guide

Yeah, it’s been a year since we threw our federal government into complete chaos.  It finally caught up to our Seattle City government, which has been dysfunctional, inept, non-achieving and over-taxing for years.

I don’t know if I’m a conservative progressive or a liberal conservative. I have opinions and thoughts on everything, but it seems to be my own brand of politics that is sometimes Democrat, while other times Republican.

Most Seattle voters pride themselves on being progressive–formerly known as liberal, left wing or socialist. Take a look at most of the council races and you get to choose between uber-progressive and really-uber-progressive.  I’m waiting for the day that the city council changes all the streets to left-turns only.

I want to truly help homeless people and all those in need, but I don’t want to enable them. I don’t believe allowing camping on sidewalks and city parks, and dumbing-down heroin addiction to the point Seattle is trying to make it a lifestyle is demonstrating compassion. You’re addict?  Here, let us set up a safe injection site. That way you’ll be healthy enough to hit those neighborhoods and steal more to fuel your habit. And now we feel better about ourselves and didn’t have to make any hard decisions.

Yeah, that’s helping.

So, the other day, I found myself at a place where you could pick up the copy of The Stranger, which I did. (after all, it’s free)  I didn’t even realize at the time, in spite of the cover, that it was the Election Issue with their recommendations for our off-year election. Coincidentally, my ballot showed up in the mail around the same time. I had started to fill it out based on some of the main races, but then I hit a point where it was going to take some digging through the voter’s pamphlet to figure out the rest of the candidates.

As I skimmed through The Stranger and came across their endorsements, I realized that they were 6-for-6 in endorsing the opposite candidate I supported. That gave me an idea.

For the first time ever, I used The Stranger’s recommendations to choose who I was voting for.  They recommended A, I voted for B. They said Yes, I said No. Since they pride themselves on extremism to the radical left, I figure the candidate they didn’t support might at least be a little towards the middle.

That was it. I finished the rest of my ballot in less than a minute, put on the stamp and ran it out to the mailbox.

And a new way to vote was born.

Election Day, as of this writing, is still two weeks ago. So lots of time left to get your copy of The Stranger.

Tim Hunter