25 Days of Democracy

In the last few weeks it’s become apparent to me that I’m not doing enough to voice my opinions on important stuff, and the vacuum I’m leaving is being occupied by things/people such as Russian botnets and cynical hired pundits.

For the next 21 days, from now until December 20th, I’ve decided to show some love for my country by speaking up about what I think is important. Each day I’ll take one “political” action that expresses my thoughts about the election and other topics. I’ll contact my representatives and use whatever forums I can think of to communicate my ideas for the US to live up to its potential as a place where everyone has an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I have a certain set of ideas about what this looks like, and I know everyone else has theirs. I want to encourage anyone reading this to join me in making your voice heard, whatever your views.

Each week I’ll post my action plan for the following seven days on Sunday morning. If you want to join me for similar actions that week, I hope you’ll let me know how it goes. I promise, our voices are important to this democracy and we can be heard over the pundits and zombie botnet propaganda machines of this world.

Day 5: On Which I Write a Haiku

Here’s a Haiku I wrote today.

North Pole
Winter rains pour down
Ancient icy ground cracks and
slips into the sea

It was inspired by this article describing how one of Antarctica’s largest ice shelves is starting to crack and may soon fall into the ocean.

 

Day 4: Florida, Where Our Hearts Will Ever Lie

Today I signed the Petition for Florida Secretary of State to hold a 2016 election recount. Florida is the third most populous state in the nation, so we get a lot of bang for our recount buck here. A true democracy should completely welcome, invite even, a recount of the votes in all narrow-margin states in this surprising election!

The Florida State Anthem reminds me of that time Florida de-registered 58.000 voters as “felons” without any evidence of their actually being felons, allowing the governor’s brother to win Florida with a margin of just 537 votes. Oh, and winning Florida also won G.W. Bush the Presidency.

Florida, where the sawgrass meets the sky,
Florida, where our hearts will ever lie,
Sitting proud in the ocean like a sentinel true,
Always shielding your own, yet giving welcome.

Day 1: An Unexpected Last Contest of 2016

Well, it’s day 1 of my 25 day challenge, and I discovered today that one US Senate race is yet to be decided. Due to neither candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote in Louisiana, Democratic candidate Foster Campbell will run against Republican John Kennedy on December 10th.

Campbell is a Commissioner at the Public Service Commission and former state Senator who has supported renewable energy and low rates for utility customers. Kennedy is the LA State Treasurer and adjunct professor at Paul M Herbert Law Center who has fought against pay increases for state employees and supported Donald Trump for president.

Today’s Action: I donated about $10 to my preferred candidate and tweeted in support. Super easy. Only took about an hour including research, donation, and tweeting. Feeling empowered!

Day 2: Audit the Vote!

Seems this is the year someone finally woke up and realized how easy it is to hack the American election system. The US has formally accused Russia of hacking related to the 2016 election and I think it makes a lot of sense right now to go back and review paper ballots. If they agree with the electronic record, that’s great but we still have a lot of work to do securing our voting machines. If they don’t agree, that’s bad, and we have a lot of work to do securing our voting machines!

Today I made a small donation to the recount effort, lead by Jill Stein, to recount the ballots in three states. Even if my money doesn’t go to auditing efforts this year, it’ll go toward election integrity efforts in the future, and that makes me feel warm and fuzzy like I’m cuddling with this little pupper.