Before you ask, because everyone asks: grand theft auto. I was 19, I was drunk, and I thought it would be a great idea to try to outrun the cops. Okay? I'm not going to blame anyone besides myself. It was a dumb mistake, and I paid the price with five years of my life. That was almost a decade ago. Now I've got a successful small business, a great girlfriend, and a nice condo, and I am, by any metric you choose, an upstanding Seattleite.

And I'm not allowed to vote.

By the time the next presidential election happens, there will be more than six million convicted felons in the United States who don't have the right to vote. It's a backward, moronic system that doesn't allow for forgiveness, which is a necessary characteristic of any civilized nation.

Besides not being allowed to participate in the most basic right provided by the Constitution, the worst thing about being a convicted felon is reading The Stranger's endorsements. Here you have a bunch of bratty d-bags who are handed access to just about every candidate and almost all the organizations behind every initiative. They're the only paper in the city to do endorsements besides the Seattle Times (and don't get me started on the Times or we'll be here forever). But what do we find in their endorsement issue, time after time? A lazy, unprincipled, expletive-stuffed guide that insults the intelligence of its readers and basically slaps me (and all the convicted felons like me) in the face with its willful ignorance.

The thing that really bugs me about The Stranger's endorsements is how obvious they are. I mean, of course they're going to endorse Barack Obama and Jay Inslee. Never mind that a Gary Johnson endorsement would probably be more shocking (therefore more Strangeresque) and impactful than an Obama endorsement. If there's a presidential candidate who more closely hews to The Stranger's philosophy (pro-pot, pro-homo, pro-abortion) than Johnson, I haven't heard of him, and a third-party surge would be just the thing to shake the gridlocked partisan hacks in DC out of their slumber.

And Inslee is so safe and inoffensive as to be virtually invisible. Rob McKenna has some problems, of course, but he's a hell of a lot more realistic than Inslee with his made-up bushel of green jobs (seriously, Inslee's green energy future is less tenable than Mitt Romney's magic 12 million jobs he'll just pull out of Paul Ryan's baby-soft ass). And what we need now is a pragmatist in the governor's office.

Once The Stranger toes the party line, they go for shock value. You have to endorse the mediocre talents at the top of the ticket so you can make some noise in the under-cards, like how they're throwing a competent journeyman like Frank Chopp under the bus so they can promote a socialist like Kshama Sawant. Gotta be "edgy," no matter what—right, Stranger? Hey, you know what's edgier than endorsing a nobody candidate in a race with no consequences? Demanding that convicted felons be allowed the right to vote. Or, to put it in language that you'll understand, Stranger: Fuck you, you fucking fucks. recommended