IT’S VOTING TIME.
If you’ve already voted, then congratulations! You’re in the minority.
According to King County Elections (KCE), only 23% of registered voters have already returned their ballots for the March 12 Presidential Primary—you know, the one between Joe Biden and uncommitted delegates, and Donald Trump vs a bunch of people who have dropped out of the race.
The elections department expects turnout to hit 40%, and spokesperson Halei Watkins believes the county is on track to hit that number, but that’s still less than half of people voting! Less than half is bad!
You know what’s also bad? As usual, people over 65 years of age make up the vast majority of ballot returns:
Bleak!
But don’t worry, there’s still time to turn this bar graph around.
If you’re registered to vote at your current address, then your ballot should be sitting in your mailbox, or hanging out among the other mail in your drop pile, or perhaps in the tub. If you can’t find your ballot, then no prob—you can print out a new one here.
Once you have a ballot, then fill it out the way The Stranger told you to. This one’s super easy! You just rip open the envelope, fill in the “uncommitted delegates” bubble on the Democratic side of the ballot using whichever pen you’d like, tear off your stub so you can track your ballot, stuff the completed ballot in its little Hot Pocket sleeve, stuff all that into your envelope, mark the Democratic Party preference box on the envelope, sign it, date it, and then drop it in a nearby drop box by 8 pm.
For you Ballard-area voters, KCE has installed a second drop box at the Ballard Branch Library location—the busiest box in town—so have no fear of delays! (If you drop your ballot in the mailbox, then your mail carrier may not get to it in time, so just use the drop boxes at this point.)
Why vote “uncommitted delegates?” Read here. Short version: we want Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump in the general election, and if he doesn’t stop the war crimes in Palestine, then he’ll lose. Though we all know Donald Trump and Joe Biden will very likely run away with this thing, voting “uncommitted” could go a long way in ending US complicity in genocide. The option needs to capture at least 15% of the vote share before the state party starts sending delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August to make some noise for Palestine.
Why mark the Democratic Party preference box on your envelope? Because state law requires it! Don’t worry—marking the Dem box doesn’t make you a Democrat for life, or even a Democrat at all, for that matter. It helps the elections department sort the ballots. So do it!
But if you didn’t do it, then you’re not alone. There are already a TON of outstanding challenges this election mostly from people not wanting to select a party. To resolve that issue, enter this online portal and turn in your completed form—with the appropriate party box checked and your signature on the line—by March 21 at 4:30 pm.
If you are not registered to vote, then go visit a voting center some time between 8:30 am and 8 pm today.
Not sure if you’re registered to vote? Then check your status here. Be ready with ID and the last four digits of your social security number.
Already voted? Then send this post to a busy/lazy/detached friend who you KNOW hasn’t voted yet, and make yourself feel extra good about your level of civic engagement.
Of course the Stranger is telling people to vote uncommitted. Liberal lemmings not thinking of potential implications and effect on the presidential election. Kinda reminds me of MAGA and telling delegates to not v+ote. Thanks for not supporting our democratic process and making it weaker. Great message.
Donald Trump thanks you, Rich.
If you rely on the advice of…well, anyone other than yourself and your own values and research you’ve done on the issues and candidates then maybe voting isn’t really your thing.
“Short version: we want Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump in the general election, and if he doesn’t stop the war crimes in Palestine, then he’ll lose.”
And, of course, Donald Trump will make sure Israel “plays nice”. But hey, at least you’ll have shown those Democrats as Israel and Russia get green lights to truly do whatever they want while we’re in a shooting war with Iran.
“voting “uncommitted” could go a long way in ending US complicity in genocide.”
Voting uncommitted in an uncontested primary won’t change a thing.
If you think the Biden administration is going to take a vulnerable political position on a hotly contested foreign policy issue simply because a statistically insignificant portion of the electorate made a protest vote, you are incredibly naïve.
Fuck you, Rich.
you
are Power-
less. NEVER
Forget that. oh
and Remember: it
ain’t Actual Genocide
not
Unless
you were
to Reverse
the Numbers.
have a Nice Day!
Expanding on my @5, Biden was just declared the winner of the Georgia Democratic primary As a result, has now clinched the Democratic nomination. So, protest votes are even more pointless now, and will have no effect whatsoever on U.S. foreign policy or any aspect of the conflict in Gaza.
This could be rewritten to read:
“We were high out of our minds/We were comatose from 2017-2021 so please go ahead and do something utterly either (at best) pointless or (at worst) destructive to the currently only possible winner of the 2024 race who is NOT DT.”
Here is a list of 10,000 Palestinian children murdered in Gaza.
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2024/israel-war-on-gaza-10000-children-killed/
The first 1000 are just the children aged 0 to 4.
Three times as many children have been murdered to date.
Three times as many children have been maimed and orphaned (or both) to date.
Three times as many children are being starved to death as I type this.
There is no lesser evil, only evil.
Hundreds of BILLIONS of American taxpayer dollars to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes that violate United States law, crimes that violate International law, and crimes that violate the “rules of engagement” (aka war, though it is not war when it’s one army against a population of civilians, more than half of whom are children).
Keep cheering about Biden. His legacy is genocide. His legacy is Zionism. His legacy is violating all laws, national and international, using American taxpayer dollars, allowing “Israel” to exterminate human beings.
Be sure to tell everyone how proud you are to vote for Biden!
Biden has not only the ability to cut off military aid to Israel, but he is required by law to do so, so long as it is preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. But he won’t do it.
The idea that we’re giving massive amounts in aid to a country that is refusing our request to allow humanitarian assistance through is embarrassing.
Embarrassing. That’s what we’ve come to. The superpower is embarrassed by its client state’s ongoing massacre of Palestinian civilians that shows no signs of stopping. The President is having to explain himself and distance himself from the Israelis.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/weekly-briefing-israeli-genocide-is-embarrassing-biden-at-last/
Poor Biden. How embarrassing! Leader of the free world can’t say not to genocidal psychopaths.
Biden has secured the Democratic nomination.
The Stranger’s hipster delusion of being an influential trendsetter is shattered once more.
And after all that, Biden dominates and gets 85.68% in the primary. Uncommitted gets 7.44%. By way of comparison, Trump only gets 73.79%.
Way to be at the forefront of the lunatic fringe, Stranger! Awesome work. At least now people should know definitively to ignore your policy preferences, which have essentially zero support among the electorate.
@14 — the “lunatic fringe’?
Change doesn’t come
from the Middle or
we’d Still be stuck
in our caves.
one-party
Corporate Rule*
is now De rigueur here
and the Status Quozzies
could not BE any
Happier
*will you be having
Corporate-Lite or
fully Fascist?
I am curious – Xina, since you are the moral uberlord, what would you do for this election? What is the right thing? Or you don’t care because they’re all evil?