Not that I ever get political on here...

Tomorrow is Election Day. And if you've read this blog for any extended period of time, you know how I feel about voting. I think it's one of the most important things you can do, if not the most important thing, as a citizen.

I understand some of the qualms people have about voting: How can you be sure you're voting for the right person? How do you know that they aren't all lying? Are you voting for just the lesser of two evils? It can get complicated. I understand apathy when it comes to politics, especially when it comes to politicians. 

Here's what I wrote a few months ago about voting. I figure I can repeat it because my feelings haven't changed:

"I love voting. I firmly believe in it. A lot of people say the United States is a democracy. They are wrong. The United States of America is a republic. That's why, on Election Day, it's so crucial to vote for our representatives. A democracy is a form of government where the people directly decide policy through hall meetings, ballots, and referendums. A republic is different because it is a system where we choose representatives who make policy decisions on our behalf. The Founders did this for a reason. In the Federalist papers, James Madison wrote, that pure democracies 'have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths' (Federalist No. 10).

Voting is crucial to our form of government. It is our voice, it is our say. If we don't speak up when our representatives are chosen, we lose an important opportunity. Because we choose our representatives, they work for us. Every time I vote, I feel a surge of pride. As a woman, especially, I feel a deep gratitude to vote -- out of the millions of women who have walked this earth, women who have largely been ignored, I actually get to have my voice heard. Sure, sometimes I don't feel like it makes a difference and sometimes I vote for a third-party, well aware that the person I'm voting for won't win, but I love being able to draw my line in the sand and, with my vote, say, 'I have listened to the arguments. I have done my research. Here is where I stand.'"

In that same post, I wrote that if I'd lived at the turn of the last century, I would have been a suffragist. I just know it. Call me cheesy, but even the "Sister Suffragette" song in Mary Poppins gets to me. Ninety years ago this past August, women were given the Constitutional right to vote.
As I mentioned previously, after so many women have been denied a voice, it doesn't sit right with me not to share mine through my vote. So, I'll be one of the first at the polls tomorrow morning. And like in elections past, I'm going to take my son with me so he can experience it first-hand.

That said, I think this election is important. That's not to say that every election isn't important, but I think this year is interesting. I see it as a sort of referendum on how people feel about the direction of the country. 

So where do I stand this Election Day?

Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows that I'm no fan of President Obama. I've done my research from various sources and I've looked at the numbers. Yet, I'm labeled as ignorant. It drives me nuts that since I disagree with the president's policies and the way he governs I am, as the author Gore Vidal recently put it, "a small-town enem[y] of everybody." Basically, if I disagree with the president, I'm a small-town, racist simpleton. Or, as other people like to call people like me, I'm a "teabagger".  Since I disagree with the president, I'm worth comparing to a Nazi or to someone who, as one congressman said, "regrets the outcome of the Civil War" and wants to go back to days of the Confederacy. Funny, since I've been enamored with African-American history from my early grade school days to the end of my four years in college, when I studied intensively and wrote my thesis about the importance of the African-American female narrative.

But I digress...

I disagree with the President and the Congress that has spent over $3 trillion since January 2009.  I am the first to admit that George W. Bush opened the spending floodgates by racking up nearly $5 trillion in his two terms. Granted, he did it in 96 months; Obama has added $3 trillion in 21. As I always quote Daniel Hannan, "You can't spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt." When there are financial problems in a family or in a business, people cut back.

Instead, the President and Congress think they can defy logic and spend more to help our economic woes. It won't work. Instead, give the private sector some room and the economy will fix itself. We've seen, in less than a couple years, the massive spending packages and an overhaul of health care. Government was never meant to be this big or encompassing. It is in our founding documents that the powers of government, the intrusion of it in our lives, was never meant to be what it is now. That's why I think leadership needs to change in Washington -- on both sides of the political spectrum. Both Republicans and Democrats have gotten us into the mess we're in.

For those in my district, I'll mention the most contested vote and say I'm voting for Morgan Philpot over the incumbent Jim Matheson. I'll admit right now, I've voted for Matheson before. I honestly thought that he was fiscally conservative enough; I liked how he refused pay raises and how he stood up against nuclear testing in our state. But in the last while, he's shown who he really is: a politican instead of a statesman. 

Matheson is disingenuous -- one thing that really bugs me is how he's based entire ads about how he voted against the health care bill, yet he voted for the 'slaughter solution' that even allowed the bill to go to a vote. He did vote no for the bill, but not after waffling back and forth. He voted no on the bill, but was one of the last to do so; just until the bill had enough to pass without him. He also voted for the stimulus bill and to adjourn Congress before the election recess without even voting about the Bush tax cuts. With the Democratic majority, why would they shy away from such a vote? Simple -- they knew the public would disapprove of them not extending the cuts and it would hurt their re-election efforts. They didn't want to be held accountable for their votes until after the election when it couldn't hurt them.

I'm not a person against negative campaign ads, but some of Matheson's tactics are less than honest. Like the mailer he sent out that said Philpot wanted to have a "23% national state tax". That's fine for him to bring up, as long as it is in context. Truth is Philpot has said that he supports getting rid of the income tax and instituting a sales tax instead. The "Fair Tax" is not a new idea. And the 23% is a number the Matheson campaign came up with.  As for the other issues in the ads against Philpot, they are also a stretch. Like the tax lien issue -- according to an article in the Deseret News, Philpot had missed paying $165.28 in state taxes from 2002, which he paid a month after receving the tax notice. Wow. Scandal. If you research, you see that a lot of these claims are out of context and frankly show that Matheson is grasping at straws. If his lead is so overwhelming, why does he have to take the offense for the first time? He's never gone negative before. His record should speak for himself.

I've gone on long enough. Do the research yourself and make your own decisions. This is only my opinion and, as always, take it for what it's worth. In the end, if you feel confident about your decision, whether I agree or not, vote. It truly is, as Thedore Hesburgh said, "a civic sacrament."