... might be wise thinking twice, putting bumper stickers ~

I had my first Obama yard sign stolen by a 'Sunday school group.' So I put the second one out and wiped it down with poison ivy sap and some strands left on top. That one survived all the way to Obama's victory.

There will always be dummies who usually just steal or destroy signs they don't like. I wait until the election is over and pickup a couple of the loser's signs. They are perfect for holding target roundels at the range.

The funniest event was at the office. With low partitions, we were in a fish bowl where loud conversations, often political, could be heard. No problem, I had modified pistol range protectors with small speakers so I could block them out and listen to my tunes.

One evening at home, I had just donated to Obama and the response page proposed forwarding a 'boiler plate' note via e-mail. So I listed the loudest voices and our supervisor and added:

I don't have a charge number to discuss politics at work. ​

One voice e-mailed a reply that he wanted to keep his job. I visited our supervisor and his first words, "I nearly busted a gut!"
The background noise was significantly reduced.

I've got a couple more stories about work sex, religion, and politics but we've covered enough for today. As for "keying" a car, my right rear quarter panel brushed again a metal post so it is already 'pre-keyed,'

Bob Wilson

 

Yeah, my parents' car was vandalized in the early 1970s because of a bumper sticker saying they hadn't voted for Nixon. Never heard that vandal was ever caught.

 

Growing up in the’50’s and ‘60’s my wife’s parents and my parents taught us that voting is a private matter and they never put signs in their yards or elsewhere. We haven’t either. Definitely wouldn’t in today’s world!

 

Your parents were very wise - they are many famous people who would agree with them - one example George Washington

George Washington Warned Against Political Infighting in His Farewell Address | HISTORY

"As he stepped down from the presidency, Washington urged Americans to always place the interests of the nation over their political and regional affiliations."

President Washington later warned against the dangers of Political Parties and people who foolishly vote for the Political Party rather than the best Candidate!

"According to Washington, one of the chief dangers of letting regional loyalties dominate loyalty to the nation as a whole was that it would lead to factionalism, or the development of competing political parties."

The Farwell Address by President Washington was cowritten by another great American Alexander Hamilton.

 

... who also wrote something like 51 of the Federalist Papers, which were intended to persuade people on a political question (namely, whether to be in favor of the newly-proposed US constitution). So he wasn't exactly one to keep quiet about what his positions were.

I remember the topic of ballot secrecy being in the news again in recent years, and why having a secret ballot is such a big deal. I've never figured it was because people shouldn't have conversations about their choices. Weird stuff happens if nobody does that.

It's of course important that nobody be forced into doing that, and that nobody be able to prove to another person how they voted, whether they want to or not, because that's the only safeguard that prevents vote-selling/vote-buying/vote-coercion from being workable forms of commerce.

Sadly, the reason the topic was back in the news recently was that there were people pressing for the right to take 'ballot selfies'—and thereby prove how they had voted, so as to eliminate the only practical protection against vote commerce—and have had success in a bunch of states.

 

Maybe a better answer-keying a car is illegal and person doing it deserves to be arrested and forced to pay damages.

How you vote is nobody else's business and if you are voting for anyone else than the person who will do the best job for the whole country you need your head examined.

 

The problem is that not enough people care about 'the whole country'. All that matters is their microcosm, typically made of just one or two concerns. You could probably have one candidate who says he's going to execute every fifth baby that's born (horrible right?), and also says he'll make abortion 100% legal at the Federal level again. Some people will vote for him due to his stance on abortion. Yes, this is an extreme example, but you get the drift....there's a 1000 similar things out there. Someday there may be a candidate who toes the line of reality, but I don't think we're there yet....

 

Whoever vandalized my parents' car in the 1970s, over the bumper sticker, seems unlikely to have leaned democratic.

 

In 1980, when still a solid Democrat in a then-leaning-Republican state, I put a bumper sticker on my car for a Democrat for Congress. Some non-democrat troublemaker couldn't handle it, so covered it with a John Anderson for President bumper sticker.

Now I live in a different state, am independent (despite still leaning in original direction), and don't use bumperstickers anymore.

 

Voting options:

• With a ballot - small but silent message to the politicians.
• With a donation - below $200, not even noticed but supports your politicians.
• With yard sign and bumper sticker - lets. others know they are not alone.
• Campaign pins and shirts - gives an opportunity to persuade the honorable competition.
• Campaign volunteer - cold call the honorable competition and motivate supporters.

Pick what passes your threshold of enthusiasm.

Bob Wilson

 

Let’s face it boys, a republican would never deface anything, witness January 6th

 

?

 

We learn from our mistakes (hopefully)

 

Here in Wyoming, I'd be more scared to put a Biden/Harris bumper sticker on my car. Being it's a Prius, that's just asking for trouble - twice.

 

The only sticker I've been tempted to place on my POV in adulthood is a small American Flag sticker, although my sweet Mother gave me a Submariner themed license plate frame that I'm currently using.
One of my distant relations drove a Prius and always had a "Dump Trump" sticker or two on her rear bumper.
Her car was keyed more than once and the sweet lady ACTUALLY THOUGHT it was because she drove a Prius and those inbred, slack-jawed, meth-addled locals were keying her car because of "Prius Hate."
Ironically, SHE was also a local, Bless her heart.
I tried to tell her that it 'probably' wasn't "Prius Hate."

Frankly I try to limit my association with people who use their cars to shout messages that they don't have the stones to say face-to-face.
The next political sign I put in my property will be my first one ever - and IIRC they are not allowed in the neighborhood that I live in.

Some of my contemporaries put the usual gun manufacturer stickers on their cars but I advise them against this practice for reasons that should be obvious even though we live in an area with very low (actual) crime rates.
Even though gas is (curiously) still less than $3 locally I'm seeing a marked increase in LGB stickers on both cars and gas pumps and TRUMP flags in people's yards.

Fun times ahead!

 

Woohoo, a topic near and dear to me. Our voting system is so bogus, and the pols/bureaucrats want it that way. They use that "secret ballot" nonsense to dismiss any discussion of the corruption. Here's the deal: your vote only needs to be a secret to other voters. Instead, it's kept secret from us as well - our own votes! grrrrrr

You and I can not confirm for ourselves that our votes were counted in any election - or, that if we didn't vote, a vote wasn't counted as ours. All we can do is drop a ballot in the mail or pull a lever in a booth and trust anonymous bureaucrats and USPS workers to count them correctly.

That's corrupt in fact, but in reality, it's worse. To wit: the primary area of disagreement in our country, the single issue that caused the original Articles of Confederation to be scrapped, the reason we had a Civil War, the reason we argue today, is over federal vs states' rights; big, centralized government vs small, local/state governments. The bureaucrats and USPS employees have a critical conflict of interest in that debate - they are products of the big government. When small government pols win, the lose.

It's bad enough that they even have a hand in the ballot process, but to let them do it all in secret, with no way to audit the results except to accept their verdicts a second time? It's absurd, and any objective-thinking person can see that. But, it's worse because it doesn't have to be that way. And was never meant to be that way under the Constitution, although they had no concept of what voting has become, how political parties have arisen to take over and corrupt the voting process. (topic for another post)

I've thought of a simple solution to solve the problem and make Americans trust their elections again. And, if I can think of it, there must be many others. That's the smoking gun - that none of the pols even admit there's this problem, even as they argue about its symptoms and solutions. They don't want us to trust our elections; they want us to just trust them and their bureaucrats, the shut the heck up.

I'll try to be brief, but there are a few details.

First, make voting a holiday, so no one has an excuse for not voting. Maybe two days, whatever it takes, timewise, for everyone to go vote. Absentee/mail-in only for documented reasons.

At the polling location, people vote in groups - let's say 25 at a time. They all walk into a room and take turns voting in a manual, visible process - say, dropping colored balls into different tubes behind a screen. Once all 25 have voted, the screen is lifted and everyone can now see how many balls are in each tube. The total will equal 25. A pic is taken of the tubes, then all of them walk out of the room to where anyone can see, and cameras can document them standing for a group pic as the vote totals displayed are updated to reflect the additional 25 votes.

The effect is a running, redundant x 25, audit repeated over and over by us. You know your vote was counted. You see it registered on the vote totals along with everyone else. All across America, Americans voting together, knowing their elections are fair everywhere. Makes me tear up just thinking of those voters standing together, voting together, regardless of their differences.

And, yeah, party names should not appear on the ballot. We should only vote for candidates.

 

Based on some of the peaceful protests that occurred prior to that, the Jan 6 people (misguided or not, who's to say) left everything in pristine condition. and...they actually left....

 

You need to change states - or perhaps learn more about the state that you may or may not be voting in at present.
They DO say that Texas is like a whole 'nother country.

The line forms on me when it comes to the notion that I don't want people to "California" my state....BUT....the idea that post election data are not widely available or systemically accurate in most states is to demonstrate a very common lack of knowledge of how things REALLY work.
Most US states have fairly robust systems from registration to ballot retention that include seal logs, custody reports, retention laws, and mandatory certification requirements.
I myself was hauled into court as a subpoenaed witness for four-10 hour days just this last year because a county official was upset that a primary run-off recount didn't go their way, and this was after both sides went through tens of thousands of records looking for 'irregularities' that did exist in some cases on both sides - because they do in EVERY election but I left that process utterly STUPIFIED at the sheer accuracy of the process - which was on the order of 10 ballots in 50,000.

People do not TRUST elections because they are willfully ignorant about how elections are conducted.

When the enemies of your country are proving YOUR case - LET them!!
This is true in a capitol building, Other government buildings (SCOTUS hearings come to mind) AND on college campuses.

Fun times ahead!