Tuesday, October 28, 2008

I Voted Yesterday.

The government here in our new home conducts all elections by mail, so D and I have already cast our ballots. If you can vote early, I encourage you to do so.

Yesterday, I helped decide legislation and appoint leaders and officials for Clark County, Congressional District 3, Legislative District 49, the great state of Washington, and the United States of America.

I voiced my preferences regarding transportation, euthanasia, and health care in my community. I chose the people I want to represent me in the state Supreme Court, the Governor's office, the United States Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House.

In black and white on a piece of paper, I exercised my right and privilege as a citizen of this republic.

I voted.

What the fuck have you done lately?

~CKL

P.S. If you live in California, please vote NO on Prop 8 next Tuesday. Also go read Ex Machina, a learned political science treatise disguised as a comic book.

2 comments:

Charles said...

Who did you vote?

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CKL said...

Dear spammer,

Although many people denigrate the practice of ending a sentence with a preposition, I believe all scholars would agree that avoiding a dangling preposition while introducing more and greater errors is both grammatically incorrect and just plain stupid.

For example, let's take your comment above: "Who did you vote?" Immediately, we can see two problems with this sentence:

1. The correct form of "who" to use here would be the objective "whom," since your construction implies that "who" is the object of the verb.

2. You're using "vote" as a transitive verb, which it can be, but only when its direct object agrees. See problem #1 above.

A simple fix for problem #2 would be to use a different verb (e.g., "choose"), or just to let it all hang out and end the sentence with a preposition (i.e., "vote for"). After all, readability is paramount.

Finally, to answer your question, I voted for one of the two candidates named in "October Surprise." If you're familiar with this blog, you can probably guess which one.

Hope this helps!

Have a nice day,
~CKL

P.S. It seems I forgot to include Congress in the third paragraph of my original post. I hate it when that happens! Fixed now.

P.P.S. John Scalzi's Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded--now on sale!