How much is your vote worth? It must be worth quite a bit. After all, politicians are spending millions of dollars to get you to vote for them.
I hope you are being compensated sufficiently for that vote. What do you think is a fair exchange for the trust you are about to give to those on your ballot?
Elections are About More Than Candidates
Elections are about more than just casting a vote for a presidential candidate, and our candidates represent far more than just personalities.
Less than 20 years ago, politicians from competing parties may have agreed on how to respond to crime in our cities and protect against an invasion at our southern border.
Today, however, political parties are so far apart, they are at odds about whether to manage civil unrest or tolerate it, so it doesn’t get out of hand.
Foreign Policy
Even looking at foreign governments such as Iran and China, candidates are far apart in political philosophies. How will tomorrow’s president handle foreign relations, and how will he play a role in securing America’s future?
Look at Party Platforms
Party platforms are an important indicator of the direction each candidate will take us. While most candidates promise to do wonderful things for our nation (or state or county government), consider what it will take to enact those promises.
Where will the money come from to pay for those plans? Will funding these programs be worth the raise in your tax dollars? Also, have similar programs worked in the past or are politicians just throwing money at a problem? How will these plans affect you personally?
How Much Will It Cost?
Today’s assurances of scores of entitlement programs sound promising for a better quality of life, but do these actually work? Politicians are happy to spend the money of their constituents.
Just look at today’s national debt--we are almost $27 trillion in debt, because the federal government borrowed recklessly to fulfill promises. The government will have to pay that back, but the money will come from today's taxpayers, their children, and their grandchildren.
Running a government is not so different from running a household budget, except for one thing: households are more careful with the money they spend, because it's money they had to earn in the first place.
Our two major parties could not be more different today than at any other time in U.S. history. Do not sit out this election.
Weigh carefully the differences in your candidates. Whose interests are they representing: the citizens who elect them to office or their own ambitions?
Know Your Candidates
Evaluate their positions on a variety of issues. Find out how they led and voted on issues in the past.
At the Convention of States, we seek to bring about fiscal responsibility as well as term limits for Congress and high profile bureaucrats, who have been at the helm for too long.
They surely will not limit their own powers. It is up to the states to hold them accountable through the powers granted to us through Article V of the U.S. Constitution and a Convention of States.
