sayHear: why are you voting?

Are you voting tomorrow? Why? That's the question being asked by the sayHear project, an experiment from Gershoni Design where you're invited to call a phone number tied to your candidate and record a message with your reason for voting. You can hear all of the messages on the sayHear Web site. sayHear

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Takuan

another reason why organized religion saps human progress.
IamInnocent

#10
dear ZikZak:

well, since when anyone has to limit their political involvement to the voting day?

For example, when the US decided to go destroy Iraq to teach a lesson to the planet essentially, laying low and making absolutely no wave was, as a matter of fact, a very effective political statement which had the effect one could expect.

We are always part of the life of our countries.
simplewonder

i like to hear my fellow citizens opinions, rather than any anchorman/pundit/journalist any day. Hope you guys listen ti mine, and leave one too
FourFiveFire

@ #8:

I don’t wanna make waves, but George Carlin makes the funniest argument I’ve ever heard against that whole “You don’t vote, you don’t complain!” thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efKguI0NFek

I just like seeing different perspectives. Carry on!
jubz

zikzak? hmm, i seem to remember being out in the street screaming at the top of my lungs along with hundreds of thousands (millions?) of others that the war had to be stopped at all costs. escaped getting arrested and brutalized by the nypd for voicing my opinion by the skin of my teeth. we tried, the world ignored us, we (all of us) failed. other friends weren’t so lucky.

i’m voting for cynthia mckinney.. why? because she’s unequivocally against war and killing people in service of turning a profit. i quite like ralph nader too, but having a black woman president would shake shit up that much more. even ron paul’s strangely weaselly self would have been better than these fools. we’re in the kali yuga, hopefully this turn of the wheel will soon complete itself…
WordyGrrl

I vote (even in small, local elections) because of my mom.

In the 70s, the Equal Rights Amendment (Google it, slackers) was up for a vote. My mom (divorced at 23 with a deadbeat ex and two kids to support), worked 18-hour days sanding fiberglass parts in a horrible factory. Yet, she found time and energy to work toward passage of the ERA.

Heck, she even got on television once, giving the benediction at an ERA rally in St Louis, MO!

But the ERA didn’t pass.

And I saw my mom get beat down personally, politically and emotionally. And that hurt like hell, seeing my own mother — a hard-working American, just trying to make ends meet and raise her kids — get beat down.

Since that time, I have voted in every single election I’ve been eligible to vote in — by absentee ballots or those iffy computerized ones. But dammit, I’ve voted.

On behalf of those who’ve been shouted down, MY vote will not be silenced. In fact, I voted early.
Takuan

it’s very simple: McCain means no hope at all.

Don’t worry about a lovefest. If Obama is not stopped by fraud and force, the barbed wire blender he is about to step into will ensure he will not be around for a second term. There is even a possibility America won’t be around. The Bush kleptocracy has rotted everything from the inside so that naught but veneer remains. This is not making the patient well, this is going to be bringing back from the dead.
sammich

tak @ 25 – but surely the USA is like coral – the individual cells that survive will reorganize to form a new organism… ?
dalesd

@#8 Anonymous
You say I give up my right to complain. I say [channeling Carlin] Fuck you, I’ll complain all I want. I’m not going to take any moral responsibility for whoever gets elected.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” – H. L. Mencken

I know what I want, and it won’t be found in a voting boot. I’m staying away from the polls. Instead I’ll do something meaningful: reread the Declaration of Independence. http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/index.htm
romulusnr

After hearing a NJ caller put on a thick-sounding drawl and go on about “i dont want a neeger president”, I’m inclined to agree with #1 about the false calls.

OTOH that doesn’t make it any less interesting, as I’m sure there will be “I’m voting Obammer because I love terr-orrism and I want America to die.”
Anonymous

Best reason for not voting: I’m a felon..
Anonymous

dthomp87: I find your statement lending credibility to the calls for McCain.

Also: it’s pretty hard to fake earnest ignorance like this
Takuan

if America is a reef, it’s been dynamite fished, chain dragged, poison flushed, overrun by crown-of-thorns, bleached and nuclear tested. Will it still be America if the average experience is poverty? The rest of the planet will be dealing with recession at least and blaming the USA for it. The Cheney mafia has three months to start a crippling war. Or rather expand the crippling war.
Anonymous

Awesomeness!!!!!
Anonymous

You HAVE to do both.

You have to be involved in politics — write letters, volunteer — be an activist. It’s the only chance you have to be vocal about the stuff that matters.

BUT

You also have to go pull the lever, black in the circle, touch the screen — whatever it is that actually counts your VOTE.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t have a lot of faith that it will get counted correctly — consider me disillusioned with hanging chads, the absolute clusterfuck that is voting machine, etc.,e tc., etc.

But it’s all we have for now. Making a lot of noise is good…but you have to back it up.
zikzak

@ jubz, iaminnocent

Exactly what I was getting at, thanks for making the connection.

Casting a vote does not constitute participation in democracy any more than having an orgasm constitutes having sex. Focusing so much on the end result is missing the entire point.

What we’re given in the US is the idea that democracy is one act, that of filling out a ballot. In fact, the ballot casting should be the rather unremarkable culmination of an extended, passionate engagement with our communities and authorities.

And in times like these, when the validity of ballot casting is heavily in doubt, our rights are dropping like flies, and our government is killing people all over the world in our names, the emphasis should be shifting even further from the idolatry of the Vote like it’s some kind of mystical ritual that makes us all free. We don’t need rituals, especially ones that don’t deliver. We need action and engagement, bad.
IamInnocent

@jubz

I thought that this was addressed to me.
Your implication and courage are most commendable.
You should know though that the World never forgot you, that it was dead set against that foolish enterprise. The betrayal of every American ideal came from inside.

@zikzak

I consider that voting is of the outmost importance: on election day there is a contract that is sealed between the population and the winner and this contract is the most solid basis that we have for any action in between elections, although not the only one.

@fourfivefire (and many others)

As much as I appreciate a comedic relief moment, I would never model my thinking process on what George Carlin says literally. In this bit you may have noticed that he says that the US is exclusively filled, if I may summarize, with degenerated dumb asses. Don’t you think that he was trying to provoke the people into action by slapping them in the face?
dthomp87

That’s all neat and everything, but I think that its filled with mainly Obama supporters that are calling in stating that they are in support of McCain so that they can say hateful and racist things in an attempt to get McCain supporters to seem senile. Many of the McCain statements are blatantly illegitimate and completely ridicules. I would be surprised if this wasn’t the case considering that 85% of the people that would end up on that website are people supporting Obama that don’t have jobs and just sit on their ass collecting welfare browsing the internet over their neighbors hijacked wireless internet connection.

Oh and I’m voting for Obama because I like to run around Naked in public burning the American Flag while singing the tune of the Taliban Anthem
- Antinous
  
  dthomp87,
  
  Can you post a link to an audio file of the Taliban anthem, please. Also, the Flickr set of your naked, flag-burning pictures.
MAguyhere

This is awesome. Very cool idea.

I’m voting for Obama to protect our freedoms (not restrict them) and to move the economy in the right direction in the US and improve our image and policies on the world stage.

Why are you voting?
- Antinous
  
  MAguyhere,
  
  I can’t really allow that link this time anymore than I could allow it the last two times. You can Suggest A Link at the top of the page if you like.
slgalt

Well I was going to say I was voting to restore the constitution, the American dream and our standing in the world. But now I am just voting to make poster #1 cry.
gabrielm

“All content published on this site is public domain.”

Can’t wait to hear these all remixed!

my fav: */