Reason #432 I don't want to deal with anyone any more

"I voted."

So, how'd you vote?

"Republican."

Wha-- um, don't you hate the current administration? Why are you voting to give them power and votes?

"Well, I didn't know anything about the candidates, so I voted for the party I signed up as."

Why. Would you. Sign up. For a party. That's running on supposedly moral stances you disagree with completely and who puts people in power that you loathe and who do things you disagree with personally, morally, and politically?

"Well, because I was signed up as a Republican in Florida. My aunt [who per previous conversations told her who and what to vote for in every election she's voted in] told me I was."

!

I'm avowedly independent, people. I try to research candidate by candidate and issue by issue to the best of my ability and I freakin' refuse to sign up for a party. I think that people should be willing to vote third party, because if they were willing to vote what they really believed, it wouldn't be throwing a vote away and might exact real change in this country. Washington warned us about a two-party system over two hundred years ago. And we let it happen.

But if you're going to vote:
Along a party line regardless of platform because it's "the party you are"
What someone else tells you to vote without having any idea who the candidates are or what the issues are
or
Just because you think you should,

Stay. The. Hell. Home.

Also--single-issue voters suck almost as much as single-issue candidates. But that's another year's rant.