Reasons to always Vote, and always vote Democrat

Politics can be frustrating, controversial, and childish.  The commercials are frequent, confusing and paid for by groups with innocuous names that start with "Freedom," "Liberty," or "Citizens."  Sometimes it can feel like all politicians are bought and paid for by special interest groups and corporations.  Congress has such a low approval rating, because they are too divided to get anything done. I've heard all of these reasons and more from people that claim to be too disillusioned to vote.

True or not, forget about all of that.  Politics and governing are VERY different things.  These three truths about politics are unlikely to change anytime soon: campaigns are the only way that politicians can get elected, negative campaigning surprisingly works very well on undecided voters, and the candidate with the campaign with the most money nearly always wins.

So why vote and why vote Democrat?  First off, elected Republicans are actively legislating to suppress the vote of people that do not typically support their candidates.  In short, they are realizing that they can't win on the issues and rather than change their policies to be more in line with today's societal realities, they have instead decided to choose the people that can vote to guarantee their own reelections.  The mantra of voter fraud is a statistical red herring.  It happens so rarely because it is a felony, and not too many people are willing to go to jail in order to vote 2 ballots.  Is this a valid reason to make it harder for any American citizen to vote?

Graphic taken from The Plain Dealer.

Republican policies are not based in the best interest of the majority of Americans and are not based on research, statistics or scientific evidence.  More guns in the hands of more people do not make us safer, they actually increase murder and suicide rates.  Raising the minimum wage to the proposed $10.10 an hour will not either increase unemployment nor drastically raise purchase prices; throughout history, raising wages results in less poverty and would allow people working full-time to not have to get food stamps paid for by tax dollars.  Obamacare is not remotely close to a socialist policy and likewise, it is not raising unemployment.  The job losses that are cited as results of Obamacare are actually reflective of elderly people finally being able to retire because their health insurance is no longer tied to their employment, and this actually opens up positions for people that are unemployed and looking for work.

Raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans does not kill jobs.  The tax rates of the richest among us are at their lowest rate ever and yet we have high unemployment.  There are so many tax loopholes that the largest corporations are often subsidized by the government rather than paying any taxes at all.  Those corporations then repay us by shipping jobs overseas, increasing the salaries of their CEO's and paying their American workers such low wages that they have to rely on food stamps to survive. They bemoan too many regulations, claiming that the free market will manage itself, and yet we have had several environmental disasters resulting in fires and contaminated public water due to being under-regulated and much more concerned about profits than they are about their workers or the environment around them.

In short, VOTE!  Vote in every election even if it seems like it doesn't matter to your life, because it does.  The government provides us with roads, highways, libraries, schools, police, firemen and more.  It is the only institution that can make and enforce laws for people, animals, parks, and the environment.  The government is our only protection from corporate interests, and corporations are neither chosen by our votes nor beholden to the best interest of the public.

These are all my sincerely held opinions, but they are based on facts, and I am more than willing to provide documentation on any of my assertions to anyone that asks.