Michele is urging everyone to vote responsibly and not to simply vote party line. I wholeheartedly agree with her, since I've never understood the rationale behind voting party line, but I think the first step in voting responsibly is to get people to actually go out there and vote.

(Ed. note: The rest of this entry is reprinted from a comment I left on her blog. At this point, I'm too tired to come up with a new way to express myself regarding the topic, plus I like what I wrote and I think it sums up my opinions on the issue pretty well.)

Connecticut used to have a lever on their ballot machines where you could flip a single switch and the machine would register a vote for every single candidate on the ballot in that party. It just made it so much easier for people to make that mindless decision.

Voting is a dangerous weapon, and many people don't believe its power. Voting party line is like going out and telling the dealership that you need a car, and they assign you something -- you have no idea if it's a lemon and will break down sixteen times in the course of a month and cause you more trouble than you've ever wanted, or it could explode one day while you're on the freeway, or it could safely get you to your destination and you'll be happy with it. But you don't know, and you have no control over what you're getting.

For all the complaints I hear about current administrations -- whether national or state or local -- it's astonishing that voting turnout is hitting record lows. If you don't like the people in office, vote them out. If you want to make sure you won't have too much cause to complain about the people filling the next term, make sure to vote in someone whose views you agree with. I've heard many people complaining about our current president, but it still amazes me that despite the fact that they knew it was a tight race and despite the fact that they had the ability to go out and do something about it, they didn't and the 2000 presidential race had the poorest voter turnout ever.

For all you people who are advocating that we go to Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein and his dictatorship and institute a fair and democratic government: Before you go charging halfway around the world to impose your way of life and your system of government on complete strangers, did you bother to exercise your right to vote -- and vote responsibly, especially given that voting party line is like that sham of an election they just had where Saddam got 100% of the vote -- last November and the November before that? Because I think you'd look pretty dumb and hypocritical trying to make sure other people in another country vote and have the ability to vote responsibly when you're not even taking advantage of that ability in your own country yourself.