I have known I was going to vote for Obama, well honestly for about 4 years now. I have not been pleased with everything he has done but I felt he was far better than the other option. The last few months I have been annoyed with all of the telephone calls, yard signs (mostly the giant yellow tea party signs stating some pretty outlandish stuff) facebook posts, etc. I figured we all know who we are voting for, none of these things make a difference and honestly they are just annoying. Well, on the way to our polling place to vote for Obama, I was telling a little made up story about our candidates. I cast Romney as the Big Bad Wolf, Obama as the Sneaky Sneaky Fox and Jill Stein as the Silly Goose (sorry to the rest of the independents but you did not make it into my tale). As I was telling my children my story, it dawned on me, why am I voting for "less bad" instead of voting for someone who actually does stand for the things that are important to me. Of course the Green Party isn't going to win, but perhaps because so many of us that do share the same values often vote for "less bad" in fear of the other person winning, some of our other choices aren't taken seriously. It only takes 5% votes to give these other options a chance. I live in Virginia and it is going to be a really close race between Obama and Romney and it was a hard choice, I actually pressed Obama before changing my mind and voting for Stein but I feel good about my choice (I still hope Obama wins) I don't feel like it is a wasted vote, but a vote stating we need more options, choosing the lesser of two evils just doesn't work anymore. So no the signs, calls, facebook posts etc did not change my mind, modeling integrity for my children did.
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