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Get out and vote!

11bee

By 11bee,
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11bee

11bee

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Just kidding on the last but hopefully all you Americans have done or will be doing your civic duty today. Don't care what side of the aisle you are on, just vote. We went out tonight and I've never seen the polls busier, was told my town had a record turnout. It's just a good feeling seeing democracy in action.

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SBARC

SBARC

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I tried but they said I couldn't. :thumbsup: I even used you as a character reference....that's when the big security guard tapped me on the shoulder.... :woot.gif:

But in all seriousness.......it is good to get out and vote.

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Antonov

Antonov

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Sorry, I tend to agree with H. L. Mencken about voting. Some of his bon mots:

“There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.â€

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.â€

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.â€

“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.â€

So, enjoy yourselves, but not I, sir...

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mchuray

mchuray

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Did vote, but I really miss the old voting machines. The new ones are just little lighted X's when you select a canidate then you press a button. On the old machines you had little levers then you flipped and larger red lever and got a a nice reasuring bell ring leting you know your vote was cast. Really miss then

Mark

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USAFsparkchaser

USAFsparkchaser

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Well....I'm in Washington (state that is) and sadly they took away our ability to go to the polls....it's all mail in now.

Which really sucks, cause I enjoyed those goofy little booths

Ah, not sure where you got that info? I voted at the local elementary school. I hope you were able to vote either way.

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zerosystem

zerosystem

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Just kidding on the last but hopefully all you Americans have done or will be doing your civic duty today. Don't care what side of the aisle you are on, just vote. We went out tonight and I've never seen the polls busier, was told my town had a record turnout. It's just a good feeling seeing democracy in action.

and here in mass, they seem to have returned to their roots of 'civic duty'... :monkeydance:

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RKic

RKic

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Ah, not sure where you got that info? I voted at the local elementary school. I hope you were able to vote either way.

I received and mailed back my ballot too. People in Washington really have no excuse for not voting, the state makes it terrifically easy

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11bee

11bee

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They should make voting easier for the younger generation

Give them a "Like' button for the candidate, and to register, they have to "friend" the local candidate first.

(Shades of Facebook)

Don't think the younger crowd really cares. Saw plenty of folks who seemed thirty and over, didn't see a single person who appeared to be under that age. Made a point of going over the issues and taking my young kids to the polls, hope to at least make sure that they will participate when they are old enough.

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Wayne S

Wayne S

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I think they should make today a voting holiday for all not just our kids and teachers, Let get this done!!!!!!!!! :tease:

I must say the most enjoyable thing I voted on today was,,, They wanted to change my States name from "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" to

"Rhode Island", and 78% said "screw you political correctness we are keeping the name that is in our constitution "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations".

If the New Governor gets long winded from saying our State name when he is sworn in, to freaking bad :bandhead2:

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yardbird78

yardbird78

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I voted this afternoon on the way home from work. I was dismayed at this election, as many in the past, where you have to choose between the lesser of two evils instead of the better of two good candidates. In the 2008 election in this county, over 500 people voted more than once and over 300 dead people voted. The County Clerk insists that there is no voter fraud problem. One precinct committeeman was tried for multiple counts of felony voter fraud in that election. He was convicted on all counts and received a 90 day suspended sentence and 6 months of probation.

Darwin

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PNW_Modeler

PNW_Modeler

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Ah, not sure where you got that info? I voted at the local elementary school. I hope you were able to vote either way.

Maybe it's a Snohomish County thing....but there were no polling stations here....but plenty of lines at the post office to drop them off!

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ikar

ikar

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We did the early voting thing last weekend. It was the only time my wife could get to vote as her sister stayed at the house to watch their mother so she won't accidently burn the house down. On the way home from work today the parking lot at one voting place was filled despite the rain.

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations? That's the first time I heard it called that.

When I used to be stationed at Loring I would drive through Rhode Island when I went home and returned. The last time I did this I got lost and was worried that I might be in Mass. and had to find someone for directions. I came across a couple police cars that had a car stopped. I sat a bit away until they were finished. Then the cops walked over to my truck to see what I was up to. I explained my situation and asked where the heck I was. I was just outside Providence. They gave me directions and I got out of there without them deciding to search my vehicle where tey would have found the wooden ammo boxed with my weapons inside. I didn't relax until I got to Arkansas but I did sweat a lot when a toll booth guy at N.Y.C. thought he'd be funny and gave me directions that sent me into one of the worst parts of the city.

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Wayne S

Wayne S

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Rhode Island and Providence Plantations? That's the first time I heard it called that.

This is a pretty good read into the matter.

http://www.projo.com/news/politics/content...56.1b5572a.html

A pop quiz ahead of Tuesday’s election:

In Rhode Island’s formal name, the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the word “plantations†is a reference to:

A. Farming

B. Slavery

C. None of the above

If you answered C, you’re correct.

On Tuesday, Rhode Islanders will be asked to vote on whether to drop the phrase “and Providence Plantations†from the state’s name. The General Assembly scheduled ballot question No. 1 in October last year, approving a resolution submitted by Sen. Harold M. Metts and Rep. Joseph S. Almeida. They had the backing of minority-rights groups who hear the echo of slavery in the state’s name, especially in the association of plantations in the pre-Civil War South.

That was far from the minds of English settlers and government officials in the 1640s, when “plantations†first became officially attached to the name of what would become the Ocean State.

As reflected in the Oxford English Dictionary, “plantation†in the 17th century meant “the settlement of persons in some locality; especially the planting of a colony.†Its synonyms at the time included “colony,†“settlement†and “town.â€

Metts and Almeida argued in an Oct. 12 commentary in The Providence Journal that those historical synonyms don’t matter, that the word has become tainted by its connotations of slavery, especially in light of Rhode Island’s role in the slave trade in America.

“If it has, in fact, become offensive to some of our citizens, isn’t that enough of a reason to change it?†they wrote.

Voters will decide on Tuesday whether to remove the word that was probably first inserted by Roger Williams and England’s Commission for Foreign Plantations.

Fearing that Puritan colonists in Massachusetts would try to take over the settlement at Providence and do away with its religious liberty, Williams traveled to England to seek separate legal recognition for the settlements in the Narragansett Bay area. In 1644, he secured a “patent†establishing “the Incorporation of Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay,†under the authority of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, head of the Commission for Foreign Plantations.

Though it covered much of the territory that would eventually make up the State of Rhode Island, the patent specifically mentioned the English towns of Providence, Portsmouth and Newport. The patent provided, among other things, “that the said Laws, Constitutions, and Punishments, for the Civil Government of the said Plantations, be conformable to the Laws of England.â€

As modern-day Rhode Islanders might expect, much political intrigue and parochial bickering followed.

While Williams was in England, the settlers on Aquidneck Island voted to change the name of the island to Rhode Island. They did so either in a nod to the Isle of Rhodes — an early explorer said Aquidneck was about the size of the Isle of Rhodes — or as the result of a Dutch account of another explorer finding a red island in Narragansett Bay, “red†being rendered in Dutch as “roode.â€

Across the Bay, the Massachusetts Colony had set its sights on acquiring the English settlement at Shawomet, which had not been mentioned specifically in the Providence Plantations patent. A delegation from Shawomet traveled to England and, in 1646, received from the Earl of Warwick an order barring Massachusetts from interfering in the settlement at Shawomet. In gratitude, those settlers renamed their town Warwick.

Although the Providence Plantations patent was issued in 1644, it was not until 1647 that the three towns named in it, plus Warwick, gathered to start setting up a government.

Among the instructions sent with the Providence delegation to the first General Assembly at Portsmouth was the wish of that town “to be governed by the Lawes of England, so farr as the nature and Constitution of this plantation will admittee,†according to a 1902 transcription of Providence records.

The General Assembly made Warwick an equal part of Providence Plantations.

From the beginning, Portsmouth and Newport lacked enthusiasm in being part of Providence Plantations.

One Newporter, William Coddington, traveled to England, and returned in 1651 with a commission making him governor of an independent colony of Rhode Island, which included Aquidneck Island and Conanicut Island, the modern-day Jamestown.

No one but Coddington was very happy with this arrangement. As delegations headed to England, two colonies operated separately: Providence and Warwick as Providence Plantations and Newport and Portsmouth as Rhode Island. By the end of 1652, England had vacated Coddington’s governorship and reunited Providence Plantations as a single colony.

During the brief independence, Providence Plantations passed a law against slavery, providing that “no black mankind, or white†may be forced to serve any man longer than 10 years, according to a 1902 history of the state.

While Providence Plantations had outlawed slavery, Rhode Island had not, and it would flourish in the reunited colony until the 1784 Negro Emancipation Act, which freed the children of black slaves. Slaves continued to appear in Rhode Island in the U.S. Census as late as 1840, and the last slave in the state, James Howland, died in Jamestown on Jan. 3, 1859, according to an 1867 report from the Secretary of State’s office.

In 1660, when Charles II took the throne of England in a restored monarchy, the validity of the Providence Plantations patent came into doubt, as did that of legal documents issued since the English Civil War began in 1642.

Providence Plantations, which already had a delegate in England, directed him to petition the monarch for an affirmation of its legal standing. On July 8, 1663, Charles II issued a royal charter including the famed passage: “to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained ... with a full liberty in religious concernments.â€

It also proclaimed the name of the newly reaffirmed colony: Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the name the colony and state has borne for the last 347 years.

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