After the disappointing primary results back in August I found myself a little disillusioned with politics for a while. I did more research into the candidates and issues than I ever had before and went into the primary very prepared. The disappointment came when almost every single person I voted for lost and the incumbents in almost all the races won. Of course I realize that everyone has a unique opinion when it comes to politics and just because I thought that a certain person would have been the right person for the job, someone else most definitely thought a different person was the right one for the job. One of the most disappointing things for me during both the primary and the general election this last week was the fact that many people believed the lies of so many politicians and unfortunately many people didn't turn out to vote.
I know that a lot of people look at the results and see that the republicans won a lot of races so that is great, or they may be glad that the democrats won what they did but for me it isn't about parties. It can't just be that we go blindly to the polls and vote for the R or the D. I am particularly disappointed that McCain is representing Arizona again and that Jan Brewer is our governor again. These are both republicans and have both had some pretty good press lately but the fact is that I deeply disagree with their stances on many of the issues and the complete lack of honesty and integrity that both have displayed on different occasions over the years. I feel that partisanship is betraying true representation of constituents. When a politician is elected to office under the name of whatever political party they are expected to vote the way the party does on the issues. Their first responsibility should be to vote the way they know their constituents would want and to hold to their principles and those of their constituents even if it means voting against their party. Unfortunately there are few who are willing to do this.
Campaigning is a dirty business and it is very common for politicians to lie straight faced. It is even more common for politicians to attack their opponents character and I completely understand how one can get so sick of hearing this garbage instead of really talking about the issues.
It is only too clear that this dirty campaigning, partisan fighting and mudslinging are destroying our government and that the only thing to do to allow us to reclaim our government is to do our parts as voters. Read and study the issues, look at both sides of an argument, come up with our own conclusions, ignore campaign ads, seek the truth, pray, and then vote our conscience. Arizona had a 25% turn out for the primary elections in August. That is terrible. Too many people don't care. Too many people think that their vote doesn't matter. We have got to do our civic duty and be informed and involved voters.
