Expanding Sticker Rewards to More Things

[XRay]

I voted today and I got the awesome "I voted" sticker. What other good activities/events/stuff do you think would benefit from having their own "I (did something)" sticker to help make people feel good about participating and let them show off?

Due to the current pandemic, the "I got vaccinated" sticker is the most obvious one I can think of.

"I donated" would also be nice. It will help non profit organizations help people and communities in need, especially right now.

[Dragoncat]

"I disagreed on politics with someone without being a dick about it"

[SoulWeaver]

I would argue against the 'I got vaccinated' one, though I know I'll be an odd one out here.

Frankly, I find I hate the 'I voted' sticker because it reminds me every year of how unworthy I was to vote. I know next to nothing about the individuals on the ballot nine times of ten, I simply go with whoever my mother says to, as I know she does in fact do her research each year, usually with my brother alongside as he also tends to pay more attention than I do. I firmly believe people who cannot spare the time to do the research necessary to know for themselves should by all means not be allowed to vote, myself included, and thus the sticker ultimately remains more a source of shame for me, one that is generally found in the trash long before the end of the month.

[Dragoncat]

37 minutes ago, SoulWeaver said:

Frankly, I find I hate the 'I voted' sticker because it reminds me every year of how unworthy I was to vote. I know next to nothing about the individuals on the ballot nine times of ten, I simply go with whoever my mother says to, as I know she does in fact do her research each year, usually with my brother alongside as he also tends to pay more attention than I do. I firmly believe people who cannot spare the time to do the research necessary to know for themselves should by all means not be allowed to vote, myself included, and thus the sticker ultimately remains more a source of shame for me, one that is generally found in the trash long before the end of the month.

I completely understand this, it's really hard to do research on it anyway! You'll find more attacks and strawman arguments from both sides than anything else and talking about politics is just stressful.

I kinda know who I'm going with, but I'm gonna run through I side with anyway. It's very helpful, just put in your views and it will show you who you side with.

 

[XRay]

On 10/28/2020 at 8:19 PM, SoulWeaver said:

Frankly, I find I hate the 'I voted' sticker because it reminds me every year of how unworthy I was to vote. I know next to nothing about the individuals on the ballot nine times of ten, I simply go with whoever my mother says to, as I know she does in fact do her research each year, usually with my brother alongside as he also tends to pay more attention than I do. I firmly believe people who cannot spare the time to do the research necessary to know for themselves should by all means not be allowed to vote, myself included, and thus the sticker ultimately remains more a source of shame for me, one that is generally found in the trash long before the end of the month.

That is the entire point of the "I voted" sticker! It creates peer pressure to encourage people to be an informed citizen. If patriotism and a sense of duty is not enough to make a person go educate themselves and vote, hopefully peer pressure would!

I highly recommend using Ballotpedia if you are too lazy to do much research. Hell, when I did my research, I primarily just used Ballotpedia and Voter Guide (this is for California, there might be similar sites for your own state if you live elsewhere).

Some things to keep in mind:

1) There is NOTHING WRONG with voting based on how another person votes. You are not going understand everything on a ballot and that is okay. Often times, it is better to vote based on how people you trust are voting. For example, I trust the ACLU, unions in general, and the Democratic Party, and I tend to align my vote with their recommendations. In fact, the foundation of this country is based on voting for politicians you trust to legislate laws on your behalf; you are not the one who is drafting and voting on most laws, and you probably should not be either. Even politicians themselves rely a lot on experts and professionals when they are dealing with things outside of their areas of expertise and knowledge.

In California right now, voters are presented with Proposition 23 and it concerns dialysis practices in the state. I personally do not agree that lay people (i.e.: people not trained in a specific field) with absolutely NO medical background can vote on technical procedures that should honestly be decided by medical professionals. Since most medical organizations vote no on Prop 23, I voted no as well.

2) It is totally okay to leave a field blank. If you are unsure about something, leave it blank and let other voters decide. While I do not think I have ever left things blank since at least some organization I trust will say something about a voting matter, I would leave things blank too if I cannot decide on something and none of the people or entities I trust can either.

3) Vote on your gut! Sometimes, there will be things that seem superfluous, pointless, or stupid on your ballot. There is a measure in my city being proposed right now that overhauls our city's governing body, and after attempting to do some research and failing to find much information that is decent and useful, I ultimately came to the conclusion that since my city is running fine so far and the argument for it does not feel sufficient, the measure seems kind of pointless and I rather just stick with the status quo.

On 10/28/2020 at 9:00 PM, Dragoncat said:

I completely understand this, it's really hard to do research on it anyway! You'll find more attacks and strawman arguments from both sides than anything else and talking about politics is just stressful.

Ballotpedia mentioned above makes it pretty easy. They condense the arguments to the main points. It is essentially the Wikipedia for voting. I still recommend looking at additional sources for information, but Ballotpedia is a good place to start, and if you are short on time or are lazy, there is nothing wrong with relying on it as your sole source.

Edited October 30, 2020 by XRay

[Excellen Browning]

On 10/29/2020 at 4:19 AM, SoulWeaver said:

I would argue against the 'I got vaccinated' one, though I know I'll be an odd one out here.

Frankly, I find I hate the 'I voted' sticker because it reminds me every year of how unworthy I was to vote. I know next to nothing about the individuals on the ballot nine times of ten, I simply go with whoever my mother says to, as I know she does in fact do her research each year, usually with my brother alongside as he also tends to pay more attention than I do. I firmly believe people who cannot spare the time to do the research necessary to know for themselves should by all means not be allowed to vote, myself included, and thus the sticker ultimately remains more a source of shame for me, one that is generally found in the trash long before the end of the month.

Who is your mom voting for this year?

[SoulWeaver]

19 hours ago, XRay said:

That is the entire point of the "I voted" sticker! It creates peer pressure to encourage people to be an informed citizen. If patriotism and a sense of duty is not enough to make a person go educate themselves and vote, hopefully peer pressure would!

Hopefully that's actually what happens where you live, but that's absolutely not what happens in Utah - mainly because everyone just assumes oh, the state's Red, either I vote whoever the Red option is or my vote means nothing. That's how we end up with people like Mitt Romney. Who is absolutely a RINO.

19 hours ago, XRay said:

the foundation of this country is based on voting for politicians you trust to legislate laws on your behalf; you are not the one who is drafting and voting on most laws, and you probably should not be either. Even politicians themselves rely a lot on experts and professionals when they are dealing with things outside of their areas of expertise and knowledge.

Ah, see here I start to run into problems, there has been maybe one politician I've seen that I might trust to legislate laws on my behalf, and he wasn't a politician, he was a businessmen who was pissed off enough at the current system to try to run, his name was Thomas Wright. I didn't agree with everything he believed, but he had a solid enough grasp of principles I did agree with that he was the best option. He of course lost by a long shot to Spencer Cox, partly because of vote dilution due to there being four candidates(with another couple factors of course), and I argue partly because Gary Freaking Herbert, our current Governor, backed Cox, and there's an awful lot of idiots in Utah who 'just really like Gary Herbert, he's such a nice man' and don't understand that 'nice man' does not equal 'someone who will actually care about making sure things are done right' any more.

13 hours ago, Excellen Browning said:

Who is your mom voting for this year?

Currently we're leaning Trump-ish, personally I really don't trust Kamala Harris with pretty much anything and I'm pretty sure that if Biden wins he's going to get pushed down some stairs or put in a home in under a year, meaning she's the one I'm watching more closely...and really not liking what I'm seeing - looking back through her record, it seems like she really doesn't actually have a real opinion, she just says whatever sounds good. It's more a talk for the Serious Discussion forums so I probably won't go into my thoughts on that matter here.

[Excellen Browning]

7 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

Currently we're leaning Trump-ish, personally I really don't trust Kamala Harris with pretty much anything and I'm pretty sure that if Biden wins he's going to get pushed down some stairs or put in a home in under a year, meaning she's the one I'm watching more closely...and really not liking what I'm seeing - looking back through her record, it seems like she really doesn't actually have a real opinion, she just says whatever sounds good. It's more a talk for the Serious Discussion forums so I probably won't go into my thoughts on that matter here.

Do your mom and brother by any chance watch fox news?

[SoulWeaver]

10 hours ago, Excellen Browning said:

Do your mom and brother by any chance watch fox news?

As a matter of fact we generally avoid reading too far into most news stations, pretty much everyone just throws their opinions around without properly delving into all the facts. My brother tends to handle listening to or reading the sources that get most of the internet thinking we're crazy, like The Daily Wire's shows, then discusses what he believes to be the facts they mention with my mom, who does most of the fact checking of what he finds as well as what her generally liberal friends or the 'recommended' news articles say on FaceBook, though we're pretty close to our entire family giving up on social media altogether due to the overarching theme we've been seeing. In general I get most of my own picture of the country from what I hear while hanging out with my brother as he plays Melee to the sound of Andrew Klavan or Steven Crowder's tongue-in-cheek shows combined with what I see or hear from my mom's government and liberty class she holds every now and then with some friends, but I rarely trust my own judgement there because I have a horrid tendency to make rapid swings from extreme optimism to crushing cynicism, with more of a trend to bitter cynicism lately.