My Voters Guide

Are you going to vote in the upcoming elections? How are you going to vote? What issues are central to your decisions? How will your political decisions and political activity affect your life - especially your relationships with your family, friends, and neighbors?

5. To address the last issue first, ensure that however strong your political opinions, please don't lose any friends over politics. If your mix of friends is anything like mine, almost half are avid Conservatives, almost half are avid Progressives, and only a few are undecided or have chosen to distance themselves from any involvement in the election process.

Whoever is elected, we still need to love, honor, and respect our family, friends, and neighbors.

I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson

4. Life will go on for each of us after the election.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed

(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)

by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,

all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

Success is not final, failure is not fatal.
It is the courage to continue that counts.
- Winston Churchill

3. Remember that most of the people you know have already made up their minds. Reserve your political (and religious) conversations for those who value your thoughts and are open to new ideas - or who are just open to a friendly debate.


2. If you are one of the few who has not made a final decision, consider looking beyond single "hot button" issues, beyond your own self-interest, and beyond this year.

Plant trees for your great-grandchildren -
for future generations.
Create the legacy of a better world.
Leave this world a better place than you found it.
Literally planting trees for
your great-grandchildren is a wonderful idea,
but far more important...
use this symbolism - this imagery -
to represent the kind of legacy
you want to leave to future generations.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

1. Please vote whenever there is an election. Your vote matters very much. Not only does your vote matter numerically, it matters that you are a full participant in your country's future.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.