If the front doorknob hadn't broken, this might not annoy me quite so much.

[mrissa]

In the last two days, not one but two people have shown up at our door representing a particular candidate and asking how I intended to vote.

Not how markgritter intended to vote. Not how timprov intended to vote. They are both registered voters. I believe they are registered the same way as I am. But twice in less than 24 hours, people have come to ask about my vote. (Possible differences in how I look to oursiders: I am the officially designated Woman Of The House; I am the one who signs the checks to charities, including charities like Center for the Victims of Torture and Second Harvest Heartland that could in some sad twisted world be considered political.)

I answered this most recent gentleman's questions happily until he got to, "Do you intend to vote for [particular candidate]?", and then I gave him my best tight, frozen Minnesota girl you-have-offended-me smile and said, "We have private ballots in this country."

I know it's useful to them to try to get numbers. I don't care what's useful to them. I do not want to encourage them to keep showing up at my house and harassing me on election week. For various personal reasons I am not the person with whom you would like to mess just now, and I do not like people showing up multiple times to ask about my vote. I'm voting. I am, in fact, voting for your guy. As long as you don't send around a third and fourth querier to make me change my mind.

Also, get off my damn lawn.

Comments

[hbevert.livejournal.com]

My parents used to have "get off my damn lawn moments" with people who would come by and stick yard signs for candidates in their grass without asking first. The parents, being usually difficult-to-rile Midwestern Scandinavian and German types, would really fume about the rudeness.

Used to really flummox the folks stopping by to make campaign pitches in Canada when I'd say, "it's no use going on with your spiel here. No one in the household is a citizen, so we can't vote."

The thing that really surprised me in the election campaign here was that I was getting ads for a U.S. Senate candidate when I was online. Following IP addresses to give the right ad to the right part of the state?

[zwol.livejournal.com]

For a while last year I was getting press releases from a fringe right-wing Australian political party.

To my *work* email address.

I have never been in the Southern Hemisphere.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

"people who would come by and stick yard signs for candidates in their grass without asking first" That was allowed?! Weird.

Well, not able to vote doesn't mean not having friends who can vote whose choices you can influence, but still, yes.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Define "allowed." Technically, it's trespassing and vandalism, but stopping it is another matter completely.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

Well, i meant, 'allowed' in the sense of such signs counting as having been legitimately placed and therefore protected by bylaw from removal or defacement. There was a time here when campaign signs could be placed on the city owned stretch of lawn between the sidewalk and the road (if such was present), that for most other purposes was private-ish property (in the reverse of the convention in Muskoka, where the stretch of beach between your yard and the water is, though in title part of the land parcel your cottage is on, is for most purposes treated as public land that anyone is free to pass through and play on etc...) and that you could reasonably control. Because if it didn't count, then it seems a kind of silly thing to do since the owner, if they didn't want the sign, would just be able to remove it, making it a waste (or at least inefficient use) of volunteer resources. I suppose that if they were aiming for character assassination it might make sense, but then they'd have to duplicate the opposing candidate's signage, or steal it, or something.