Politics:

So I was helping out with the Bruce Roemmelt campaign again last night and the subject of what issues matter to the voters came up. It quickly became apparent that I am very unusual amongst voters in our district 13 (Northern Virginia) in that my three biggest issues for the Virginia State government are:

1. Ensuring fair, transparent, and honest elections (see VerifiedVoting.org).
   
2. Switching from pluralistic (pick 1 of the above) voting to instant runoff or borda (rank order your choices) voting.
   
3. Protecting the environment as best we can, immediately through improved public transportaion.
   
4. Strong education, both academic and vocational, for all school age children and young adults (they are the future).
   

What I realized last night was how differently I felt than most of the people we talked to. Most people stated their big issue was traffic, by an overwhelming majority. Traffic is a problem that is mostly outside the scope of any one politician, yet it remains the big issue for most people.

You can find out what issues your delegate cares about by checking the state's legislation information web site: http://legis.state.va.us/ and searching for your delegate. It is pretty clear that my current delegate, Bob Marshall, only cares about two issues: he is anti-abortion and anti-gay. He's done nothing about traffic. Nothing for education. Nothing about health care. Nothing to protect the environment. Nothing to protect our voting process from tampering or errors. All my delegate cares about is hating gay men and preventing people from planning their own families proactively. Don't take my word for it, look it up yourself using the state's list of all legislation he's sponsored. If you want to check up on another delegate, you can pick from the list of them here.