Political Spam.

I've been politically active since before I was 18.

Heck, I sort of grew up around politics. The mayor of my hometown when I was a kid was a friend of the family (he's a state legislator now). I've had the opportunity to meet, speak with and hang out with governors, congressmen, etc etc etc in both parties ever since I was a young teenager.

Part of it was family connections, part of it is because of the places where I've worked/people I've worked with, and part of it is because, well, to be honest, I have the tendency to meet interesting people (and the fact that I tend to be memorable for some odd reason =] ).

When it comes to politics, I tend to be a moderate. A lot of the people where I currently am would call me a "dirty liberal", but that's largely because they consider anything other than extremely hard right to be "dirty liberal" territory.

To put it into perspective, I had to register as a Republican in my hometown when I turned 18 for one very important reason - so I could actually vote in the local primaries. People would literally fight over who got to be the Republican candidate because *nobody* there would vote for anyone that actually ran as a Democrat. There were more Independent candidates than Democrat ones where I grew up. I kid you not.

I figured that I might as well register in a manner that would allow me to *actually* help decide who would get into office in my city and county.

It was crazy and rather surreal. The sad thing is that basically the whole geographic area was like that (and still is, really). We're talking about people who admit that they would gladly vote Bob Ney back into office if they could "because he isn't a Democrat"!

Me, I tend to vote on the issues and not on the party. I do my research and make my decision (despite what a certain commenter here seems to think because he doesn't agree with my conclusions). I don't care if you're a Republican, Democrat, or a member of the Bull Moose party as long as I think you will do your job well and faithfully for the benefit of your constituents.

That said, I have to admit that, if I didn't vote on the issues, the political spam I've gotten this election season would probably have me voting against every Republican on the ballot. I'm not talking phone calls or letters/fliers. Those I get from both sides. I'm talking actual email spam.

I've gotten hammered with spam from the Republican party for probably two months. I have yet to get a spam message from the Democrats (and yes, I've checked my spam filters).

I can't say that I haven't gotten emails from Democrat candidates for various offices, because I have, but those were actual emails and not spam (yes, I get emails from Republican politicians as well. I have friends on both sides). I don't hear from them as often lately, but then I've been kind of quiet for the last year or so myself due to some things that have been going on.

The point is that the Republicans are really abusing this "new" (to them, at least, it seems) technology to reach out to people. They seem to be spamming anything that moves, because I haven't used one of the addresses for *anything* of a political nature.

The greatest part is that they're spamming me, making twisted (and often false) statements, and then *asking me for money*. That's right. They're annoying the hell out of me with spam email and then expecting that I'll give them money.

Granted that's not quite as good as the spam that I've been getting from the "Bank of Nigeria" in Japanese, but it comes fairly close.

From an issues standpoint, there are almost no good Republican candidates here this time around, but the spamming tactics is just another nail in their coffin in my opinion.


Current mood: tired
Current music: Starship - We Built This City