If you turn 18 before next years election

But not before the presidential primary, that's ok, go ahead and register and vote in the primary as a 17 year old. That's per the Election Commission (via South Carolina, a Wordpress blog). To quote the website.

State law allows for this practice since the Primary Election is the nominating
process for the General Election, making each, in effect, parts of the same
election.

The State Law referenced is 7-5-180.


Speaking of elections, three were in the news this weekend, with 2 of the 3 showing victories for liberal democracy. They serve as start reminders of the importance of voting and to vote your conscience. They were the Venezuelan referendums, the Russian Parliamentary Elections, and an election for a seat in the Hong Kong Legislature.


To start off, the election in Hong Kong of a pro democracy legislator against a candidate supported by Beijing. I've got my own opinions of the Chinese, and their petty totalitarian government. The people in the country side, the wandering millions will eventually rise, especially since so many are ex-military people and the regime, one prays, will fall. They make strides for 'democracy' and 'capitalism' by liberalising the markets and the laws, but in reality they pick and choose what to liberalize which best props them up monetarily. I laughed with glee the fact that the dollar has gotten weak and the Chinese government doesn't know what to do. Europeans are even threatening them with trade sanctions because of their increasing trade deficits because the government in Beijing refuses to liberalize the monetary policy and let the market determine the value of the currency as opposed to their artificial devaluation. I might be a fan of sesame chicken and crab puffs and even the every day Chinese person, but a fan of Chinese Government, I am not.


Next, the Russian Elections. Are we surprised? Really Putin has been consolidating his power grab for sometime now. The fact that westerners are calling him Czar Putin just speaks to what the spirit of Russia is about. The Revolution of '17 was aimed at turning the politics of the bear upside down and creating a new world order, class-less (take it how you want to) empowering the proletariat. Instead it just replaced one Absolutist (a monarch) with another (a statist) and now it looks like the fall of communism has served only to make the absolutism visible as opposed to invisible. They're not changing anything just doing it in the open now. The key to Putin's success though and we can all acknowledge it has been the boom in his economy because of European needs for fuel and electricity. And of course the Russian Bear is keeping a tight grip on that sector of the market with the state owned Russian conglomerate Gazprom. Of course as the EU is taking climate change more seriously than their allies to the East or West of them they're beginning to move in a direction that may see independence of energy need from the bear.

Finally Venezuela. Venezuela, Venezuela, Venezuela. The 'so-called leftist, socialist' bloviating of Hugo Chavez is as irksome, actually is more irksome than all of the 'conservative' bloviating of the Fox News Commentators. After listening to this guy go on and on about Venezuelan nationalism and standing up to the United States while raping the population of civil liberties such as freedom of the press, it's easy to sympathise at times with even those I disagree with, like Pat Robertson. One can not help but stand behind the actions of Juan Carlos King of Spain in telling Chavez to 'Shut up.' So we're happy here that Chavez has been dealt a blowing defeat at the hands of his people. This after he threatened to cut off oil to the US if we complained about the election results - we ain't complaining. I say he should have cut the oil, that would have just quickened our resolve to move away from an oil economy to a Greener one, all at the expense of his people though (but you can bet the US would be right there to give them aid)

So I can't encourage my fellow South Carolinians enough, especially those who will be Eighteen (18) before the Presidential election to get out there and get registered and Vote! If you want to vote in the Republican Primary you must register before the 19th, for the Democratic primary you must register before the 26.

:::Update::: I just e-mailed a uniform "Letter to the Editor" to the more prominent regional papers in hopes that they publish this information to inform local leaders, school officials and parents to take note and encourage their teenagers to register and vote! :::

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