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Is there a way to remove myself from being a registered voter in the State of California? I’m so sick and tired of all the campaign mailers, the war-dialer phone calls to my cell phone, the constant emails from Barbara Boxer (or my local rep) about some major issue of saving a city park, and the random grumpy old people who seem hell bent on calling my cell phone and telling me which school board candidate should get my vote. It’s been a source of constant harassment for me and I’m done with it. The upcoming election makes, what, THREE(?), elections this year so far, and four within the past seven months. It’s just ridiculous. With all the harassment elections generate it’s a wonder that anyone still votes.

It’s not that I don’t want to vote, but I really am just tired of all the harassment that surrounds the process. It’s as if the whole process is intentionally made annoying and difficult so that we will become disenfranchised and stop voting. So the population of voters keeping you and your job in check gets smaller and smaller, which I’d guess makes it easier for you since you have less people deciding if you get to keep your job, regardless of the level of public dissent.

If there isn’t a way to remove myself from being a registered voter, I’d like to make a formal complaint. I’m sure that the harassment wouldn’t end if I switched parties, so it’s really a complaint about my voter contact information being given out to seemingly everyone. There seems to be no way to opt out of it, and trust me, I’ve tried.

Why should my private information be given to solicitors? The political parties, groups, and lobbyists have absolutely no reason to contact me. I make my decisions based not on TV mudslinging ad campaigns, daily mailers, or the war-dialer message that’s on my cell phone’s voicemail, but on actually researching every bill, measure, or candidate being put up for vote. I guess that makes me an informed voter. And I vote moderate besides being registered as a Democrat.

I’m also an absentee voter, because my job finds me rarely ever being able to make it to the polls in time to vote.  I feel like it’s my responsibility to vote, so becoming an absentee voter was my workaround to fulfill both my work and citizen obligations. With all the research I typically do before voting, being an absentee voter also allows me the time to make my decision. That is a feeling I don’t get from going to the polls.

Before breaking down and finally emailing all of you I tried to unsubscribe from all the emails that I receive from these groups/politicians to no avail. I probably hit ‘unsubscribe’ to these emails once a month. It changes nothing and the email account where I receive these solicitations does not allow me to setup a spam filter. So I find I just have to go through and delete them email by email–something that I don’t find especially exciting in my day.

I don’t even know how many mass-emails Barbara Boxer has sent out, but she seems to be more concerned about violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by endorsing discriminatory hiring practices than any other pressing issue actually plaguing California currently. I guess that will require my voter participation in 2010 to remedy as my numerous requests to be removed from her mailings seem to fall on deaf email aggregators. She’s not the only one guilty of these emails, nor is she the only political mass-mailer that doesn’t honor ‘unsubscribe’ requests. They’ll also be added to the “to fix” list in coming elections.

Next, there are the war-dialer calls. I’ve reported them to the DO NOT CALL REGISTRY (of which I’m a member). It’s also a program that doesn’t seem to work. Either politically affiliated lobbyists and action groups are exempt, or the registry doesn’t work at all. I’d assume it could be a little of both. Even after reporting numbers to the registry, I still receive these calls. Since it costs me to check these messages (the glory of my cell provider, Sprint), it’s getting rather pricey to receive and delete spam calls.

My only other solution to this has been to shut off the ringer to my phone and never check voicemail messages. Since it’s my only phone, my family and friends are convinced that I’m either no longer speaking to them or dead and what little social life I have outside of the office has been squelched. After this election, I can once again be among the living for a few months; at least until the next special election.

Then there is all the physical mail. None of these organizations seem to use recycled paper or board product, and I figured it’s worth noting (being a packaging specialist) that they seem to only use virgin paper products. When they send out a mass mailer to thousands of people about some green initiative that they want to us to vote for—it may be a good idea to use recycled stock.  Doing otherwise tells the many of us that YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE ISSUE YOU ARE MAILING ME ABOUT. It’s sometimes the simplest mistake that sends the strongest message.

For the upcoming May election in California, I’ve received one inch of paper/board in mailers. I’ve been collecting them, just to see how bad it’d get. I could now tell you the stance on every issue or measure taken by every politician or dozens of special interest groups and PACs. They’ll all go into the recycling bin after the election and finally become the recycled paper products that should have been before reaching my mailbox.

All of my solutions to reduce the amount of mail/email/phone harassment surrounding my civic responsibilities have seemed to fail. Well except that I’m able to properly send those mailers to a bin for recycling. I’m actually not expecting much from sending this email to you. If it doesn’t warrant a response, and no solution to my issues, it’d be on par with almost every other failing government program. Lack of true representation and responsibility from our government is a subject for another email though. For all I know, it’ll sit in spam folder with thousands of other emails from disappointed/disenfranchised or angry voters.

Ultimately, if you do respond, I’d initially like to how to opt out of my private information being passed around to anyone who has a political agenda. And if that’s not an available option, please let me know how to remove myself as a registered voter, so when I’m finally at my wit’s end with the harassment, I can finally just become another drone who blindly allows our government to run away with our money unchecked.

Please note that if you are a recipient of this email, I voted for you in a prior election, regardless of your party affiliation. And chances are that I voted for you based on information I had available to me at that time through my research because I felt that you were more qualified for your position than some other applicant.