Election Day

[Tuly]

I hope you all voted today. This as all elections are important and do make a difference. I'm putting this on our celebration section because I do feel like celebrating when I vote. I volunteered to be a poll worker this year. I had no idea how grueling this job could be. We had to report at 6:00am and ended at 9:00pm. Our stipend was $100.00, so you can understand why we are still considered volunteers. But you know I understand now what a provisional voter is.

[Tuly]

Yes!!Proposition 19 (legalizing Marijuana in CA) did NOT pass.

[Tuly]

Please VOTE today!!

John Quincy Adams said, "Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."

[Steve]

Our would-be regenerators would feign try and make us believe that unless we all go to the polls and vote their ticket we are slaves to the Priesthood; that because we chose to vote for our friends, we are doing the bidding of the Priesthood. Yes, and so we are. The Priesthood has always taught us that we would be fools, indeed, to vote for our enemies, for those who would rob and plunder us, for those who would not only rob us financially, but would steal from us the common rights of citizenship were it in their power to do so. And, yet, forsooth, because we vote for our friends, for men in whom we have confidence, they say we are priestridden, etc. And what does it all mean? “Why, we want you Mormons to vote for us that we may get our arm into the public treasury, for we are too lazy to work.” All who are acquainted with the administration of affairs in Utah, know that the affairs of government, both territorial and county, and also municipal, are the most economically administered of any other Territory or State in the Union; that there is not one delinquent or case of embezzlement to where there are ten in any other Territory or State. And yet our would-be regenerators are exceedingly angry because we will not vote for men to misrepresent us and our interests at the seat of government; because we do not squeak when they squeak, because we do not sneeze when they take snuff. This they call liberty! And there are perhaps some of our own people who are so far befogged that they run with this class of men; they read their twaddle so much and they become so much beclouded that they think it is necessary, in order to show their manhood, to vote for their enemies because, if they do not vote for their enemies they will be put down as “Mormon slaves;” and this would be too much for them, they could not stand so much.

Now, thinking men understand the object of all this cry. It is prompted by the same spirit which we see manifested by the extremists almost throughout the civilized world. It is true there is a great deal of oppression in the world, and these men see it and they wish to improve things, but do not know how; and instead of commencing to rectify what is wrong in their own hearts and in their own families, and then extend their influence for good to those immediately around them, instead of using moral suasion and showing a good example, they turn to and undertake to serve God like the devil, trying to right things the wrong way by casting down everything in the form of order and government, producing anarchy and ruin instead. Like the idiot who, because he himself was houseless, having to sleep on the doorstep of some rich man, put the torch to the rich man's palace and destroyed it. Fools can demolish and destroy; it requires wise men to build.

I said of the ancient people of God; I say of the Latter-day Saints, there is no people capable of appreciating true liberty and of understanding the principles on which it is founded, and who know so well how to maintain them; because we have found it in the Gospel which we have received. And every man who has received the spirit of the Gospel, and whose heart is warmed with the love of it, is preparing his heart and is using his influence to educate the people to understand the true principles of human freedom, and the means by which they can be maintained. And I say, as President Cannon has said, referring to what the Prophet Joseph Smith told us, that the time would come when the extremists of the land, who are undermining the fabric of freedom, and little by little breaking under foot the guarantees of human liberty which have been raised up by our heavenly Father, through the instrumentality of wise men whom he raised up to establish the institutions of our country; these extremists of the land are gradually undermining those safeguards of human liberty, and plotting to carry out their nefarious designs in their endeavoring to oppress the people of God, and to destroy the institutions of heaven out of the earth. The time will come when the voice of such men will be heard in the land, like the roaring of a tornado, so that the still small voice speaking from the heavens cannot be heard; and the voice of the loudmouth, plotting destruction to human liberty and freedom will be heard all over the land, and everybody raise up and say, it is the voice of God; and they will be willing to stand and look on and see the Saints butchered and Prophets martyred, and our institutions wrested from us and wasted away. But when that time arrives, the Lord will come forth from his hiding place and “vex the nations;” he will raise his arm, and it shall not be turned back, and he will stay the hand raised against his people to destroy them and their institutions.

The Gospel has been the means of gathering us out from among the nations, and has made us a free and happy people, an able and united commonwealth; and the Lord is using us to establish its principles in these mountains, that throughout these valleys may be formed a nucleus around which honorable men and women may gather, men who will be capable of appreciating the blessings of liberty and of helping to extend them to others. And all presidents and senators and judges, and all men in official authority who shall lend themselves and their influence to trample upon the common rights of man, those rights which God has bestowed upon us and which are our common heritage, and who shall be found warring against God and his institutions, when the cup of their iniquity shall be full, the Lord Almighty will cause them to disappear from the public gaze, he will let them sink into oblivion and disgrace.

Those who suppose they can secure happiness in doing wickedly are grievously mistaken. And if they seek to oppress their neighbor by appropriating to themselves his hard earnings without rendering him a just equivalent, they will find every time they do it, they are but weaving together withes for their own backs, preparing punishment for themselves, and bringing themselves into bondage—the bondage of sin. For all judgments and punishments which the law of the Lord has ordained and appointed unto man are designed to correct their errors and sins. And where they are corrected and they learn better, then He is ready to stretch forth His hand to save and exalt them. The Gospel is ever ready to step in to assist repentant man when he has become sensible that he needs help to be redeemed, and he realizes that he has not the power to redeem himself. Then repentance unto life is granted to him; but it never can come until his judgment is convinced, until his mind is enlightened and his eyes are opened to see himself, and to comprehend his true position. And whether he be in this world or the world to come, he must place himself in a condition to be saved before redemption can come unto him; and it is only by the light of truth and of true and correct principles which can bring happiness and liberty and freedom, and with it a disposition to extend that liberty to all around, and to maintain it and protect each other in its enjoyment; and not with a spirit of vengeance upon the erring, and oppression upon the ignorant, but only with a disposition to seize and hold the hand which is raised to smite his fellow and stop in his wayward course the individual who would override his fellow. And all men should be protected in this freedom to go so far and no further.

May the Lord help us to live and walk in the light, and think for ourselves, and act like sensible people, paying heedless regard to the blatant foolish lunatics who are attracting the attention of the world. They, however, have their day, after the manner of the old adage—Every dog has his day; and when it is past he will cease to bark and bite.

(Elder Erastus Snow, General Conference, April 4, 1881) ↗