I do not subscribe to a political party. I have taken a lot of heat for this, from all sides. People often tell me: I’m wrong, I’m throwing away my vote, or that by voting for a 3rd party I’m voting for R/D (usually the opposite of whichever side they happen to be on). Not true. The way I approach the polls every time is that I vote for the candidate that I think will do the best job, and who I think is the better person.

What I have found to be true over and over is that the character of the person in power matters a lot more than their politics. If someone is open, caring, logical, and compassionate, they can often be swayed. In our world of sound bites, people can easily have opinions based upon partial knowledge. But what if you’re wrong? What if what you thought was right turns out to be based upon misinformation or errant opinion? What if you have new experiences that contradict your old experiences? What if you go through something and learn and change through that? What if God shows you something you hadn’t seen before?

I believe all of this happens all the time. I want people in power that are open to change.

It’s happened over and over for me. When I was younger, I was anti-LGBT. I thought it was: sinful, gross, and a personal choice. I said mean things, using bad language, about people that were LGBT.

Then I met people that were LGBT. They became friends. I realized my stereotypes were completely false. One of my friends told me he’d always been attracted to men, and that it wasn’t a choice. He asked me if I chose to be attracted to women. “No,” I realized. We talked about it. Regarding attraction, at some point between 10-13, I started looking at girls a different way and their beauty was attractive to me and did something to me in a physical way. For him, the same experience was for men. It wasn’t a choice for either of us. My opinion changed after the conversation. I asked for forgiveness, admitted my bias, and switched my stance.

Likewise, I’ve had thoughts on immigration, gender, and education that, when challenged, have changed. When I saw how badly a lot of Democrats run school systems, I became more conservative on many educational issues. When I saw how badly conservatives run foreign policy, I became more liberal on those issues. I’m not for raising taxes for no reason. I’m not for big government. But I am for taxes and for government.

I respect people and politicians and their points of view - as long as their sound. I respect Justin Amash a lot, though I disagree with him on many issues. I respect Matt Gaetz and how he approaches things, though I find his support of the president quite odd and many of manners to be bad. I have mad respect for A.O.C. and Bernie Sanders. I loathe Hillary Clinton. I also loathe Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions. But I think Lindsay Graham and Nancy Pelosi are essentially the same person tapped into different funding sources.

I could be wrong on any of it. Blind loyalty to a party leads to bad things. China. Germany. Russia. North Korea. It’s all blind loyalty.

I want people in power that are willing to stand up for their party, voting for their people, based upon ethics and what is right and beneficial to all.