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My Rant on Voting With Your Feet

For several years now, people who live in states with high taxes, like New York and Massachusetts, have been voting with their feet and moving to states with lower taxes, like Texas and Florida.  The migration has been great enough that after the 2010 census, many liberal states will lose seats in Congress while many conservative states will gain seats.  National Journal Online created a map that illustrates the expected change in house seats after the census.

As you can see from the map, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois will most likely lose seats in the House after the census.  These states have all been implementing liberal tax and spend policies for years and are losing some of their  population as a result.  Of the states that will most likely gain seats, all are solidly red with the exception of Washington and Nevada.  None of the solid blue states will see a gain of house seats after the census.

This means that people are voting with their feet in favor of conservative policies.  This doesn’t surprise me, because liberal policies are not sustainable and eventually collapse.  New York and California are near bankruptcy and Michigan isn’t looking too hot either.  I don’t blame people for fleeing liberal mismanagement of state and local governments, but I’ve seen a problem in my own state of Virginia caused by people voting with their feet.

Virginia used to be a solid red state, but not anymore.  While the vast majority of native Virginians are conservative, there has been a large influx of new residents from liberal states like Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts.  I understand the appeal of a state like Virginia (or any other state in the south) to people from these states — taxes are lower, government is less intrusive in the lives of the people, the crime rate is generally lower, and houses are less expensive.

These immigrants are fleeing liberal policies in favor of conservative ones, and I applaud them for that.  But the problem I have with many immigrants from liberal states is that they continue to vote for the same type of candidates and policies that they voted for in their home states.  Don’t they realize the reason their home state has such high taxes and government intrusion is because of the people’s voting habits?  Don’t they realize if they move to a new state in large numbers and continue to vote for the same liberal  policies as they did in their old home state, their new home state will eventually resemble their old one?

Right now, both Senators from Virginia are Democrats and in 2008, Virginia voted for Barack Obama.  In my opinion, this is because of the large influx of newcomers from the liberal northeast.  Thankfully we just elected a conservative Governor, but I’m still nervous that former New Yorkers and New Englanders will continue to change the political policies and voting habits of my state.  I’m glad these people want to move to a beautiful and historically rich state like Virginia, but they need to change their political views when they change their address.  Voting with your feet only works if you change your voting habits as well.  If you don’t change the way you vote, you will eventually turn your new home state into the same type of liberal, bankrupt, high tax state you moved away from.

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