Vote

Friday, May 7, 1999

I've never been much into politics, and I think I get that from my mom. As long as I can remember, she's always said "Politicians and lawyers are all crooks," and I think I can only remember her voting one time, when I was still in grade school.

I've been of voting age for almost ten years now, and I've actually been a registered voter for the last three or four, but I must confess that I have never, ever voted in any election, not even for local officials or local issues. I feel bad about that, because I know it's not only my right to do that, it should be my duty.

My polling place is just about a block or two away, easy enough to walk; and the last time we had an election, I thought about going, but I didn't. Why? Because I figured when Mom asked where I was going and I told her, she'd have something to say, like, "Why bother?" and I would have taken it personally. I also hadn't bothered to research any of the issues, so I wouldn't have been very confident in my decisions, having to make them on the fly. I don't watch much television, so I'm not inundated with all the campaigning and mudslinging that goes on.

It seems like these days, everybody has something to say about what's going on in politics, but many of us never do anything about it. Last night, while I was reading a college government textbook I picked up somewhere for fifty cents, I found out that it's not just something in my family. The average voter turnout for presidential elections has been falling off since 1960 or so (see http://www.fec.gov/pages/tonote.htm for more detail).

For the 1996 election, less than 50% of the United States' voting age population actually voted for a presidential candidate. If you only count registered voters (which is not quite accurate, because Wisconsin has same-day voter registration), the percentage goes up to about 66%, but that's still not very high, compared to many European countries.

Why don't people vote? I'm not sure. My own reason for not voting was pretty pathetic, and I doubt criticizing moms are very high on the list of reasons not to vote. So I took a look around, and found what some other people had to say:

The Food Not Bombs mailing list had an interesting thread on this very topic, last November:
Why Don't Americans Vote?

In my searching, I also stumbled across this page: Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Vote Written from the perspective of someone in Utah, but I think it applies to all of us.

I do plan to vote in the 2000 election. I don't know yet who I'm going to vote for, but I intend to spend some time researching the various candidates, and what they believe they can and should do for the country. If you're interested in checking up on any matter up for election, a good place I've found is Project Vote Smart.

On a somewhat related note, last night during my reading, the text mentioned the idea of an electronic voting system, where homes would have some sort of device connected to some centralized location, where you could vote right from your easy chair. While these days that would be somewhat feasible with the Internet, I came up with another means to encourage the population to vote.

If you want to read more about my idea (and I will be the first to admit that it's not likely to ever be implemented, anywhere!), check out my new Ideas page.