politricks and other distractions

Why Bother?

Why bother to vote?

It doesn't make a difference. The Black Box machines will just eliminate it. The Bad Guys will always win.

Call me crazy, but I think it makes a difference. Here we've got ten (mostly) stupid ballot initiatives on the ballot and 2 weeks to think about them. It takes a million times more effort than most people would care to spend on it. Maybe only the geeks do it. But you gotta.

I disagree that you have to be ultimately informed to vote in an informed way. Just one of our Voters' Pamphlets was over 170 pages long. Who's bored enough to read that? So, what you do is you skim through the initiatives that might make sense to you. You see who writes the arguments pro- and con-, then you vote with the organizations or people you agree with. A friend in Eugene says he knows who to vote for because he drives by a well-informed friend's house at election season. He remembers whose signs she puts in her yard and votes for those things/people. That's good enough. I bet that's even good enough for our founding fathers.

I've been working on this right to vote thing. Amazingly, it's not a right that's guaranteed in the Constitution - yet another proof that that document is not infallible.

In those days, only rich, white landowners could vote. Forget women. Forget anyone whose skin wasn't white. The slaves were only considered 3/5th human. These were areas that had to change in the blessed document.

Today, smart political forces have realized there's a value to keeping certain segments of society from voting. Stop the elderly - they're not too sharp anymore. Stop the disabled - you know they'll only vote for more government aid. Stop the working poor - they don't have the time to wait in line because their shift starts in 45 mins.

If things keep going as they are, the right to vote will one day be like the right to choose - something enshrined at the top of a precipice somewhere in the desert - the kind on top of which Wile E. Coyote would land after an explosion. We'll be able to point to the right to vote, squinting in the setting sun, and say, "Look, we still have the right! It's over there, where the SUVs and Hummers and Segues and Cessnas can get to it. That's all that matters."

Tonight I toast the right to vote. Hell, I've already done it myself. All my choices are in the mail. Nobody's dirty ad can touch me anymore. And maybe, just maybe, things will change in 9 days.

To quote my boss: WOOOOO!

posted by dcnative @ 8:45 PM