by Bert Prelutsky has an article today about voting— something I’ve been thinking around for a while. The Founders definitely wanted people with a stake in the game to be voting. Now we’ve come so far as to herd people like cattle to the polling place telling them to vote for our guy. My feeling when I hear about all this busing and other means to get people to the polling places is, if it’s important to them why aren’t they finding a way to get there?
Now, before you call me a meanie, I’m not saying that people with disabilities or the inability to travel shouldn’t have a means provided for them should they so desire– maybe an internet sign up page or something. What I am against is this– “I’m coming by to fill this bus to bring people who wouldn’t have voted otherwise to the polls because I know they know nothing but that they will vote for the guy with the D or the R next to their name.”
Here’s something I would find amusing. What if, this year, a county switched the labels on the parties people were running for? Make GW Bush the Democrat and JF Kerry the Republican. You could question them on the way out if they really knew who they were voting for, so you could correct the mistake, but I’d be curious how many people would be upset because they voted for the wrong party when they didn’t even know their party’s candidate.
Don’t like that? How about we take the names off and put in phony names. We could put in there some name like Oscar Willmington or something and see how many people complain that Bush or Kerry isn’t a listed choice. Perhaps they would get that confused with the voting for electors and that wouldn’t be good.
See what I’m getting at? How many people truly are involved– those people should vote. Not saying that anyone should not be allowed to vote, but those that are informed should be the ones making decisions. Just like you don’t want me making decisions about the ingredients for a gourmet meal because I’m not informed– or running a nuclear reactor!– I don’t think those that are uniformed should vote.
By all means– get informed, find out the issues, do the research, and then VOTE!
Funy quote from the article: “There I am, faithfully watching CNN and FoxNews, reading a daily newspaper, keeping up on things political, and then, come Election Day, some lunkhead who’s spent the past four years watching wrestling on television and reading Hustler gets shamed into voting, and he winds up canceling out my vote?! Is that fair? Is that just?”
You’ve got a point that we’ve colored out allegiance to a donkey or elephant. Me, I vote issues. Which candidate will represent my values when they get into office. If that means a democrat, so be it (I’ve done it before even though I’m registered a Republican). Some people want to put you in a box, and some people do it to themselves. I agree one should read up on the issues/candidates and make an INFORMED decision.