Posted by
Craig Freeborn on Friday, October 13, 2006 3:33:42 AM
Every year you hear it. “Voter turnout is too low.” “Exercise your civic responsibility to vote.” “If you don’t vote you can’t complain.”
Yup, it’s the Get-Out-The-Vote-Campaign Season again!
Only this year there’s an added twist. Some self-proclaimed “patriotic” do-gooder with too much time on his hands has been running around collecting enough signatures to place his “So You Want to Be a Millionaire” lottery scheme on the Arizona ballet. If passed, the state will start holding a drawing of all those who vote in each election – the winner to receive $1Million. (Of course, he’ll let the good citizens of Arizona pay the $1 Million.)
Yeah, turn your ballot stub into a lottery ticket – that ought to entice those pesky non-voters to turn off their MTV long enough to find their way to the polls.
All these get-out-the-vote campaigns have one thing in common – improve the voter turnout. But they all start out on a false premise – that increased voter turnout, by itself, is a desired “improvement”.
This bi-annual feel-good bandwagon reminds me of the quip from Adlai Stevenson. During his 1956 Presidential campaign, a supporter told him “Mr. Stevenson, you have the vote of every thinking voter in the country.” To which he replied, “Thank you, madam, but that’s not nearly enough – I need a majority to win!”
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By the way, do you know who Adlai Stevenson was running against in 1956? And do you remember the two famous lines he delivered at the emergency session of the U.N. Security Council called during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962? I remember watching him on TV as he cream the Soviet Ambassador; but for those of you who weren’t around at the time, try practicing your research skills and look it up. It shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes.
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Adlai made the point that our Arizona do-gooder should have heeded. Why should fully informed and actively involved Freeborn Americans have their votes cancelled out just because the siren song of a Million-Dollar Lotto persuaded some politically ignorant citizens to enter the polling booth?
If he’s not interested enough to make the effort to get out to the polls for the purpose of voting on the issues and the candidates, will the bribe of a free lottery ticket induce him to suddenly become informed on those same issues and candidates?
As of this writing, even the Supreme Court hasn’t found a constitutionally proscribed “civic duty” to vote. But if you do choose to vote, you should at least feel a moral obligation to cast an informed vote.
If you don’t know anything about the issues, don’t vote!
If you favor one candidate because of his metro-sexual bouffant don’t vote!
If you’re standing in the voting booth and reading the candidates’ names for the first time, or trying to figure out what the passage of “Prop A” will mean, don’t pull that leaver. Submit your blank ballot, collect your lottery stub, go home, and try to make some sense out of MTV – just do us all a favor and don’t vote!