Voteapathy
| May 26th, 2008 by Robert | Word Count: 1236 | Reading Time 5:02 | 2,018 views |
Since I’m currently enamored with making up words, I thought of another one. As I mentioned in yesterday’s first paragraph, I was struck with an idea while I was writing the article. Voter apathy popped into my mind to talk about and it’s a perfect time with the primaries currently running and the Presidential Election coming up this fall. What exactly does apathy mean? Apathy basically comes down to someone’s lack of caring. Vote for President? Who cares, it’s only one vote. Vote during the primaries? Who cares, it’s not even the real election. Vote for the mayor of your town? Who cares, he or she doesn’t have any real power anyway. Vote to pass or deny a local ordinance? Who cares, it doesn’t affect me. I’m sure you are getting the idea here. People, also known as voters, choose not to exercise one of the most powerful rights our forefathers made sure was protected.
What has happened to our democratic process to make voting basically a 50/50 proposition on any level? I’m sure the issues that come up for vote affect more than 50% of our community whether it is the city, county, state, or federal process. Why do we choose to allow half of our society to determine what 100% of us have to abide by? Shouldn’t we all have a desire to voice our opinion and make sure our votes are considered and counted? You might be thinking that the numbers are a bit skewed here. You may be thinking that there are a lot of people under 18 that can’t vote and this affects the percentage. No. Current data shows that even with the removal of people who cannot vote, we see around a 50% turnout. However, the 2004 Presidential election saw an increase to about 60% turnout which was good. But, think of it this way. If we think 60% is great, then I guess you think a D- is the equivalent of an A+ in school. 60% is horrible if you happened to miss my point.
Here we sit, in a society where people do not consistently exercise their right to vote. It’s really sad if you spend any time thinking about it. We live in a country where many people have given their lives to create and defend our freedom and way of life and we are failing to use one of our most important tools of democracy. If our voting public actually went to the polls and voiced their opinions, would we see anything different? Quite possibly yes. There are many things that would still be the same because you cannot change the majority opinion on some things very quickly. But, if enough people are dissenting in a vote, they are still voicing their position and the winning side must take that into account. Over time, if the majority dwindles because things aren’t working out like they were led to believe, they would have an alternative position to research and potentially join.
If the dissenters choose not to vote because they think they are going to lose no matter what they do in the voting booth, then they have no say or position to argue. Think about it. If nobody knows how passionate the opposite side is, they will be consistently bypassed and majority opinion will continue to rule just because the opposition is apathetic. If the dissenters do not exercise their right to vote, their opinions basically do not count. Apathetic voters become invisible citizens. Why would the public officials spend any time worrying about those against the majority opinion if they know they won’t even exercise one of their most important rights as citizens of this country? Sure, they will complain and moan about things not being the right way in their mind, but they won’t ever do anything about it. Status quo will exist and the majority opinion will continue to make decisions for everyone, even though a majority of 50% isn’t all that hard to obtain.
That’s a pretty profound statement in itself. If 50% of the people vote and you only have to have a majority of that 50%, then we are really looking at 25.01% of our public determining our futures in the political process. Does that make you feel good? I sure don’t feel good about it. That means that potentially, up to 75% of the public could be disagreeing with this so-called “majority” opinion. Have you ever thought about it in this manner? It’s easier to not think about it, I will agree. But, we NEED to think about it. We may individually be one vote at a time, but it doesn’t matter, we still count. Our opinion and position still counts and we should WANT the public officials to know where we stand. We are NEVER throwing our vote away. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say this: “I would vote during this process, but what I want to happen doesn’t have a chance to win so I will just be throwing my vote away and also my time and effort. I’m better off just not voting.” How wrong is that statement?
My opinion over the years has changed. Originally, I was an apathetic voter. I could not have cared less who won or what passed because my existence couldn’t affect what 250 million people in our country did or the few thousand in my local community. That’s the trap, and it’s huge. Don’t fall into it. If you are in the trap, make the greatest effort to pull yourself out of it. Pull everyone you know out of it. Make sure your voice is heard by voting. USE your right to vote. MAKE your voice heard. If we could effectively reach more of our voter public, I would guarantee you we would have a much different local political board, state governing body, and federal system. Our congress would have so many new and invigorated faces we might actually have worthwhile bills coming to the desk of our President. Our local boards would be so different that local issues would be solved and the major issues would be dealt with without fear of retribution by the voters. That in itself is the key. If we would vote, we would change the guard. We would have citizens in the position to make key changes to our country and lives.
The answer lies in IF we vote… only IF we voted. When the next voting process comes to your area, spend some time and research the issues and the stances of the people on the ballot. Take some time out of your life to learn what will be affecting your life in the very near future. If you don’t vote, it doesn’t mean you won’t have to answer to the people in charge. You might as well voice your stance then right? Voting doesn’t hurt anything. However, not voting is very harmful. Choose not to vote, that’s your right. By doing so, you are removing your right to complain. You were given the chance to voice it on voting day. Remove the voting apathy from your life and start exercising one of the greatest democratic tools our society has. I’ve chosen to voice my opinion and I vote. Now, if we can only get the other 100 million people to exercise their right.
Citation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10492-2005Jan14.html
on May 27th, 2008 at 9:04 pm:
We all hear about the bad things that our politicians do, but like you said not enough people vote to really make our voices heard. Most people that don’t vote are usually the biggest complainers. I don’t think that we should let the illegal population vote, but they see something that a lot of registered voters and non registered people don’t see or don’t care enough about to put their name on the line.
It don’t make sense to me that we have U.S. citizens that say that we need some changes made but they won’t vote. On the other hand the illegals are wanting to vote. It makes me wonder where our citizens loyalty lies!! In the meantime our politicians are doing exactly what they want. Not enough people are telling them by their votes that the government is supposed to be for the people and by the people, or at least it used to be that way.
on May 27th, 2008 at 11:18 pm:
Exactly. The non-voting population are very loud when complaining, but do they have a right to complain if they have failed to exercise their most basic right outside of speech? I don’t understand the reasoning behind it all. If you truly believe something different, shouldn’t you also have the assumed responsibility to try and do something about it? Why just let things be decided for you?
As I said before, I was an apathetic voter, but I also didn’t complain about the system all that much because it didn’t matter to me at that moment in time. But, the day it started to matter to me to the extent that I voiced my opinion, I began to research the issues and candidates and began voting. It appears that most of our society has never reached that hump in their life. They are apathetic voters who complain, but fail to research or truly understand the way things work. If they really believed their vote counted, I think more of our population would vote. Somehow, half of us think our votes mean nothing. That is very sad.