John- The country is served by active participation of its citizens through voting because they are taking part, giving back, being involved. More involvement leads to less divisiveness overall, at least so far as people can say that they have beenheard. It would diminish the effect of naysayers and complainers and return a modicum of participatory society.

I don’t care if people vote democrat or republican, though i would prefer they vote not along party lines at all, but rather for those who they feel will truly serve with honesty and integrity. Personally, I have no allegiance to a political party per se.

I would say they have tuned out not because things aren’t bad enough, but because they haven’t been engaged and the crop of pols are thieves and liars (metaphorically and actually.)

And while being new to an area may be an excuse to preclude oneself from voting, its an excuse, nonetheless. To say people who know little about a candidate just shouldn’t vote excuses the apathy that leads them to know so little. I would rather they spend a little time learning instead of not voting at all.

And yes, I do support an end to gerrymandering and redistricting and will probably vote for the reform plan on the California ballot that puts district writing out of the hands of politicians. That practice has led to a great decrease in election viability for outsiders.

Thanks for the comments John.

Windspike- I agree that opening up the candidate process is vital to ending apathy, and it is tricky, but the funding reforms I’ll talk about may have some ideas to help alleviate this problem.

And yes, we could create, manage, and keep inviolate an electronic system if we put our minds to it.
Thanks for stopping by, as always.

Rudicus- I can’t argue with much of what you say, only that you seem to get it. I will be discussing funding reforms in the next essay. Hope to hear from you again.

Chandira- Ouch! Glad I’m not the cat!

MJ-Thanks for letting me know! Hope to hear from you again.

Jill- And that is another reason why we need to open the field and remove the money. Stay tuned…we may find a way to change in spite of it all.

Eko- Sound like their system is more “democratic” than ours, if one measures the amount of public participation as a factor for determining self- rule. (Of course, Indonesia has its problems too…)

I think I might totally agree with you, and it’s rare that I will totally agree with anything.

I got my cat Fixed, and look what it did to him! 😉 That more describes how I felt on Nov 4th..

Sorry I haven’t been commenting as much, but between my site, The Impeach Bush Coalition, Blogcritics and Blogtemps I haven’t had as much time to read and post.

I’m afraid you are just scratching the surface on this one. Having worked in politics on the election side and having been a co-designer in a Yale University GOTV study, I think the roots of our election quagmire go to the point that i really think we need a compete overhaul of the system.

If we are still claiming to have a participatory democracy then we need to get rid all the barriers to entry both for politicians and voters.

For voters – voting needs to be easy. I agree that a national holiday would help, but even then, most people don’t want the hassle of standing in endless lines and dealing with all that. An electronic system with special encoding might be developed so that people could vote online would be ideal – there could still be polling places, but this would allow folks to vote from anywhere – thus no absentee ballots for overseas and invalids etc. – everyone could easily participate. we could see upwards to 75% or more. Everyone could be pre-qualified – certainly if credit companies and drivers license places can pre-qualify you then so can the voter registration people.

From the Politician standpoint, one of the reason’s we are in the place we are in is because of the election system – it’s all big money right now, which means that only well connected people can even get in the game – and well connected usually means beholden to anyone. The only true way to go would be to level the playing field so that there was NO outside money and everyone had the same budget and the same advertising time – thus the would be no soft money, no hard money and no contributions of any kind.

If everyone was pre-budgeted then anyone could run and have a fair shake.

Lastly, I think we would need to do away with the electorate system and allow votes to be votes by district so that there was no winning of states, you actually had to get the most votes.

And finally people in this country are so woefully uneducated, especially about their leaders that some form of educational system should be in place otherwise we shouldn’t be having the American people electing anyone and we should have qualified people selecting candidates and not bother with the “people”

That’s my long winded thoughts.

Another thoughtful essay. No need to explain the double entendre. I thought it appropos.

Indeed, to fix the vote, we have a multi-layered problem. Part of the issue is also that there are no candidates that reflect those who purposefully don’t vote. That is, if I don’t have anyone who looks like me or I feel like can represent me, then why should I vote?

This is a bit of a chicken and an egg question. If there are no good candidates, then I won’t vote, but if I don’t vote, why would any good candidates run?

A few other thoughts I have are thus – if we can give all registered citizens a social security number, what prevents us from simultaneously allowing them to vote upon their 18th birthday?

Moreover, we could actually allow all registered drivers the opporutnity to register to vote as a matter of checking a couple of blocks on their license application. Yes, this would mean that 16 year olds could get the vote as well, but if they are old enough to drive a car, I think I could trust them to vote – hell, why not?

On another tact, if you want to encourage voter turn out, why don’t we make the actual federal voting day (that could coincide with major local votes) a National Holiday – automatically giving people a day off would mean that folks wouldn’t have to juggle their work schedules to make their way to the polls.

Lastly, if we can allow folks to coordinate and vote in corporate share holder elections effectively, why can’t we do the same kind of electronic voting (from your home, library, or school) on line. This would remove the hassle of voting at polling stations (avoiding lines, shceduling conflicts, etc…) and put the actual voting control so close to the voter, it would behoove them to vote.

Anyway – thanks for sharing your thoughts on the matter. Look forward to the dialog in the comment section as well.

Yes, this is apathy. Clearly,these people have better things to do.

But how exactly does it serve the country to have them voting?

That is an important question, Ken. Is because you feel these dummies will invariably vote Democrat? What does that say?

I would argue that they have tuned out because things aren’t bad enough for them to care. After every election, the police still work and their jobs and roads are still there, so they don’t really expend the effort to watch the news.

I agree its pathetic, but hey, that’s freedom.

You have a right to a vote in the same way you have a right to a gun…

But just because you have right to a gun doesn’t mean everyone should should have one.

In fact, the fact that most people don’t have guns says something good about our society: most people trust the police to provide security.

When I recently moved to my new house, I recused myself from voting for local school board officials because I didn’t know anything about them.

I wish others would do the same.

The guy that wants to vote for Bush because he is a Texas Rangers fan: stay away! The woman who wants vote for Gore because the way he kissed Tipper was so romantic: stay home on election day!

But surely someone who opposes “voter apathy” must certainly support ending district gerrymandering in CA and Texas (and most states)?

Right?

In CA, you have a state that recently had elections to its statehouse, and not a single seat changed hands because the party in power drew its own districts.

That is a recipe for “voter apathy.” A bad kind of voter apathy – exactly the kind you talk about here.

Am I right, Ken?