to vote or not to vote, is that really the question?

If the answer were simply getting everyone out to vote, then the first question is why have we not done a better job of achieving that goal? 

Every year it's the same story, only 44% voter turnout.  Or maybe a whopping 66%.  It reminds me of the problem faced by vocational rehabilitation services to the blind.  No matter what we do, the unemployment rate stands at 70%.  So it's obvious to me that we're doing something wrong or attacking the wrong problem. 

Here's the deal, we all understand that in order to eat we must somehow get our hands on food.  Simple, huh?  So how come folks don't get the picture that in order to have control of our government we must all vote? 

The answer is pretty easy.  If we don't get food we soon see the results.  Our clothes fall down around our ankles. 

But when we don't vote, ore even when we do vote, we see no change.  So we begin to ask ourselves, "Is voting really the thing that gets me good, responsive government?" 

What we need to do is to take a step or two back from the idea that voting is the single important part of having good government. 

Perhaps we should first examine how we select candidates.  Or in our current situation, how we buy our candidates.  Could it be that even more important than voting is our need to get money out of the candidate selection formula?  What good is our right to vote when we come to the polls and find that none of the people are people we'd really want running our affairs?  Don't we keep saying, "Well, I voted for the lesser of two Evils?"  What does that say about our right to vote? 

 

First, in order to give citizens actual choices at the polls, we must end our present "selection" method.  We need open radio and TV channels where honest debate can take place.  We need to stop the glitzy campaign lies that appear for months prior to elections.  We need to end First Class Corporate Citizenship and only allow flesh and blood citizens the right to vote. 

We got big time troubles, and voting or not voting is not very high on the list. 

 

Curious Carl