Some of you may know that this blogger is an activist in the Democratic Party and a believer in progressive causes. One way that a poor retired person like me helps the party is by "door belling"for candidates. It turns out that the best way to move people to vote and to act progressively is person to person and face to face.
Last weekend as I was out door belling I met several folks who told me that they didn't find a need to vote. I asked why, of course.
The answers were all some version of the 'I hate politics and politicians" line we've heard forever. My response, after picking up my dropped jaw, was various versions of "if you don't vote - you can't bitch" or "OK you just made my vote count for more". Of course, none of that actually changed anyone's mind or got more votes for my candidate. What it did do was get me thinking about why people vote - or don't.
Americans are pretty lousy voters for being so into democracy. In our state at the last off year election there were over five million (5,149,729) voting age persons. Three million plus (3,601,268) were registered voters. That leaves us wondering where the one and a half million unregistered but probably eligible voters are. Even more worrying is that those who were registered, only two point five million (2,565,589) actually voted. That my friends is only 49.82% of the voting age population of this state.
Even so, a million and a half additional voters is enough of a difference to effect any state wide election. What really worries me is that there are a million and a half ideas and opinions that just aren't being heard because those are the ideas of those who don't or can't vote.
Let's find a way to at least get the number of voters above the fifty percent mark for this election cycle.
