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Colorado election officials expected 1.5 million citizens to vote Tuesday, and only a million Coloradans bothered. Other people have died in bloody revolutions for the right to have a say in their government, and black Americans used to fight their way past police dogs and fire hoses in order to vote, but the same Coloradans who would gladly drive 80 miles of ice-pack blizzard on Interstate 70 in order to ski are intimidated by a few snowflakes when it's time to go to the polls.
Nationally, only about 37 percent of registered voters
cast ballots last week. This prompted the Chinese
government's official organ to observe that The American
people themselves don't care about their democratic rights
or hold them in high regard.
That's Communist propaganda, so there must be a better explanation.
One reason for low turnouts is that people don't realize that voting pays. Back in the days of corrupt machine politics, the connection was obvious. Vote as directed by the ward-heeler, and you got a job. Your potholes got fixed, as did your traffic tickets.
The payment isn't quite so direct now, but observe the elderly of America. They are devout voters, appearing at the polls in numbers far greater than their percentage of the voting-age population. The result is that 28 percent of the federal budget goes to 12 percent of the population. On a local level, schools suffer because the people most likely to vote are people who want property taxes kept low.
Voting pays well for the Gray Lobby, although no get-out-the-vote do-gooder ever mentions this as a good reason to exercise your civic rights. But the main reason for low turn-out may be our bland version of democracy.
America offers a great deal of variety in most pursuits.
If I'm looking for a novel, I can choose a schlockbuster best-seller or mordant cult humor. At dinner time, I can find Chinese food, Mexican food, Italian food, Greek food and good old American fast food. I can listen to twelve-bar blues, classical orchestras, Appalachian bluegrass, hand-clapping gospel, Tin Pan Alley pop.
But when I vote, the choice, if there even is one, is generally limited to two white guys in suits who both say they're against crime and for economic development.
This is disgusting, especially in a town and in a state where there are lots of interesting people: Goldwater conservatives, hard-core Libertarians, foaming anarchists, mellow Greens, unreconstructed Wobblies.
In other pursuits, McDonald's might outsell the Chinese
restaurant down the street, but that doesn't mean I can't
ever get Hunan pork. Stephen King outsells John Barth, but
I can still read The Sot-Weed Factor. Tiffany
outsells Muddy Waters, but that doesn't stop me from
listening to Louisiana Blues.
But in American winner-take-all politics, if you're not the absolute best-seller, you cease to exist. Most people would eventually give up on eating out if McDonald's was all there was, and that's precisely what our political system offers us. The surprise is that our turn-outs aren't even lower.
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