Electing by Apathetic Consent
 ~ by James Banzer

   The stories will soon begin relating to the numbers of
people who stay at home on presidential election day.
This is a sure bet, as many Americans have stayed away
from the polls for years and show no intentions of
casting their ballots, and nothing would indicate an
impending change.

   During the 2000 presidential election, only 49.3% of
America's voting age population voted. Less than half
of the people took part in the process. An enormous
number of people did not even bother to register. Even
among registered voters, only 67.4% voted.

   It was not always this way. A group called the
Constitutional Rights Foundation says that throughout
the 1880s, 80% of those eligible voted. Then, the rate
plummeted when barriers such as the since-banned poll
tax were put in place.

   In recent years, when legitimate excuses for not
voting have been harder to come by, the politicians
have worked to solve the problem of non-voting. It has
not done a lot of good. The motor-voter law was
supposed to fix the problem, but that was a dud. You
just can't squeeze blood out of a turnip, and you
can't create voters among those who are not
interested.

   Granted, there has been a little bit more success in
Oregon with online voting, however that brings up the
important and not yet adequately addressed question of
security. It also elicits the question of whether
elections officials and politicians should pander to
those who are too lazy to go to the polls.

   There are actually some who say voting should be a
requirement for every qualified citizen. This was
brought into consciousness one evening when a
news-talk radio show out of Canada discussed a member
of the Liberal Party who had suggested a law requiring
every citizen to vote.

   But, that's Canada. A little bit of Internet surfing
reveals that one of Richard Nixon's guys, John Dean,
has been talking about the same thing. Dean gained his
national fame when he told the Senate Watergate
Committee that the president was aware of White House
Watergate break-in efforts as of September 1972.
Thirty some years later, his idea is that since it's a
government by the people, perhaps the people should be
required to vote.

   That makes no more sense than would a requirement that
all citizens desiring to vote must pass an
intelligence test. That second idea might sound good,
but where do you draw the line on the level of
intelligence? Either way, it would amount to Big
Brother - read that the government - intruding upon
the rights of its citizens. We do have a right to be
dumb.

   We also have a right to abstain from voting. Maybe
those who don't care should not vote. No major
corporation would want a member of its board of
directors making decisions about matters which they
had not given careful consideration.

   We the citizens are the board of directors. The
elected representatives serve at our will. It's up to
us to know the issues and the candidates, and have
some idea of what's likely to result if those
candidates are propelled into office.

   The deepening problem is the growing numbers of young
people who don't vote, and could not care less about
voting. An online clothing store sells a t-shirt that
is obviously directed toward this crowd. It proclaims,
"Voting is for old people." The "old people" are the
ones making the decisions on election day. The young
are giving away their future in this age of music
videos and computer games.

   An organization called Rock the Vote has been
attempting to turn the trend around over the past few
years. The success rate appears less than stellar,
with many in the group to which the appeal is geared
not giving a damn.

   Authority of government is derived from consent of the
governed, as proclaimed by Thomas Jefferson in the
Declaration of Independence. Sadly, if the people who
are propelled into office exhibit a less than shining
performance, much of the blame has to be laid at the
feet of apathy. One must conclude that these non-votes
constitute consent.

030104

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