Why Voters Are Tired Of Elections
Wednesday - November 08, 2006
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Del.icio.usI, for one, am happy to have survived another election season. After you have covered your first election they become progressively less interesting. In the political world, truth is plural and contingent. “World rationalization” is a mental technique that allows one to lie or cheat without feeling guilty, and feel justified in not apologizing to those they offend.
I keep reminding myself that in the beginning no one ever expected the government to take care of the poor. Rugged individualism was a way of life. Welfare did not exist in this great nation until after 1870.
What happened? I think some of it can be blamed on our love affair with the election process.
It gets more complicated every election cycle. Government at present is constantly creating programs that are designed to collect clients rather than empower communities of citizens to improve their circumstances. These people have learned to be dependent upon and controlled by their helpers and leaders. The problem with that is clients understand themselves in terms of their deficiencies and wait for others to act on their behalf. Our entire emergency response system is based on people waiting around for someone to rescue them from the realities of life.
Hopefully, our election process will encourage citizens to understand their own problems in their own terms. In this way citizens perceive their relationship to one another and believe in their capacity to act in a positive manner. Good citizens make good, strong grass-roots action groups.
In the beginning, reliable research shows that the public believed that most members of U.S. Congress and state legislatures cared more about pleasing specific interest groups rather than the general public. To combat that belief voters demand term limits, campaign reform and ballot initiatives.
Why does it seem that things are the same? It is my personal opinion that the voters don’t want more elections, more opinion polls and more meetings to attend. They are surely tired of media types telling them how to vote and whom they should vote for.
Why? It is a fact that our government has engineered the political process to a point where we have more elections than any other county in the world. The last time it was checked, there were more than 500,000 elected officials in America. That’s about one in every 180 voters. I believe that is why voters are tired, and that feeling accompanies them into the voting booth. Generally speaking, many voters walk into their prescribed booth and are greeted by pages of names they don’t even know and propositions they don’t understand. Those nameless candidates are in a bitter contest for a elective office these voters know nothing about. Add on the BLANK vote vs. NO vote debacle and you have a contagious political disease called voter apathy.
It’s almost comical to try to explain the thinking behind the 12 charter questions in this year’s general election. Most of the propositions on the ballot are things the elected county councils are supposed to decide. After all, they are legislative in nature because if they are passed, they become more laws for the public to obey. Problem is, a rule driven government may make things work more smoothly and prevent corruption, but at a price of monumental waste. Simply put, these charter questions are strong evidence that bureaucracies can’t do anything new without adding more people and spending more precious resources.
Here’s hoping the general public took the time to figure out the hidden agendas behind the multitude of charter questions. Wouldn’t it be nice if the voters knew who was supporting each charter question and why?
Not to worry, in another decade another Charter Commission will be appointed by another group of hand-picked bureaucrats and it will submit another bevy of charter questions to be answered by a bunch of tired voters.
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