Of late, I have been trying to gear my thoughts to two types of people around this country, the low information voter, and the non-voter. Both feel justified in their opinion. Strangely enough for the most part it is the same opinion. Ironically it is their practices that cement their opinions. So what is this demonstratively caustic opinion that ruins the democratic process: “It doesn’t really matter, all politicians are corrupt anyway.” It works like this, if everyone believes that politicians are lying, thieving, philanderers, then no one is outraged when that truth is borne out, and then there is no public backlash against it, which is a tacit endorsement of it. This gives another politician the latitude to try to get away with the same practices if not more. It becomes a very real self fulfilling prophecy.
Yet this is only part of the problem. Only 50% of us vote, of that 80 to 90% of voters are likely to vote strait down party lines regardless of who is running. This means anyone running can reasonably expect to get 40 to 45% of the support they need, and that means that they really only need to fight for 6 to 12%. Which if you add it all up means, that at least on the surface Politicians only have to be responsible to 6% of the entire population.
It gets even worse on a national level. Think about this New York and California are going to go to the Democrats, You know this, I know this, and politicians sure as hell know this. This renders us silent. We can effectively be ignored by either party. The democrats can take us for granted, and republicans can ignore us with no more dire consequences. These are large populations that do not have their issues addressed on a federal level. This includes the hurricane destroyed states of Mississippi and Texas too. So it isn’t even 6% of the entire population deciding the vote, it is 6% of a few select areas and not even necessarily heavily populated areas that are holding our president accountable. You hear it all the time, how will this play in Florida, how will this play in Ohio. You never hear, how will the New Yorkers, or how will the Texans feel about this policy.
All this stems from a lapse of personal responsibility. As it stands politicians have to fight to get your attention. Everyone has too much on their plate, I’ve listened to far too many people say I don’t have time to find out what their politicians stands for. They have kids; they have school, bills, overtime, relatives, and personal dramas. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. I understand that everyone has just so many things to do in their day what concerns me is they believe they are getting and adequate amount of information. They believe they can get enough information to make their decision based on the minute and half shown on evening news, and the 2 to 3 image dominated pages in their local paper for campaign coverage. This just isn’t the case; Politicians are in charge of handling extraordinarily complex problems on massive scales, do you honestly believe that these policies can be adequately described by ANYONE, in less than a paragraph, or even worse a sound bite. This is not the purpose of these presentations, at best these are appetizers, and it is still up to you to go out and understand what the politicians are promoting.
This can be daunting at first, but it doesn't have to be. They say all politics is local. I say start there, for example there is a good chance you belong to some society, or perhaps your union, your local PTA, find out who they are supporting and why. If you can't find any way to become engaged through local community make a list of the things that matter to you and do a search and find out what the candidates have to say. If neither candidate is covering that issue search to find out who is speaking about that issue, and add your voice to theirs. It is not easy to ignore millions of voices speaking in unison. The one thing I’ve learned this election cycle is that information is easily accessible. At this point it is so easy to find out where someone stands and how they plan to try to change the world. Not only that; analysis from independent experts are often available to determine the plans feasibility. No you will not be able to do this in an hour or even a day. Seriously though this decision will effect the next several years of your life, people spend months deciding on the kind of car they'll drive, or weeks on their hair style, a few days to decide who is going to be decide how your kids will be educated seems like very little effort.
If everyone was engaged in the process, if everyone did their part to inform themselves it would be a lot easier to hold politicians accountable. All power is given, and the politicians only rule this way because we let them rule this way. A few years back a remarkable thing took place in California. The citizens had enough they united and forced things to change, but it could only happen because people became engaged. Even if you don't like the way your government runs no matter how you slice it you are going to be affected by it. Whether it is through things you see first hand like taxes, or things you don't really see like the war on terror. You owe it to yourself, to your kids to everyone to be as informed as you can and to act on that information.
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