Why we don't vote

It's absolutely shameful that only 30% of those registered to vote in Middletown, actually voted. It's an indictment of a populace too lulled into complacency to get off their asses and make a decision about the people who run the towns, the state and the country they live in.

So, why don't we vote. On Connecticut Public Radio today, John Dankowski hosted two young politicians on Where We Live. The topic of discussion was Getting Out the Youth Vote, and the guests were David Brewster, President of the Connecticut Union of College Republicans, and Matt Lesser, whom you may have read about in this blog before, who is a member of College Democrats in Connecticut. (The show is available online and will be rebroadcast tonight on WNPR).

Lesser, BTW was recently victorious in his unopposed run for Planning and Zoning Commission alternate here in Middletown, where he received nearly as many votes in his category, as the unopposed candidate for mayor, received in his. Matt worked hard to get the vote out among his fellow Wesleyan students.

The main question on Where We Live was voter apathy among young people. The problem with the topic is that voter apathy is not an affliction of youth. It infects young and old alike. The answer to the question of why people don't vote became clear during the course of the show. Though they are barely out of their teens, both Lesser and Brewster spouted the pat, scripted answers you would expect to fall from the lips of party bosses several decades their senior.

When asked about youth disaffection from policies of the Bush administration, Brewster took the opportunity to not answer the question, but to laud Bush for diligently fighting terror. While Brewster admitted that the war may not be going the way it was predicted to go, he thought it was important to be fighting in Iraq (I suppose so we don't have to be fighting them here.) He obviously doesn't think it's important enough for him to enlist. His evidence to the success of the Bush doctrine - we haven't had a terrorist attack on these shores since 9/11. The same specious argument the president offers.

As for Lesser, when asked if students were less active politically because they aren't threatened by the draft like young men in the sixties were, Lesser smugly posited that youth today are more "saavy," that they don't need to espouse revolution because they can affect change through the electoral process. He cited the Democratic congressional victories as his example of how change can happen by using the system. What he didn't explain was why the Democratic congress has been such a complete failure in ending the war, protecting our civil liberties and the Constitution, or controlling a runaway executive branch.

The reason most people don't vote. Simple. Politicians. When twenty-year old political novices speak exactly like their ineffectual mentors, it's a hothouse for apathy and cynicism.

Give me Abby Hoffman any day.