Don't Forget to Vote

Next Tuesday is Election Day. I love Election Day and have since I turned 18. Voting is not only a right and responsibility; it is, for me, something in which I find joy. This is my chance to express my opinions and actually have them tallied up and counted. Guaranteed. Regardless of whether my candidates or issues of choice come out the winner, I know that I did my part to help form the laws that govern us.

Usually in the weeks (and sometimes months) prior to elections, I spend time with the newspaper, people who’s opinions I respect, and the inevitable campaign ads that come in the mail to make sure that my choice is not simply a “tick the party block” choice but actually motivated by some sort of educated understanding of the people who are vying for the right to represent me in whatever capacity. I do this because I see this as the heart of our system of government. Voting for someone simply because they’re on the right or left side of some line, or because your parents tell you to, or because your favorite celebrity tells you to – or even because your favorite politician tells you to – well, to me that’s just not a good enough reason for them to have my personal endorsement. I want to know for myself what they stand for and what they’re likely to incorporate into law – on my behalf – should they get elected.

In the past, this kind of research hasn’t been difficult to do. Sure, there’s usually a little muckraking going on, but it’s easy to detect and usually easy to get to the candidates actually stating their opinions on things despite the potshots. Not this year. This year, all I can find are the potshots. It seems like this year all the candidates want to do is tell me why I shouldn’t vote for their opponent. But they don’t seem interested in telling me why I should vote for them.

I suppose there’s potentially merit in knowing that “Candidate X plans to spend your tax dollars on issue P!!” But I’d rather hear it from Candidate X, not Candidate Y who thinks that they’ve targeted me as someone who is anti-issue P and therefore will choose not to vote for X because of this. If Candidate X wants to come forward and tell me why they favor issue P and give me a good, rational argument for their desire to spend tax dollars on it – then I can at least know that X really is for P, and not simply know that Y wants me to think that X is for P. Who knows, with a good explanation, I might even change my mind on my overall stance on issue P. But both sides of the fence are participating in this campaign strategy and so now the only information I can find on either candidate is what the other candidate is saying about them.

Frankly, I don’t understand why any candidate would allow this. Why would you tolerate letting the opposition be the sole purveyor of what you do and do not stand for? Wouldn’t you at least want to simply say: I stand for P, Q and R. These are my convictions, and I stand by them. But of course, that is part of the problem – politicians as a rule don’t stand by their convictions unless the latest poll tells them it’s ok. They change their convictions depending on the audience and it doesn’t seem to faze them if they totally contradict what they said yesterday.

The end result of this is that it’s harder and harder to be an educated voter. There’s less information out there coming from the horse’s mouth – it’s all coming from someone else, be it a reporter, a commentator, or their opponent. All these analysts look at speeches and digest them and then spit out to you what they think the candidate said and then put their spin on it as to why that means you should or shouldn’t vote for this person. My question is: how do we teach the next generation to be informed voters when this is the only kind of information available? For that matter, how can I continue to be one?

So tonight I will sit down with my political ads and read them over again, but do it backward. I will read Candidate X’s literature as if it was from Candidate Y and vice versa and hope that somewhere, in between the hype and muck, I can find enough to actually cast a vote that is more than a party affiliation.