"Decisions Are Made By Those Who Show Up"
Thus sayeth fictionaleth President Jed Bartlett, of the late, eminently quotable series The West Wing. I can think of no one sentence which more appropriately summarizes tomorrow's elections.
Now, I am not going to echo the numerous celebrities who seem insistent that we should all vote no matter our rationale or thought process. I do not believe that voting is, in and of itself, an unmitigated good. Voting is like speaking: it may or may not be good; it all depends on what you have to say, and why you're saying it. If you're voting because P. Diddy's threatening you, and not because you've studied the issues and come to an informed conclusion, I daresay the nation will be better off without your ballot.
This will surely be sacreligious to some. The media in general is disgusted with the electorate's generally declining turnout, and all involved seem to have agreed that anything which helps reverse this trend is good.
This is true, to a degree. Low turnouts are bad, but higher turnouts are not necessarily good if they are not the result of increased interest and/or education. We don't need more voting; we need more engagement. People who encourage the former without encouraging the latter have confused the goal with how we go about measuring it. Voting without genuine interest is just noise, and the political landscape is noisy enough without a disinterested chorus singing backup.
People who care will vote, but not all voters will care. The former is the important part. Saying we need more voting is like saying we need more writing. Isn't the important thing that the voting, like the writing, have something worthwhile to say?
I don't know what tomorrow's turnout will be. It may be very low, and if it is, we'll probably hear more than one pundit decry the nation's lack of initiative. But this is not the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that the turnout will be high, but comprised largely of people with only a passing interest in the candiates they vote for.
In other words, we shouldn't have to "get out the vote." The truly worthwhile vote should get out to the polls all by itself.
UPDATE: "Oak Leaf" over on PoliPundit notes that Florida's Seminole County's early voting appears to be exceeding 2004.
» November 6th, 2006
|
|
Calendar
More Entries
Blogroll
Instapundit
Andrew Sullivan
Tom Maguire
Decision '08
Patrick O'Keefe
Categories
Blogging
Democrats
Economy
Elections '04
Elections '06
Elections '08
Entertainment
George W. Bush
Iraq
Media
Miscellaneous
Republicans
Social Security
Supreme Court
Technology
War on Terror
Email Me
|
