Opinion

To Vote or Not to Vote

Reflections on time wasted voting

By Brian Sylvester

Posted on Nov. 14, 2005, at 12:00 a.m.

While I was voting the other day, alongside the 970 other people who didn’t have anything better to do that afternoon, I suffered a mild shock to the brain. No, I didn’t accidentally hear a portion of a George W. Bush speech, but I saw that there was more than one question on the ballot. What the hell? Surely this was a mistake. There couldn’t possibly be other issues at stake besides the all- encompassing Question 1, or else they would have been advertised, right? Right? But no! I checked with one of the friendly and helpful old people milling around, and she reassured me that the ballot was in fact correct. I was lost in a mire of technical looking budget language that I, as your average voter, was unprepared to care about. So, I did what any other red- blooded Mainer would do: I voted ‘No’ on anything with ‘budget’ in the title, and checked the rest of them randomly in hopes of making a symmetrical, aesthetically-pleasing ballot.

All seriousness aside, I had not intended to vote. “But Brian,” you might say if, unlike most of the campus, you cared about the voting process, “everyone should vote in order to make sure that we are fairly represented to the legislation.” To which I would have replied true enough, but I also had a full schedule of “nothing” planned for the afternoon. I think we all know who wins in the epic struggle between sitting on my rear-end playing Mario and involving myself in a process which primarily consists of standing in line for a long period of time.

In the end, it was a teacher who convinced me to bother with voting. By assigning homework, he sent a clear message that I should put off said homework, and go vote instead, thus providing me with a viable excuse for not having it completed. And lo and behold, the system works. I saw many faces at the polls which, quite honestly, I had not anticipated finding there. As disturbingly low as a turnout of 971 is, it was about 500 more than I expected to show up. Because I know something which not many voters know: Politicians don’t want you to vote.

The key to any election is voter turnout. Specifically, you don’t want anyone who isn’t affiliated with your campaign to bother to vote. This ensures that your legislation and or candidate will be accepted, because no pesky uninformed voters that actually care about issues will get in the way. Hence, the mind numbing advertisements which invariably occur every election year, forcing the average voter to wish he were dead rather than listen to one more debate.

There is method to that madness. Debates are constructed not to address issues, but for the specific reason that people want them to address the issues. This turns people off to the debating process, which in turn makes people dislike both candidates, which leads either to voting for third party candidates or not voting at all. And since a vote for a third party candidate is about as useful as a vote for a brick, it all boils down to voter turnout. The politicos downthere in Augusta and elsewhere don’t want us to care about the budget issues, so they can send their lackeys out to vote according to their personal agendas. If we don’t go vote, their voices are the only ones that count.

Now, you might be wondering if the above-mentioned process is why I bothered to vote. That, dear reader, is a silly question. Of course not. I voted because I was emotionally bound up in the tension of Question 1. Specifically, I was annoyed at being asked by every third person I ran into that day if I had voted yet, whether or not I intended to vote, and if I was going to vote would I please vote No, because if I don’t then I’m an evil heartless bastard that hates gay people, just like Hitler. I maintain that this vicious campaign strategy should have been adopted by the opposition to the Maine Won’t Discriminate party, because it made me want to vote Yes out of spite.

However, now that I have voted, I feel better about myself as a person. I also feel a righteous anger welling up towards everyone that didn’t vote, because I had to stand in line. Fortunately for me, there was a law passed a few years back giving me and everyone else that actually voted permission to verbally harass everyone that didn’t. So prepare yourself, negligent percentage of the university population. I have a large vocabulary, and I’m just dying to use it for evil.

Brian Sylvester voted and all he got was this lousy article.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 14th, 2005, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.