Election Day

It should be the most important day of the year. It’s why we fought the Revolutionary War. We wanted the right to govern ourselves. We wanted to call the shots. We wanted to say who would represent us. We wanted the people we voted into office to hear us and listen to us. It’s the foundation of a democracy, the right to vote in free and fair elections. Millions of dollars are spent to get our attention about candidates and issues. Many of us don’t seem to be listening or care. What happened?

This is what is called an off year election. It isn’t a presidential election year, or a mid-term election when the whole House of Representatives and one third of the Senate are up for election. But there are many local elections for county commissioners, county councils, township mayors and councils, district attorneys, and judges. There are some bigger offices, like Mayor of Philadelphia where there hasn’t been a Republican mayor in decades. Democrat Jim Kenney will probably get about 75 per cent of the small number of voters who do bother to vote. Some of the people who get elected to these local offices have a bigger impact on our daily lives than the president or our congressman or woman. Among other things, these local officials determine how much your property taxes will go up, and how your money will be spent.

Last year, 2014 was a midterm election. In 43 states, less than half the eligible voters cast ballots. The national turnout was 36.3 per cent. The last time voter turnout was that low was in 1942 during World War II. Look at these numbers from the Bipartisan Research Center for voter turn out in the last three U-S presidential elections:

2012-57.5%
2008-62.3%
2004-60.4%

Now look at the last three presidential elections in France:

2012-80.35%
2007-83.97%
2002-79.71%

Does that mean the French think elections are more important then we do? The numbers don’t lie. The U-S Census Bureau asked people why they didn’t vote in 2014. Here are some of the top reasons:

28%-too busy
16%- not interested
11%-Illness/disability
10%-out of town
8%-forgot to vote
8%-didn’t like the candidates

You can pick the lamest one. We have probably all been guilty of missing a local election. But there is no really good excuse. It may sound overly dramatic to say people died for us to have the right to vote freely. But they did. To say we are too busy, or just not interested demeans us as a society. Maybe the French have a greater appreciation of the vote because their parents and grandparents lived under the terror of the Nazis during the 1940s, and they realized what the loss of freedom of choice really means.

We have the individual responsibility to cut through the clutter of all the candidates and issues to make an informed decision. To say it doesn’t matter, or that all politicians are out for themselves, or are crooks are just lazy excuses. We should be demanding better candidates. These people make decisions about our security, our money, our healthcare, how much freedom we will or won’t have. Do we want to leave that up to someone else?

When I was working and covering elections, Election Day was always the longest day of the year. In the newsroom at 7am and going home at midnight. Months of planning went into our coverage leading up to the election, and the day itself. We thought it was important. I’m not sure we really got that across to viewers based on the number of people who just don’t care.

We don’t appreciate things we take for granted until they are taken away. President Franklin Roosevelt said, “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.” Election Day is here. Do you care?