Listening to The 1A today, the topic was democracy and voting and the troubled state of American politics. One of the panel members was a student at Yale, speaking eloquently about the "disconnect" between voters and politicians: a majority of voters support gun control in some form or fashion, but politicians won't even bring a bill to the floor of Congress for debate. (This evening on All Things Considered they ran a report on the gender gap between men who tend to favor "2nd Amendment remedies" and "prying mah gun (I typed "fun" and had to correct it; I'm not quite sure I was wrong) from mah cold, dead fingers") and women, who favor reducing gun violence over protecting gun owners (men are, in general, on the other side of that question, too). Funny, but he never made the connection between that generalization and all the callers who left messages for the panel to ruminate over.
Almost every caller averred that they weren't going to vote in 2020 because they purity of their sacred franchise would be sullied by contact with reality, and no candidate met their exacting standards for electability (basically they want to elect a Platonic ideal, and were forced to chase shadows. O, the humanities!), and besides, why bother, nobody listened to them. Which, of course, is precisely why.
This system has a very basic buy-in: you don't vote, you don't play. You want politicians to listen to you? Vote. Is the majority of the country in favor of gun control? Vote. The gun nuts (sorry, but it's descriptive, not pejorative) vote. They make sure to give money to the NRA and vote every time the ballots are open. It's the "silent majority" that doesn't care that much, to vote down the NRA nut-candidate, or vote for a Beto who says he'll do something drastic to reduce gun violence (which "won't work" because no one will vote for it because why bother, politicians don't listen anyway, and besides my vote is holy and pure and can't be preferred to mere mortals who might not do ALL that I want done, even if I don't know what I want done.). The majority in this country has the power to take guns away from people, if they so choose (I still don't understand why somebody doesn't campaign on taxing ammunition; I really, really don't.). They just have to vote.
And yet, all we can do is complain about the electoral college (which wasn't so much a problem until Trump won, and he won because people in certain states didn't....what? What did they not do? All together now: VOTE! Damned right!) or gerrymandering (another favorite reason not to bother with voting) or just because.
I also heard the story, earlier in the day, of a felon in Florida who, at the age of 64, got to vote for the first time in his life (he was incarcerated before he was 18, IIRC, and as a felon was banned from voting for life, because heaven forbid poor people and black people, and most especially poor, black people, get the chance to vote!). He got to vote once before Florida decided all felons must first pay all fees and fines due for their crimes (reimbursements, fines, etc.), or be guilty afresh of a felony for attempting to vote. To make it worse, Florida has no central registry recording the charge of such fees and fines, or payment thereof. So how does a voting official know if you've paid, or not paid? How do you know what you owe, or don't owe? It couldn't be more clearly a poll tax if it tried, but it's Florida, man. And how did that law get passed? Because people of good will didn't bother to vote because, you know, why bother, they don't listen anyway, and gerrymandering, and so on and so forth.
Tell that to the man who voted for the first time (and last?) in his life, at the age of 64. His vote was so holy and precious to him (he is a pastor), he took his grandson to watch him vote, and he broke down crying when they showed him to a voting booth. But he voted.
How the hell can you tell me you can only do less than that? What excuse do you offer? That unlike cable TV and streaming services, the ballot doesn't offer you enough selections? Can we shame such people? Can we treat them like something we'd scrape off our shoes? No; it wouldn't help. But excuses to not vote are worth about as much as "the dog ate my homework" or "my grandmother died (for the fourth time)". It's time we at least treated it that way, anyway.
Rat own.
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