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US Elections
Should I Vote? And Which Way? by Julie Fonda October 5, 2004: Did you watch the President debates? Were you impressed by either of the candidates? President Bush stammered, scowled and sweated. Senator Kerry stood tall, wore a red tie and appeared prematurely Presidential. And I found myself wondering how, for the 2004 Presidential Election, at a time so pivotal to our country -- both domestically and abroad -- that the convention delegates of our two--party system managed to present us with such a paltry duo of candidates to compete against each other for the job of Commander-In-Chief of the largest free nation in the world? America is entangled in a war that keeps blowing up in our faces; the threat of a terrorist attack hovers over us daily; the National Debt has skyrocketed; our schools are not keeping up with America’s rising number of children; health care costs have reached the crisis level; two-income families are struggling because of the rapid rise in housing costs, daycare expenses, fifty-dollar- per-barrel oil prices, saving for the children’s college education, etc., ad infinitum. At least, if the delegates at the Democratic National Convention had chosen the good-looking candidate with the "honey-fied" Southern drawl as their man for the White House, it would have made the race more interesting to watch. That scenario would have been far more palatable than the one that the delegates dished up for the millions of voters who will hit the poles on November 2nd. Is John Edwards’ shortage of political experience really so disquieting? And who cares if -- before his six-year stint as a United States Senator -- he was an ambulance chaser for twenty years? At least he’s on the Vice Presidential ticket, and the bottom line is that "eye-candy" is better than nothing. Or we could have Cheney, his hawkishness, his secretiveness and mysterious meetings and haughty, condescending attitude, along with his faltering heart. (Perhaps his conscience is getting to him.) For this election, I feel the same apathy that I experienced during the first election that followed the Watergate scandal, where the President got caught being the mastermind behind one of the dirty tricks that all politicians play. He slipped up, became paranoid, and taped all of the conversations that "went down" in the Oval Office. Had his conversations not been captured on tape and revealed for the entire world to hear, Former President Nixon would have gone down in history as the President who got us out of Vietnam and who opened the door to the East. Richard Nixon’s wife, Pat, would have been remembered for that classy red coat she was sporting, as she walked down the ramp, exiting the plane in Beijing, China. Pre-Richard Nixon, our United States Presidents had been portrayed as unblemished, sacrificial lambs who willingly surrendered their anonymity and their right to live a normal life, for the White House Goldfish Bowl. Though they weren't perfect human beings, they were treated as if they were. The "Witch Hunt" was primarily a standard, modern-day manifestation. Before Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, there were secrets in the White House that, though they cast the President in a less-than-perfect light -- had nothing to do with the successful running of the country. Henceforth, they were kept silent. Presidents were revered, followed, believed in, trusted to run the country effectively, and relied upon to keep us from getting nuked by despots with world-domination ideation, like Kim Jong Il of North Korea. But from the telltale Nixon tapes, the "White House Witch-Hunt was conceived." And after the Watergate scandal, Nixon’s impeachment and the televised interrogations that followed, my voting libido hit an all-time low. Camelot had crumbled. Our leaders had fallen from grace, and we learned that they had just as many faults and foibles as the rest of us. Today, I feel a malaise at the thought of making the one-block trip to my polling place, standing in line to get my ballot, going into the secret booth, and punching the little metal stick through the dot -- juxtaposed to the name of my candidate of choice. I don’t even think that I have enough energy to punch the infamous chads all the way through the ballot. If I do end up voting, though, I’ll make darn sure that when I am finished, none of those little cardboard controversy-creators will still be hanging-by-a-thread from my ballot. Before I drop it in the ballot box, I’ll flip my completed ballot over, look at its back side and pluck the tenacious little circular nuisances off of it -- before I slip my ballot into its envelope and drop it in the ballot box. Even if they let me vote, I’m thinking that this time, it may not be worth the bother. I don’t see a single candidate in the race for the White House who is worthy of my vote. I watched the debate, and it’s my opinion that there wasn’t a winner. One candidate smirked at his opponent’s answers and made far-reaching promises, without telling us how he planned to fulfill them. And then he had the nerve to say that if we want to find out what his "plan" is, we have go to his web site and look it up for ourselves. The other candidate scowled and sweated and defended the promises he’d made to us three-and-one-half years ago. Promises that were impossible for any one man to accomplish. I will give the man credit for one thing, though: he warned us at the beginning of the War on Terror (which now has us buried up to our eyeballs in the shifting sands of Iraq) that for us to win the war, it was going to be a long, difficult haul. And on that promise, he has made good. I may not even have to worry about who to vote for and am probably making much adieu about nothing, because I recently moved and forgot to re-register to vote. (I think that it was a Freudian "slip-up."). My fiancé arranged for me to fill out my Voter’s Registration Form on-line, but the Voter Registration Form still has to be mailed back to me for my signature. And then I have to mail it back to the Registrar of Voters. The Presidential Election is on November 2nd. Counting backwards fifteen days from November 2nd brings me to October 17th. I e-mailed my completed Voter Registration Form to the Registrar of Voters on October 2nd, and they have up to fifteen days to send it back to me for my signature. The First "Informative" Memorandum on the government’s Voter Registration web-site said that they would mail my completed registration form back to me for signature within five days of its receipt by them. In the following Memorandum, they said that they had seven to ten days to get my form back to me. And on the last Memorandum, it said that they had fifteen days. Consistency? Our tax dollars at work. That means I may not be receiving my Voter Registration Form in the mail until October th, and that is a Sunday -- which I surmise will mean that I could get my form on Monday, October 18th, which is the same day that it is due to be signed, postmarked, and mailed back to the Registrar of Voters. So, if I receive and mail back my signed Voter Registration Form on the same day that I receive it in the mail, I’ll probably be allowed to exercise my voting rights on November 2nd. That is, if I decide to. My fiancé suggested that there is probably a public place -- like the Department of Motor Vehicles -- where I can drop off my completed and signed Voter Registration Form in person. But do I really want to? Frankly, even if I make all of the deadlines in registering to vote, I may just sit this election out and abstain from voting in total. Special interest groups, the need for campaign finance reform, the "pork" system of appeasing constituents in order to get re-elected, special favors, the ratio of Senators’ and Congress-persons’ children who serve in our U.S. Armed Forces compared to the children of other Americans, the mudslinging, the lying, the questionable credentials and prevarications of candidates for public office, the washing away of the political machine that used to actually see to it that constituents were served by their elected officials. These are what now characterize the candidates that we vote into office. Both candidates who are running for President claim that they will be a "President of the people," but with each election, I see the interests of American citizens being represented less and less. I read the election booklet, and as I read through the propositions, I thought, "Who writes these things? Political analysts with Dyslexia?" The booklet is vague, ambiguous, contradictory, and confusing. And it would appear that it was designed that way on purpose. Maybe the government wants us to pay more attention to the smear ads on television and the libelous fliers that come in the mail just days before election. I’m tired of the dirt-slinging and the gargantuan amount of money spent on Presidential campaigns. I wonder how many of our country’s hungry that we could feed on the campaign funds that candidates pay out to get elected. How many schools could be improved, how many hungry children could have breakfast at school before classes begin, how many homeless people would not have to sleep out on the streets, and how many more scholarships we could provide to deserving young people who want a higher education? But instead, the men and women in our country’s government spend a disproportionate amount of money on the election process, and the average American (unless he marries into large sums of money) cannot run for public office because of the prohibitive cost. The majority of leaders in our government are not "common" people and never were "average Americans." How can they represent the "common man’s" interest, if they have never lived the life of a "common man?" And for our elected officials to substantially lower the financial spending limits on all campaigns and to set up an accountability structure to safeguard and enforce the new system – would be a conflict of interest for them, as they are the ones propagating and even exacerbating the problem. And, yet, these are the people who have been given the responsibility, and these are the people who still must be very, very wealthy to run for an elected office. Again, your tax dollar at work. (NOT!) And the beat goes on and on and on and on. I’m not saying that we don’t have a good country. Go anywhere else in the world, and you will see that our country is a great one. And you will probably appreciate it more when you get home. It’s just that the election process in America today has run amuck. We have steered in the direction of the North Star, but because we were off by two degrees, we missed the mark and kept on going. We need to come back and work to build up the people of this country, make some modifications in our election system, and produce better candidates to run for public office. So, just maybe on November 2nd, I’ll sit on my front porch with my feet up, sipping red wine and listening to the election results blaring from the television set from inside my house, while waiving to all of my conscientious, civic-minded neighbors as they walk by on their way to the polling place. And as I relax outside on my front porch listening to the early election results from the polls that have already closed on the East Coast, I’ll have an idea of which candidate that we (or rather, "they") will most likely be putting into the White House, barring any sudden surges in votes that swing to the other candidate later in the evening. I like the line of least resistance. Nothing ventured – nothing gained. Which is far more expeditious and much less taxing than something ventured – nothing gained. Besides, why would any man want to work so hard to be chosen for a job that comes with an implied guarantee that it will age him twenty years -- in only four? It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. And I’m certainly glad that it’s not me. About the Author(s): See under Our Contributors to find out about the Author(s) of this article. |
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