Wednesday, 29 September 2004

Voting - It's What's For Dinner

Old friend/editor Alan Wirzbicki writes in the New Republic Online on the futility of those "voting is cool" drives to encourage youth voting in the US. Makes a good point:

... as non-partisan groups, these outfits all promote voting for voting's sake, and stay away from endorsing candidates or anything but the most vague causes ("change," "justice").

Maybe I travel in cynical circles, but I have never met anyone who votes solely out of an abstract sense of civic responsibility.

Makes sense to me. Never quite understood how "rock the vote" or "choose or lose" worked without any appeal to the value of the political process to the would-be voter. I suppose campaigns can make voting cool (debatable), but ultimately it has to motivate someone to drag her butt down to the polling station.

Edit: Apparently, according to James Wolcott, in so linking, I've just perpetuated the "Harvard Crimson-Washington Monthly-New Republic brain trust".


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