Hey, neighbor: you owe me a vote!
Sent Sept. 22, 2004; revised Feb. 24, 2006

 
With another interim election imminent — and the last two elections apparently having been stolen, then the stealing of the first legitimized by the U.S. Supreme Court — op-ed discussion turns inevitably to the subjects of voting fraud and of the nation’s lousy record of voter participation and what can be done to increase it. I won’t repeat here the humiliating statistics about what a puny, inadequate percentage of those who can register to vote do so, or what even more embarrassing percentage of those registered actually show up to vote. Others will be regurgitating those stats eventually, in yet another attempt to goad the general public into voting this time.

Here’s my problem with most of the discussion about increasing voter participation: it seems to dwell more on exhortation based on either 1) shaming people into voting and/or appealing to their self-interest or 2) focusing on successful strategies to deliver people to the polls on election day — without talking about something more basic, like what citizenship requires. And it never occurs to nonvoters that they owe me, their fellow citizen, much beyond not disturbing the peace, let alone their participation in our democratic government. Time to change that.