A discouraging 36% of eligible voters exercised their constitutional right to elect officials to local, state, and federal offices. I’ve been grappling with this dismaying recent voter turnout statistic from the most recent November 4th midterm elections. As an avid follower of the elections, I was up until the wee hours of Wednesday the 5th, only shutting down the TV and putting the computer to sleep after Coakley told her followers to pack in in and head home. I had followed as many state, and local elections in Massachusetts as I could keep up with, not mention the polling on MA’s 4 ballot questions and numerous gubernatorial and federal elections in other states. How could such a small percentage of eligible voters choose to exercise their voting rights?
If my words seem to teeter on the edge of anger, it is because I am passionately discouraged by and annoyed with voter apathy. I understand the turnoff from politics, I truly do. The 113th Congress is on track to pass 251 laws by the end of this term, a pathetically low number. A continuing hyper-partisan lock-down between Democrats and Republicans has given Congress its lowest approval rating ever. People are disillusioned with the political process and I feel their pain, but do not
This prevailing distaste of government ineffectiveness is not without reason, but voters in the United States should not be turned off. Politics and voting still have serious relevancy, maybe more so now than ever. Millenials, the term used for the generation born during the late 1980’s until the early 2000’s, are not a completely apathetic group. People have not magically grown to lack opinions. If no one cared about anything at all, I would never be the subject of a good moral beat-down or a participant in an old-fashioned heated argument. When it comes to policy that serves the community or nation in one way or another, Millenials are just more likely to personally serve their community than to vote for elected officials who debate, create, and vote on policy that affect it. This is not a piece criticizing community service in any manner. Volunteering at a local food bank, donating turkeys, working with the homeless; these are all incredibly helpful ways to contribute to your community.
What I’m slowly working my way around to is that something must be done to reconnect eligible voters with the idea that voting is a service to your community. The realization of this is so important, especially in an age of possibly futuristic or actual rising democracies. How are we to inspire rising progressive reform in dictatorial nations, or in nations going through the early stages of democratization, when only 1/3 of our county’s eligible voters participate in the most essential principle of the democratic process?
The simplest solutions present extremely difficult obstacles in the path to materialization. In order dismantle voter apathy, voters must be reconnected with the power of their vote. Each time you go to the polls to vote for an elected official or on a ballot question, you participate in an election and dictate the course of history. These officials and ballot questions shape policies that guide what will be the future of your state and nation.
