I got my ballot in the mail this week. I’ve already filled it out and sent it back in.
Hopefully you’ve done the same. Wasn’t that easy?
Honestly, it’s never been easier to vote, and there’s a lot to be said for the convenience of doing it by mail. I definitely miss the days of proudly marching to the polls on Election Day, but I’ll be the first to admit it wasn’t as easy for some people as it always was for me.
Now the polling place comes to you, right there in your own home. Voting couldn’t be easier unless a person (AI-generated or otherwise) hand-delivered the ballot and sat down with you and put a pen in your hand and helped move your arm.
All of which begs the never-ending question: What in the world is wrong with people?
In 2022, the numbers say there were right around 255.5 million people of voting age in our country.
Care to guess how many of them were actually registered to vote? Less than two-thirds, just over 161 million.
Out of those 161 million people, do you know how many actually bothered to vote on Election Day, when we were tasked with choosing all 435 members of the House of Representatives?
Try 107.7 million.
In other words, only 42 percent of potential voters participated in an election many called “The most important of our lifetime,” just as a never-ending parade of demagogues claimed about every election since I first voted 44 years ago.
And we wonder why the country is so screwed up?
With apathy like this, it’s safe to say we are getting, and will continue to get, the government we deserve — one that’s often disinterested in the needs of the people, but 100% vested in doing whatever it takes to stay in power.
How else can you explain the gems we’ll likely have atop our respective two-party system again this fall? We’ve got one guy who (according to his own Department of Justice) is too old and forgetful to be prosecuted for stealing top-secret documents, and another guy whose history of stealing documents is so far down the list of things he’s in hot water about, it doesn’t even crack the top five.
We will likely once again nominate two men whose greatest claim to fame is this: They may be only person in the country who could possibly lose to the other guy.
Is this kind of disfunction any surprise in a system that basically empowers a couple of states to determine which two people will run for president in the fall? What’s up with that? Everyone from Tim Scott to Ron DeSantis already said they “don’t see a path to victory” even though at least 99% of the delegates were still up for grabs.
That’s like the 49ers gaining 4 yards on the first play of the Super Bowl and the Chiefs throwing up their hands and walking off the field. “Sorry. We just don’t see a path to victory after that opening 1 percent of the game didn’t go our way. Momentum and donors, you know.”
I don’t get it. Coming from a guy who proudly wrote in Joe Walsh for president in 1980 (and hasn’t missed an election since), I think what this country needs is, frankly, a good old-fashioned slap upside the head. People need to wake up, and maybe it’s your job to help wake them up. You can start by telling them, “Don’t believe any news source that always seems to be cheering for the same side” — yep, that’s a lot of them, especially in the national TV news world — “and throw every piece of unopened political mail directly where it belongs, into the return-to-sender file. Please learn to research and think for yourself.”
Unfortunately, as long as the slick and soulless people who run politics continue to come up with scary narratives that convince two-thirds of the population that “the other side is a lot worse than us,” and we allow them to get away with it, it’s not going to change.
But it could happen if the almost-60% of people who are eligible to vote in this country, but don’t, finally get off their apathetic rear ends and get involved. You want to scare the hell out of everybody in Washington? Having another 148 million previously unattached voters deciding to participate would do it. So would a sudden interest in people with both R’s and D’s after their names to place issues over personalities — and hold elected officials accountable to their duties (like, say, passing a budget on time, something Congress hasn’t done since 1996, but now I’m just talkin’ silly).
Or we can all just keep plodding along, leaving our noses stuck up against the screen of our iPhones, garnering news from sources that tell us only what we want to believe to be the truth, while telling ourselves, “I’d better get around to filling out that ballot that got mailed to me and study up on things … whoops, already too late,” and then wondering, “How in the world did we end up in such a mess?”
For starters, I’d suggest looking into the mirror. Even if it’s the one on your phone.
Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com.
