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To Vote or Not to Vote?
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Primaries arenāt particularly attractive to voters, so a low turnout for the March 5 election was expected. However, only 30% of the registered voters bothered to vote in Fresno County.
Letās say a candidate wins with 50% of that 30% of the overall voters. That means a small minority of people elected that candidateāabout 15% of the registered voters. Can we call that a democratic election? A democratically elected official? Certainly not.
So why donāt people vote? What I heard is lack of motivation and mistrust of the candidates and political parties. Nothing new. However, what are the political parties and candidates doing to change this situation? Nothing.
The parties arenāt interested in an educated, motivated electorate. They donāt really want to be held accountable and discuss openly how politics works, the money involved, and how and why they make decisions.
Republicans, in particular, hate to be questioned; they hate the media. But Democrats are not much better. Yet, in each election period we are bombarded with donation requests by candidates, some from outside our district and whose name we never heard of.
Recently, I had a conversation with a group of young peopleāall voting ageāand they expressed their frustration and disappointment with the political system and their intention not to vote in November.
āPolitics as usual,ā they said. And if this is a big, national trend, then Democrats are in trouble. Because Republicans are already placing all kinds of obstacles for minorities to vote, hoping to get mostly white and old voters to vote because they know this demographic is more conservative.
I donāt see a change in our political system, at least in the near future. Money talks and will continue to talk in our political system, which gives you the feeling that candidates are for sale. And those who donate the most are rich people and corporations.
On top of that, we have a Supreme Court currently dominated by a majority of racist, conservative judges. So, this is a closed circle in which change emerges slowly, if at all. Young people are correct in their criticism of the system. In Congress, little gets done.
The citizenry isnāt really represented in Congress. We canāt blame voters for being apathetic. Members of Congress seem not to care about their constituents (see āActivists Call on Costa to Meet with Palestinian and Muslim Leadersā on page 1). The āCosta syndromeā is common in our political landscape, and there is little hope that this will change.
People should get more organized to confront this awful situation. We should create groups, or āclubs,ā to learn and discuss politicsābut please, no more nonprofits.
To learn who is who in this poisonous circle, we have to get more involved in the process, away from parties. Perhaps we should join some organizations (but which one(s)?) to push together for change.
It wonāt be easy, but we canāt sustain this circus called Congress or representatives like Costa any longer. And how about a candidate for the White House who is confronting dozens of serious legal challenges in court? How can our system accept this? This aināt democracy, for sure.
Till next month.