Thursday, October 15, 2020

This November, If You're Stupid Don't Vote

With little more than three weeks remaining until the 2020 presidential election on Nov. 3, the season for last-minute registration drives and snappy “get-out-the-vote” campaigns is officially upon us.
I certainly wish it were not. Better yet, I wish that it had not come at all this year.
Heck, I often wish with all my might that it had never become an established part of the American political discourse at all — and not simply because I am sick of being accosted on the street by supposedly nonpartisan registration teams or hate being subjected to uncomfortable celebrity video compilations begging my attention and reminding me of the importance of my vote.
Far from it, in fact, my wish is grounded in something much more foundational than any of that — the fact that, no matter what you may have heard about fake news and growing partisan vitriol, the single element that is most damaging to the republic is the mass registration of uneducated voters at the close of election season.
A record high 865,015 Americans were added to the rolls on National Voter Registration Day 2018, just six weeks before the year’s national midterm elections.
The result was a 12.1 percent increase from that of National Voter Registration Day 2016, but it had managed to more than quintuple that of the holiday’s 2014 iteration.
For Brian Miller, executive director of event organizer Nonprofit VOTE, that was something to celebrate.
“Democracy works best when more people participate and vote,” Miller told Time in light of the result. “That’s a shared value that brings everyone together.”
Of course, with no guarantees those registered will inform themselves beyond the opinion of their best friend, beloved family member or favorite celebrity before heading to the polls, there seems no reason to believe their involvement in the democratic process will actually better the nation.
Read the rest from Andrew J. Sciascia HERE.

If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.


No comments: