Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihuxm.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!mh3bs!mhtsa!exodus!gamma!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!ihuxm!berman From: berman@ihuxm.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Voting: Low Turnout Message-ID: <896@ihuxm.UUCP> Date: Sun, 26-Feb-84 07:23:08 EST Article-I.D.: ihuxm.896 Posted: Sun Feb 26 07:23:08 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 26-Feb-84 23:26:51 EST Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL Lines: 33 Michael Turner says: >Give more voting power to those with more money? Let's turn that one around: >have a guaranteed national income, collectible only when one presents proof >of having voted (or proof of inability to do so). This would certainly bring >voter participation up from its rather disgraceful level. > Now why is the low voter turnout in the US so "disgraceful?" Grant you, Reagan was voted into office by something like 27% of the eligible voters, by why is that so disgraceful? Why not take it for its face value? The 45% of eligible voters who don't vote in Presidential elections and the massive number of others who don't register, simply don't see the importance of it in their own lives. This, mind you, is in the face of a phenomenal media build up, the likes of which we are now getting for the 1984 election. When the American people are bombasted with TV hype for 6-8 months, and then still fail to respond, the people are saying something significant. I suspect that an awful lot of folks have a gut level feeling that the options that are offered unto us, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, generally don't differ very much. The fault, perhaps, in not in the "apathy" of the American people, but in the failure of the political system to present alternatives that people feel are significant. The fact that third-party movements are so often still-born, may not reflect on their own lack of appeal so much as the legal and procedural blocks put in their way. Andy Berman