I Voted in the Political Wasteland; Did You?
I voted this last election season; in fact I can boast a 26-year voting history with only one glitch. In 2004 my district had six voting booths for about 6000 voters. The five hour wait pushed me up against an afternoon flight – I was disenfranchised. This year I have to give the committee credit for getting their act together; my wait returned to the usual one to three minutes.
The electoral process improved, but the political tickets were a wasteland. Five of the races had only one candidate. I refused to vote for any of the lone candidates. Why should anybody bother? All one-candidate races should receive a single vote – the candidate’s own. The reason there were so many lone races is that too many people vote party tickets. The races were in iron-clad republican districts so no democrat, regardless of how wise and committed to excellent representation, could win.
I live in a populated area so I had the pleasure of following two congressional races. Voters heard nary a single word about sharpening our education system to equip our children to compete in a global economy. There was no discussion of a better strategy to combat terrorism and to achieve a stable and prosperous peace in Iraq. Voters received stone-cold silence about the inevitable challenges of the rising global demand for resources and the environmental impacts of about six and a half billion people using the resources. Not a word was said about investing in our decaying infrastructure. In the place of issues I was treated to empty claims of achievement by less than achieving incumbents.
In one race I found a long-term incumbent boasting of his service to education by connecting educators with the Library of Congress. Wouldn’t raising pay and having a commensurate increase in our expectations of our teachers be more effective? The incumbent boasted of his service to textile workers. How has he helped our workers compete with a few hundred million Chinese and the eighty million Vietnamese ready to join the World Trade Organization and compete on quality and price? American workers will be competitive when we make sure our trade agreements are truly fair for us and when we educate our workers for the next generation of jobs.
I would like to hear how the incumbent fought to eliminate unfair trade practices that hurt US factories. I would like to hear how he brought research and development jobs into the district and trained our workers for the ensuing jobs. But he can’t make these claims. He promises to keep factory life as it was years ago when U.S manufacturing had no rival. This incumbent promises to keep his district linked to an unchanging past while the world changes around him and his constituency. I don’t live in this incumbent’s district; I live just over the district boundary. I wish I did get to vote in his race; he was reelected by about 330 votes. I would have liked to have made it 329.
In my district I get to vote for a big red sign. Each election cycle big red signs go up all over town – Vote for Sue Myrick. And why should we, we are not told. She brushes off what appears to be a very dated photo and creates an image. We are to vote for what we think the big red sign represents. We never get to hear the issues.
The big red sign takes credit for keeping the United Arab Emirates (UAE) out of “owning our ports”. First of all, our ports were not being bought; the British company that operates some of our ports was being bought. Notwithstanding the problem with accuracy, are our ports safer having kept the UAE at home? No, nothing has changed. In fact we would probably be safer if we had let the UAE deal go through; I suspect that we would have become more focused on security. At a minimum, I would have liked to have seen a debate over whether the big red sign made our ports safer.
The big red sign claims to be tough on immigration by voting to build a fence on the border and, get this, deporting illegal aliens that are arrested for drunk driving. I would think that a “get tough on immigration” candidate would advocate deporting any person arrested and found to be here illegally. How come she doesn’t want to deport illegal immigrants arrested for shoplifting? The big red sign was accused by her opponent of being a rubber stamp for President Bush. She countered that accusation by saying she was against Bush’s comprehensive immigration policy. That’s one area of policy where she should have worked with Bush. A comprehensive policy is the only way to secure our borders.
As I looked at my ballot, the one-candidate races and the empty congressional agendas saddened me. Americans love debate. We tune into the so called reality shows and the “Jerry Springer” genre just to see what people might say. Why don’t people who seek our vote have the courage to say what’s on their mind? One candidate is gong to lose; I would rather lose having said something than to lose by being timid. And this is the crux of the problem. Incumbents don’t want the open their mouths and spoil an image. Challengers should be more vocal and show their passion to serve. Make the race interesting and maybe we can all make a difference. How else will get beyond voting for a big red sign or for a candidate that keeps his district connected to yesterday?
Copyright: American-ideal.com - 2007