4th of July Hypocricy (was: OT Celebration)

From: Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com>
Date: Fri Jul 6 17:05:37 2001

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, joe wrote:

> At 10:05 AM 7/6/01 +0930, you wrote:
>
>
> > > I think the most offensive law in Oz is the requirement that all
> >citizens vote.
> >
> >Mixed reaction to that here. At least the govt is elected by virtually
> >all of the eligible voters.
> >It's mildy amusing that less than half of eligible voters in US
> >elections actually bother to vote.
>
>
> FWIW in the last election, some precients here in Florida had more
> than a 97% turnout. My person opinion, if someone is too lazy to register
> and/or vote I don't want them voting anyway. In the last election, the
> democrats realized that they were in trouble here in Florida and they
> issued a last minute plea for more "mininories" to get out and vote at the
> last minute. That's what lead to a lot of the voter confusion and
> un-counted votes. Many of those last minute voters had never registered
> and most of them didn't even know that they had to go to a voting place IN
> THEIR OWN DISTRICT. They simply went to the first voting palce that they
> found and DEMANDED to vote. Of course, they were turned away and told that
> they had to vote in their own district but since they hadn't bothered to
> even find out were that was they ran out of time before they could vote.
>
> Joe

IMHO, that is a pretty good analysis of at least part of the problem,
Joe. It is my belief that the Congress, what with `motor voter' et al,
has made it far too easy to vote. The net result being a vast number of
voters who have not the slightest notion of who or what they are voting
for or why as they have not spent thirty seconds thinking about it
before appearing at the polls.

Likely the very old rule that only property owners had the right to vote
deserved to be overturned, but it certainly put a more thoughtful group
of voters at the polls.
                                                 - don
Received on Fri Jul 06 2001 - 17:05:37 BST