Political scientists just don't seem to get it

It's amazing how many political scientists with Ph.d.s cannot figure out something so simple about politics: Why don't people have the desire to vote?

Jacob Soboroff, executive director of the election reform group Why Tuesday? asks: "If the United States is supposedly the world's most famous democracy, why is our voter participation near the bottom of all countries?"

Let's forgo the obvious "we're not even a democracy" argument and just deal with this on the surface level alone. Maybe being the "world's most famous democracy" doesn't equal "world's most democratic" country. Think about it. Every election people go into the voting booth to vote for people they generally didn't choose in the first place. For president this year, we have Obama and McCain as the two possible choices (yes, third parties are completely irrelevant in this country). I find it quite important to point out that I never trusted McCain, as he's more of a wild card kind of politician who I equate with the Hillary Clintons: People who will say and do whatever is necessary to get to the next rung of power. Obama, well, I could go on for days, but I'll just leave it at the fact that I don't trust the fact that we really don't know anything about how this guy operates. He's really a relative unknown who is pushing forth his "reputation" of change without actually revealing what that change is going to be. Yet, when questioned on specific manners, he answers with solutions that appear to really be pretty much all the same as before. Change is in word alone, not in any particular actions.

Now interject the common voter into this situation, completely leaving out my criticisms of either candidate, and you have people who really didn't have much of a say in who was going to be running for office. They were given a choice of either McCain, Obama or Clinton. That's it. Democracy left the playing field down to three people and then said that in order to be a truly democratic citizen of this US institution, you had to choose from one of the three. You don't have the democratic option of saying: "I don't like any of them." Because if you do choose that option, all of these political scientists then claim that you are either apathetic, confused, not smart enough to make a decision, or too lazy to find out enough information to make an informed decision. Yes, that's what they say. If you don't choose from the names that have been preselected for you, it's really YOUR fault that you don't participate in "democracy".

Now, that's just the presidency. How about all of those other options you can vote for? Senator. Congress representative. Sheriff. Judge. Tax commissioner. Building inspector. I mean, there are tons of different positions for which people are trying to become elected, and for the most part, EVERYONE knows very little about any of these people, and sometimes what the job itself entails. Yet, they'll be on the ballots, and people are "obligated" to vote for one of them. So, they're pretty much left to either try to remember someone's 30 second ad on television or radio, or to recognize a name they might have seen on someone's sign in a yard they drive by to go to work every day. Yes, lots of people who do vote end up making their decision based on name recognition of names they see when driving by a placard indicating someone's candidacy.

Political scientists keep making the error of asking how to get these nonvoters to actually vote. Rarely do they ever ask the question of what might actually cause people to take an interest in politics that's not business as usual. In other words, is not the status quo. Well, if people could somehow believe they are part of the electoral process from the get go, and I don't mean being respondents to the political players who have decided to be the "rulers of the USA" but to actually be able to do some type of grass roots movement that can put non-political entities in power, then maybe they might be interested. But that's never going to happen. Those who are already in power like the fact that they are already in power. They have set up an institutional framework for their power ascension model, and if you do not buy into their model, then you don't get to play. And even if you do, you still might not get to play.

Some political scientists get all upset when they discover American voting is higher in percentage rates for American Idol than it is for a US election. Well, the numbers can be interpreted a number of ways, but even if that were true, what's wrong with that? All of the people voting actually care about the results. They like a certain performer and vote for that particular performer. It's not like someone decided beforehand that of the 20 performers (I'm guessing a random number cause I don't actually watch the show), you can only vote for one of two that they chose beforehand. Instead, you actually get to vote all the way through the whole process. You don't have to wait until Arizona votes for their idol only to discover that before California's vote showed up, half of the idols were already gone. You got to vote the whole time through. For you, this is actually democracy where you get to participate. Granted, you can't really become one of the performers, which would make it true Athenian democracy, but at least you get to participate for the brunt of the process.

You don't get to do that in American politics. Instead, you have to buy into whomever the "show" decides you get to vote for. If this was equated to American Idol, imagine that when it comes time for the final election, you are told that you can only vote for a musician or a singer, and that you're already registered as a musician liker, so you are expected to vote for the musician, even if you like the singer better. That's our democracy. Try to sell people on participating in that.

In the end, people who don't participate realize that it doesn't really matter whether or not they vote. Sure, people can scream and holler that four more years of Bush happened because people who should have come out for Democrats didn't. Well, from what I've heard from the rest of the people running and people in power from both parties, not much would really have changed in the last four years REGARDLESS of which party was elected. The only difference is who would have profiteered from the contracts doled out for those handling the logistics of the war itself. Right now, in fear of sounding less manly when it comes to defense, both sides are pretty much promising a lot of business as usual when it comes to Iraq, yet the Democrats keep saying that voting for McCain is going to give four more years of Bush-like presidential decisions. Honestly, how much different will Democrats be? Different people, same system.

So without taking one side or the other, let's look at the original argument of this post. Why should Joe Schmoe participate in the electoral process? What has happened that makes this person believe that his or her decision will actually result in something that makes this person happy? Or does the end result result in business as usual, except everyone is wearing different hats? In order to change the status quo on voting, it is necessary to convince Joe that a vote will make a difference. And yelling out: "Your vote will make a difference" doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell if Joe doesn't buy the argument.

That's something political scientists need to wrap their heads around, instead of whining about the fact that 40 percent of Americans don't vote. Give them a reason to do so, and they will. Whine about it and continue to whine about it until the republic becomes nothing but a shadow of an authoritarian regime in democratic wrappings.

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