Voting ‘no’ on voting

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As we come into the home stretch of the presidential campaign, I’d like to suggest that everybody stop pressuring their friends and neighbors to vote. There is absolutely nothing un-American about staying home and minding your own business on Election Day.

I, for one, am sick and tired of hearing about all the brave Americans who fought and died so we’d be free to vote. What those good people actually fought for was the freedom to vote, not the obligation. It is the freedom not to vote that is denied to slaves. It’s only when dictators are in charge that people are compelled to go through the motions. The likes of Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin and the Stalin wannabe, Saddam Hussein, never had to worry about chads and miscounts. When those guys got out the vote, they got out the vote!

I can certainly understand why the two major parties want everybody showing up on Election Day. After all, each side is convinced, after losing an election, that if only 100 percent of the electorate had shown up and done their duty, the right guy – their guy – would have won. But they’re in the business. What’s in it for us?

Please understand I am not writing this in my own defense. It so happens that I vote every chance I get. In fact, having been born in Chicago, I subscribe to the belief that I should vote early and often. I mean, I’m good at it. I can be trusted. There I am, faithfully watching CNN and FoxNews, reading a daily newspaper, keeping up on things political, and then, come Election Day, some lunkhead who’s spent the past four years watching wrestling on television and reading Hustler gets shamed into voting, and he winds up canceling out my vote?! Is that fair? Is that just? More importantly, is it good for America? I think not.

What possible good can come from the 50 to 60 percent of the electorate that prefers to sit things out on Election Day being herded like so many sheep to the polls? I mean, if you think the politicians we elect now are bad, can you imagine what we’re going to wind up with when really dumb people start voting in record numbers?

Yes, I understand this is a democracy and that a double-digit IQ doesn’t disqualify anyone from voting – or from pursuing elected office, for that matter. But why on earth would anybody in his right mind want to encourage those sloths to foist their ignorance on the rest of us? It should be our patriotic duty to make them stay home and mind their own beeswax.