Politics | Elections

Low Voter Turnout Doesn’t Bother Me

Voting is important to me — but if it’s not to you, don’t vote

From the time I was old enough, I’ve never missed an opportunity to vote.

There was one time I forgot to turn the ballot over and missed voting for a candidate I was supporting, but I never made that mistake again and I’ve always made it to the polls.

Voting is important — especially in our republican form of government.

Republic: “A state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.”

In the run-up to just about every election, the pundits talk about how “everything depends on voter turnout.” Well, duh! Of course every election depends on voter turnout.

And so often after elections — especially primaries and mid-terms — there’s a lot of hand-wringing commentary over low voter turnout. It used to bother me when only a small percentage of registered voters went to the polls, but it doesn’t anymore.

A couple of years ago on election day, I was listening to local news on the radio while taking one of our dogs to the vet (any excuse to mention the furbabies). I’d cast my ballot in early voting the week before.

The announcer said that if you didn’t know where your polling place was, you could find it by going to the station’s website.

Seriously?

If it’s election day and you don’t know where your polling place is, please don’t vote.

If you haven’t bothered to figure out where to go to vote, then you probably don’t know enough about the rest of the issues to cast an intelligent, informed ballot — in fact, you probably haven’t even seen the ballot.

The requirements to vote in this country are minimal — essentially citizenship, age, and residency. Nothing says voters have to be informed. But nothing puts our country at greater risk than an uninformed electorate that is not educated on the issues.

This is not partisan. It’s not Democrat or Republican. If people want to vote, if they care enough to take the time to educate themselves on the candidates and issues, then great — they should vote.

If they don’t, then they shouldn’t vote. And they shouldn’t feel pressured to cast a ballot they don’t understand.

Low voter turnout with highly-informed voters is better than high voter turnout with low-information voters.

A version of this article was originally published on my site at CreateTeachInspire.com. You can reach me there or email me at [email protected].

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