Thread: No-shows at the polls are exercising their rights, too

No-shows at the polls are exercising their rights, too

Written by Logan Jenkins
6 a.m., June 4, 2012

An open memo to San Diego County’s 1.5 million eligible voters who will not cast ballots in tomorrow’s primary:

First off, relax.

I’m not going to badger you. I promise not to use phrases like “civic duty” to make you feel like a lesser citizen who doesn’t understand why Americans bled and died on foreign shores.

Many of you — about 630,000, according to Deborah Seiler, our ever-helpful registrar — couldn’t vote if you had a mind to.

You’re eligible but not signed up. Turnout percentages are based on registered voters. Electorally speaking, you don’t even exist.

Chances are, you’re young, mobile and couldn’t care less about voting.

Or you’re hustling to get educated or get a paycheck or get loaded. Getting on the voter rolls is not high on the to-do list.

Or maybe you know you don’t know enough to vote intelligently and, out of modesty, you’ll leave the chore to older, if crankier, citizens.

The world is better off without your dimwitted participation, you figure.

As for the roughly 870,000 of you who are registered but won’t vote in the primary, don’t beat yourselves up.

You have elected to pass for many reasons.

Maybe you’re sick or worried about a child or parent. You could be traveling. Life gets in the way.

Or maybe you don’t really understand your redrawn district and the weird open primary rules.

In silent protest, you’re sitting this one out.

You’ve been stunned by a blizzard of oversize mailers and TV ads and perhaps you’re wishing a pox on all the campaigns. Maybe you remember the grand old anti-party adage: “Don’t vote, it just encourages them.”

In the general election, however, you may get your head back in the game.

About 360,000 of you registered primary holdouts will get fired up and go to the November polls, Seiler estimates.

The Golden State is a true-blue state, but the whirlwind around the presidential election may start those juices flowing.

In the city of San Diego, you’ll have the chance to vote for the mayor in November instead of this four-way cage fight to determine the finalists.

For what it’s worth, I’ll be at the polls tomorrow, sporting my holier-than-thou “I Voted” sticker.

For me, voting is an old-school addiction as compulsive as gambling. I have a physical need to have a stake in elections.

But for you, the 1.5 million no-shows, tomorrow’s primary is a biennial demonstration of your constitutionally protected right to not give a damn.

Yes, it goes against the patriotic grain, but the freedom not to care is at the heart of why this is a great country.

No-shows at the polls are exercising their rights, too | UTSanDiego.com

I've been stunned by oversize mailers from a sitting State Senator, my district's Senator. I wrote him once in the last two years, nearly two years ago. Provided him with my conntact info and the concern that caused me to write. I still await his response, ph. call, email, letter was an acceptable response.. But mailers, I received as many as two a day, 1-2 a week for weeks before the primary here. Do I need to say what Party he belongs to, yeah in the interest of being clear, he is proudly Republican. If they are not going to respond to mail from a voter, would'nt it be prudent to remove that voter from their mailing list? For the record, I cannot support Party of either major flavor. I will support common sense!!