Why Don’t We Vote?

These two photos are Afghans waiting to vote despite the threats of death from the Taliban.

Yet we had an election here in Wisconsin on April 1st when only 9.3% of the electorate bothered to show up. And no body was threatening their lives if they did so. So they got to decide a few things for the other 90%. Now I realize that here in the city of Milwaukee we really only had a few seats to fill…all of them Circuit Court seats and only one of them was contested. Not as inspiring as a presidential election granted…but think about that next time you are a defendant in Circuit Court.

The other item in the city was the referendum on cutting the pay and benefits for county supervisors. So again less than 10% of the people decided on the future of county government for the remaining 90%. Keep that in mind if you ever try to contact your supervisor and can’t reach them in their part time role.

For those of us continuing to fight for voter rights…we need to fight for voter responsibility…citizens need to exercise their right to vote at each and every election.

Side note: it is time that small spring elections like these get rolled into the fall elections to save money but increase voter participation in each and every race on the ballot.