The Turnout

One of the interesting things I noticed with the recent elections in the U.S. is the turnout for certain states was really poor!

I am certainly in the camp of those who are grateful that Trump won instead of Harris for many reasons, but I did also want to discuss something even more important. The poor voter turnout!

I don't prefer to say which state I live in for various reasons, though some may know it. One of the things that really surprised me on the voter turnout was how low it was compared to the population of the state. This is really kind of scary at the end of the day! There are always going to be people who don't vote, that's their choice and freedom to do so. However when LOTS of people feel disenfranchised to not vote, that has a really serious cascading effect in the future that people may not be thinking about.

I don't want to get into the valid discussion around "does voting even do anything?" because that is an entirely different topic that has extremely valid points. In terms of the semblance of choice that we have, it is important to keep in mind that voting is supposed to be able to be how we decide things in a fair society. The balance of local, regional and national voting is actually a fairly complicated, but important process. Yes there is a needed balance versus popular vs electoral votes. I think this process has been captured unfortunately, but it is a good way to run the system if we can root out some of the corruption in it.

With the voting turnout being so low - this is what really threatens it all. I think this is sadly and likely quite intentional. When people don't feel like they matter, and their vote doesn't matter, they won't participate. This has far more LOCAL ramifications than it does nationally. The local stuff is what really gets fucked with this type of thing.

Ballot questions are an important part of the way we, the people, can force our politicians hands. It is the way in which we can collectively come together and add something to the ballot and get it voted on by those around us even when the politicians are ignoring us. This is a good part of those checks and balances that we have incorporated into our system.

When more and more people don't go out to vote, one of the ways in which this negatively influences the power of the people is they don't get to vote on those types of things. For example we had one ballot initiative that ended up passing by a pretty sizable margin, but the real issue that I saw was how many people actually voted on it, and it was abysmal!

I don't live in the most populous state, but I also don't live in North Dakota either, that's got very little people inhabiting it. There should have been a lot more people voting on these ballot questions and sadly, the way they felt negatively influenced to not go out and vote really messed it up. It was not even a fair vote, in my opinion, which is unfortunate.

I will say that I've felt this disenfranchised in the past, and didn't vote as a result of it. I know what that is like, but I've changed my stance on the process because we do need to make sure that we do these things in order to preserve this system and keep it going forward. It is the best option that we have, and with the people foaming at the mouth to have it be destroyed, we need to make sure we keep this going for another few decades, or hopefully generations. The most important way we can do that is to vote and make our voices heard, if nothing else at the LOCAL level.

What about you, do you make sure to vote where you live? Would you do it more if you understood you had more of a LOCAL impact than anything? Let me know in the comments!