Broken Wing

Voter Encouragement

This is the second in my series of word collections that talk about politics. Today's topic is the movement to get young people involved in voting and politics. MTV (or as I call it, EWN for Epileptics Worst Nightmare) has been advocating voting for a while, with the Choose or Lose program and the Rock the Vote program. Just recently, P. Diddy started the Citizen Change program to encourage young people to vote, with the slogan "Vote or Die." I applaud EWN and Mr. Diddy for their intentions, but I think they might be going about it wrong.

People my age and younger aren't stupid. Well, okay, many of us are quite stupid. But still, these slogans are an insult to our intelligence. MTV seems to think that merely putting the word "rock" somewhat near the word "vote" will somehow make voting instantly cool. Rocking the vote is pretty unrealistic, though. There are just so many goddam old people who can vote. They have much more free time, given that the only thing they're busy doing is waiting to die. A more realistic slogan might be "Nudge the vote." Young people do have the ability to nudge the vote if we show up in somewhat large numbers.

If there were a contest for biggest exaggeration in slogans, Citizen Change's "Vote or Die" would take the cake. Which is disappointing, because I was looking forward to eating that cake for dessert. Bush is a terrible president, but as bad as four more years of him sounds, I will probably not die as a direct result of it. The worst-case scenario is that a draft is reinstituted and I am selected to go to Iraq (or North Korea or Iran or any of the other countries we might try to "liberate" in Bush's second term). In that case, I think most people who know me realize I am likely to pull a Clinton and move to Canada or England, or maybe I will just grow a mustache as a disguise. Even the draft is unlikely, though. The truth is, "Vote or Die" probably applies best to people already in the military or thinking of joining the military under Bush's tenure. To summarize, "Vote or Die" should be changed to "Vote or Die, if you are in the military," or "Vote or the country will be slightly worse, although probably still the richest in the world."

So far I've only suggested changes to existing slogans, as a service to the people who came up with them. Its probably best to start from scratch, though, as I've come up with a few that dominate the changed ones up above. The new slogans reflect the attitudes of young people today, without trying to appease anybody else. Here is a sampling:

• "Voting: Its pretty easy, even if you're high on whippets." - We took civics class. We know what voting does, and that the person with more votes wins. But is it easy or not? In most elections, it's not really that easy, because the candidates are so similar. In this case, though, we have the mentally challenged right-wing nut against a fairly liberal candidate. The division is pretty clear, even for a person who goes through life in a qualuude-induced daze.
• "Your vote matters! Sort of." - Some people want to over-emphasize the importance of each individual vote, pointing out that the last presidential election was very close. Realistically, that was probably an aberration. Most elections probably won't be that close, and your vote is really not that important in any real sense. This is especially true if people who would normally vote for opposite candidates stay home in similar proportions. Even if this coming election is as close as the last, keep this in mind: the vote in Wisconsin (where I lived for the last election) was considered very close. The difference? Over 5000 votes! One more vote would not have made any difference! So, to summarize, in some vague abstract way, your vote is really important. But, if the polls are closing soon, and you have a pie in the oven that's almost done, I'd tend to the pie.

Posted by mill1991 at August 17, 2004 12:08 PM