The Cupertino Courier

Halloween screams 'you don't have to vote'

By Jon Hoornstra

If you hear blood-curdling screams Saturday, don't assume they have anything to do with Halloween. It may just be voters reacting to the chore of lifting the tons of political ads from their mailboxes. I'm not sure if I'll scream or hire a neighborhood kid to haul it all away.

The supply of people who want to get a government paycheck seems inexhaustible. And there are nearly as many ideas for amendments to the state constitution. I did a check last week of official voter pamphlets mailed by the county and, with an error margin of nearly zero, I counted 82 names seeking election to one of 22 offices. The pamphlets also contained 14 wordy, complex propositions and six local measures.

To be good stewards of our political system, however, we must read each and every one of the propositions and candidate statements. Right? Even though I dread wading through piles of vacuous political rhetoric, I'll do it. What other way is there to separate the riff from the raff? And it's the least we can do, given how much money candidates and special interest groups have spent to get our attention and win us over.

I say 1998 has been especially hard on voters. We've had to work a lot harder than in most years. We just recovered from the June primary, which gave us nine propositions and nine political offices with no fewer than 87 wannabes seeking our votes. I swear nearly every one of them put something in my mailbox. A few of us were summoned to the polls a third time for a localized bond issue in March affecting our high school district. So it's been a heavy political year, indeed.

Now we approach the political end game, numb and super-saturated with the political version of medicine's empty calories--words and visual images that sound and look good, but which hold no real value in the morning light. I'm convinced that not even a cabal of used-car dealers would pile it on as thick as the political machines have this year.

There are coping mechanisms, however. You might consider the rule I adopted for myself soon after arriving in California in 1988. Never before had I lived in a place where proposed constitutional amendments were a routine part of the election cycle, so this rule has helped: If I'm not sure that I understand a proposition after a third reading, I vote against it. The way I see it, complex propositions with their murky, foggy paragraphs and slippery clauses make for bad laws. The only reason they are murky and slippery is because someone wanted it that way. Moreover, most of the propositions cost either millions or billions of dollars, and we aren't that rich. Proposed laws that are not expressed simply and plainly usually make bad law.

Finally, you might consider not voting at all on certain issues. When I arrived in California, I was a citizen and fully entitled to vote in the general election of that November. It was a very big year--a presidential ticket, senatorial and congressional offices and a full plate of state and local offices--maybe even a dog catcher or two.

But I submit I wasn't really qualified to vote on most of the issues or candidates. I had the political right, of course, but I wasn't informed nearly well enough. I'd lived in the state just three months and a few days, obviously not enough time to really understand most local or state issues. I voted only for president and governor, as I recall. Anything more would have been pure guesswork.

There must be a few voters in a similar position this year, qualified and ready to vote, but not really acquainted with many issues. Official city signs notwithstanding, Cupertino's population stands at 46,700. The Santa Clara County Center for Urban Analysis says we grew from 44,800 to 46,700 between January 1997 and January 1998. That's better than a 4 percent increase, compared to a statewide population growth of just 1.8 percent.

We have 21,760 registered voters, according to the Registrar of Voters. Would anyone hear us if we scream when we empty our mailboxes on Halloween?

[ Back to Contents Page | Cupertino Courier Home Page | Archives ]