The Willow Glen Resident

Point of View

Deborah Taylor-Hollis

If you don't vote, you get what you deserve

Only 40 percent of registered voters generally turn out for primary elections, according to both the League of Women Voters and the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters, and I would like to say, "Thank you."

With six out of every 10 of you abstaining from your right, you give nut cases like me a real advantage at the polls. My vote counts for a lot more without yours out there. I can make or break the way you do business with my vote for mayor. I can decide if you get to have heavy traffic during your Christmas shopping if I vote for the new Town and Country development. I can even decide if we all learn to speak only English in elementary school.

Now, we all know that I'm both very conservative when it comes to crime and the death penalty, spending on stupid projects or removing historical sites, and very liberal when it comes to what I can do with my body, where I can speak my mind and how the Earth will grow and heal from all the crap some of you have done to it.

Unfortunately, most of the people who also feel compelled to show up at the polls are not as worthy to rule the world as I am. I can guarantee that every sick skinhead in town made sure he or she voted. I know for certain that all the seriously bent, right-wing, neo-Nazi, anti-democracy nut jobs got right down to those polls and cast their votes, too.

You people who didn't vote have given me a huge challenge--it's very hard to counter their ideas with just my one vote. I wish some of you had come on down and pulled the old lever for justice, decency and apple pie right along with me.

I get so sick and tired of all the rhetoric and apathetic justifications about not voting. Hey, if your "vote" didn't count, then how can you explain getting anything done by having meetings at work, or how your church runs or even how your family operates? You and your spouse each cast a "vote" in most household decisions.

You work together to find a common path, a better good. You vote with every decision you make and voice to others, every opinion you stand behind. When you don't get up and go vote, you deserve to end up with 40 percent of the voters turning out to elect what you call brain-dead self-serving weak-kneed two-faced unwholesome randy lying elderly youthful unknown fundamentalist knee-jerk liberal Republican gay leftist Commie juvenile ineffective representatives in government.

If you ran your personal lives the way you exercise your obligation to vote, you would be living in a state-run group home up in Napa with lots of Thorazine, not allowed to wear belts.

When I was a kid, my mom volunteered to work every election, and I grew up in my elementary school library greeting every neighbor as I watched that gaggle of increasingly aged women personally administer democracy in America. Now, each time I leave with my sample ballot and walk down the street to the polls, I feel closer than most Americans will ever get to Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, et al.

Yeah, I get so corny I can almost hear the fife and drum somewhere in the distance--and I get really proud. Thousands of people fought and died, choking in the mud to make sure I could do this. Millions are harassed, tortured, raped, beaten, incarcerated and slaughtered every year to prevent them from walking down their countries' streets, whistling show tunes from the musical 1776 as they clutch their sample ballots and make up their own minds about what's right.

In elections, you only need a majority to win, which makes it easy for less than 20 percent of the population to decide who actually runs things around here. It may seem too big for you, but with just a little effort, any nut can declare candidacy and gather his supporters to push him into victory--elected office, where the real power lies.

If more of you people can't get your act together and change the dismal numbers, that easy voting target is going to start looking pretty tempting to some left-of-center big-mouthed know-it-all with a chip on his shoulder and a hidden agenda that makes Boris and Natasha look like pacifists.

Maybe even me. Think about that one--do you really want me in charge?

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