Bridget Johnson in the WSJ, writing about “vicious campaigning”, makes a fine point about voter apathy:
American culture tends to find politics about as exciting as going to a hot dance club with Alan Greenspan. As citizens in Afghanistan are tripping over each other just to register to vote, Americans might register if the booth is conveniently located between the ice-cold Bud and T-shirts at a Limp Bizkit concert. And when it comes to actually marching those feet down to a polling station, in marches couch-potato apathy. Secretaries of state anticipate this, sending out sample ballots and other materials to whet one’s electoral appetite, all screaming “ELECTION DAY IS NOVEMBER 2–DON’T FORGET!” Meanwhile, election day is burned into the mind of the average guy on a Kabul street.
As I read this I was thinking, gee, it really ought to be difficult to register to vote. You should have to show at least two forms of picture ID with your current address, bring notarized affadavits from at least two neighbors stating that you do indeed live where you say you do, and swear on pain of perjury that you are making a full and truthful statement.
And before you get your voter registration card, your precinct committeeman should make a personal visit to ascertain your veracity in all of the foregoing.
But shoot, we’ll make it easy for ya. Renewing your license plates? Here’s a voter registration card. Just turned 18? We’ll register you at your school. In college? No problem, we don’t care if you’re a legal resident or not, we’ll sign you up.
Pretty soon there will be voter registration forms in breakfast cereal.
Why make it easy? Voting may be a right but it is a seriously precious right. Yet we make it so trivial. Only half of us even vote, and in primaries it’s less than that.
Millions of us died so that the rest of us would have that right. It’s not fair to their memories that we are so cavalier about it.
(FWIW — sometimes I think it’s not so much vicious as viscous. Especially where The Two Johns are concerned. But I digress.)