Rhiannon Pabich
Don’t
By Rhiannon Pabich
Fall 2012
‘Sup, apathetic youth of America! I totally get where you’re coming from, don’t worry. I think you’re right; you shouldn’t vote.
For starters, your vote doesn’t count, right? Some electoral districts in battleground states don’t sometimes decide winners by a 5-vote margin. And the stakes are hardly high; it’s not like it really matters who wins. All politicians are the same, right? Whether it’s Obama or Romney that wins this election, four years from now everyone’s going to be in the same position—women, minorities, people who aren’t heteronormative, students, the elderly, small business owners, teachers, veterans, whomever—so why make the effort to cast a ballot?
And that’s the thing—it is quite the effort, isn’t it? First, you have to make sure you register by your state’s deadline, and no one’s reminding you when that deadline is. To register, you have to fill out this invasive paperwork asking really tough questions like whether you’ve been incarcerated and your date of birth and your name. Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a website to generate your application for you or something? Oh, well, you can’t have it all.
Boy do I feel sorry for you if you’re thinking about voting absentee—you have to
visit several websites and download a form and fill it out YOURSELF and mail it in on time. And you might get some super obnoxious follow-up call from your precinct verifying your information—who gave them your phone number?
Once you’re registered, someone’s going to try to hold you accountable. You might get reminder emails (spam folder obvs!) or start to notice people your age in campaign ads (Side note: campaign ads are really cramping your style, aren’t they? There are no catchy freecreditreport.com-like jingles for swing state commercials. I miss Education Connection too). You might get a phone call from some complete stranger from some foundation introducing herself by name and asking—can you imagine that, ASKING—if you’ll take the time to tell her about your feelings on the candidates? She may even offer you financial compensation for your time. Psh, telemarketers.
VOTING IS HARD
As if the campaign ads weren’t enough, screwing up your commercial breaks and your Pandora app, you also have to contend with these damn debates, which have kept Glee off of my tv for two weeks now and I’m not having it. You don’t understand how you can be expected to pay attention for an entire hour and a half with no commercial breaks. Luckily, you aren’t really paying attention anyway since you’re too busy checking out all the snarky things people are saying on Twitter. This Paul Ryan Gosling is hilarious, and Silent Jim Lehrer doesn’t have a whole lot to contribute, but your seventeen-year-old little sister definitely has the right idea: “Watching Mean Girls > watching the debate. #cantvotedontcare” She makes you proud.
So even if you try to tune into all this nonsense, you don’t understand how you can be expected to choose. Obama and Romeny aren’t that different—I mean yeah, one’s black, that’s cool—but the people on your news feed keep calling Romney “Mittens” and that’s pretty cute too. And they’re both married to these gorgeous women, and they have like nine kids between the two of them. If they’ve both managed to button their cufflinks and raise children past the critical age of ten, who are you to pass judgment????
But you’ll feel pressured by your civic duty to sacrifice your lunch break on November 6th to go stand in a line to step behind a curtain (how Wizard of Oz) and bubble in a ballot or maybe use a touch screen (which is no fun anymore, thanks to Steve Jobs). With nothing to show for it, you’ll take a sticker and head back to your daily grind. You don’t need to worry about keeping track of the winner, because the magic of technology (and definitely not a small handful of super-dedicated, sleep-deprived reporters) will let you know the result by tomorrow morning.
Voting definitely isn’t something you should be excited—or, dare I say, FIRED UP—about. It’s not like your tame relationship with voting fraud (your mom bringing you into the booth with her when you were in 7th grade, and then having your best friend film you as you cast your first ballot absentee eight years later) means anything to you, or that turning eighteen was way more exciting for you than turning twenty-one will be. You don’t research the candidates, or do your own fact-checking, or contribute your own campaign analysis to the ether. You definitely weren’t the weirdo wearing campaign buttons through your high school hallways, and you probably don’t sleep in a campaign shirt from an election you certainly weren’t eligible to vote in. You don’t tear up a little every time you sing the National Anthem, and you aren’t eternally grateful to all the people who have marched, fought, died, protested and cared so that you can have the option not to.
So I get you, apathetic youth voter. I understand that picking the right filter for the picture you Instagram of your ballot might be more important to you than the bubbles you did or didn’t shade, and if you’re so disenfranchised with the election process that you choose to sit it out and whine instead of becoming involved and trying to reform it from the inside, that’s your business. But if you weren’t proud to vote, would you mind sending your “I Voted” sticker my way? Even though it might clash with your outfit, all of my shoes coordinate pretty well with Democracy.
