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March 23, 2012
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April 6, 2012
The Republicrats race to the bottom with their continuing presidential primaries inspired me to compose the following essay about voting for all you politicos out there. I’ll probably never run for any type of political office, but it’s always fun to watch this stuff from the sidelines. Never fails to inspire my creative juices for the writing.
Word Count: 921
The Candidate of My Choice
Like most citizens living in a functioning democratic society, I strongly feel that it’s the proper thing to do when a person exercises their rights and visits the local precinct to vote. You feel like you’ve achieved some sort of bizarre empowerment granted to you by filling out that ballot, and whether your vote counts or not almost seems irrelevant as you walk out of the voting booth and down the street.
Saying you believe strongly in something, and actually seeing it come about are two totally different things. I’ve been lobbying for years to get The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to give out an Oscar for best comedy each year, and still nobody is listening to me.
Thankfully the concept of a functioning democracy is ingrained into most of us at an early age. By the time you’ve reached 4th or 5th grade, you’re already being asked to cast ballots for the head boy or girl in your class. Nobody seems to take this too seriously though. If they did, you’d see a lot more toy and candy bribery between the candidates and their prospective constituents.
My first experience with casting a ballot was during my college years and didn’t even involve voting. This incident did result in my blood pressure levels being raised, but that’s another story.
The Colorado state legislature had voted to lower the funding for CU-Boulder, which resulted in a proposal to raise student tuition fees. The blowback from this wasn’t really that unexpected. Lots of the student body freaked out (including yours truly) and somebody somewhere decided to print up a bunch of T-Shirts. Probably a disgruntled student who should’ve been studying for that sociology 101 midterm exam instead.
The T-shirts were a nice yellowish-orange with an image of Mackey auditorium on the front. Proudly proclaiming Boulder Junior College-1979. On the back was printed the following statement of defiance, “Formerly a quality institution of higher education.”
I immediately found out where I had to go to purchase one of these fashion masterpieces and did just that. For a month during the spring of 1979 I wore the T-shirt proudly while sauntering back and forth to classes. I’ve still got the garment and it doesn’t look too ragged. Despite the fact that I wore it at least three times a week.
The local editor at the Silverton Standard newspaper wrote an op-ed. piece about the entire incident, and like the good rebel that I am, I responded to it in kind. A week after my letter got published I ran into my sister who was also attending CU-Boulder at the time. Her comments, “People liked the content of the letter, although most folks wondered whether the letter’s title meant you’ve finally slipped over the edge; “Student screams!!”
Then I got to Kenya in the Peace Corps and voting became a very serious matter. At the time a number of contentious issues were on the fall ’82 ballot back home. All us lame brain liberal types (one uncles’ assessment of my political philosophy) had me urgently wanting to vote in the upcoming election. Two months before the fateful day I mailed a request for an absentee ballot.
Now this was in the days before Internet cafes, rapid worldwide transport, and every six months the U.S. Postal Service begging Congress for a subsidy to ensure its survival. The absentee ballot got to me, but it probably went via camel train through North Africa and arrived in January of the following year.
Einstein theorized that if one traveled faster than the speed of light they’d go backwards through time. Not having a safe method for testing this theory, I chose not to attempt the procedure.
Choosing to vote while attending cartoon art school in Jersey also proved an interesting proposition. I maintained my voting status in Colorado, but wanted to cast my ballot once while living in the Garden state.
At the time though I was totally obsessed with wanting to become the next full-time illustrator of “Conan the Barbarian” comic books. Subsequently I really didn’t do much homework prior to stepping in the voting booth that day in November of 1988. Not knowing any of the local candidates or referendums on the ballot, I briefly panicked. Suddenly realizing that the quarter in my pocket could be used for more than just purchasing my next slice of pizza-I smiled. Don’t laugh. Flipping it wasn’t such an easy task to pull off since I found myself trapped in a confined space.
Since then I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I’ve utilized the coin flipping solution to vote a few other times as well. Voting conundrums while care taking that house up in the Mountain Village outside of Telluride immediately comes to mind. My political philosophies being the exact opposite of all those second and third homeowners on that plateau above town has something to do with it. Indifference being a very strong factor in this situation.
Recently, I attended a candidate’s forum for local town council elections in Silverton. All the aspirants running for election (even the ones I disagreed with) spoke eloquently about the issues near and dear to their hearts. As I walked out of the forum the one over-riding thought that kept floating through my mind? “It’s a good thing I’m not running for any of these positions, then the people in this town would find out how a mayor-for-life dictatorship really works.”
