Decision 2008: But Are We Ballot-Worthy?

With all due respect to Brian Corley, Pasco's young, enthusiastic and appointed elections chief, This Space disagrees. Courteously.

In a recent letter to the editor, Corley, successor to former county elections supervisor-for-life Kurt Browning, touts the business of voting every bit as earnestly as a first-year civics teacher, and for many of the same reasons: it's our civic duty, Americans from the get-go have shed blood and treasure defending access to the ballot box, you can't complain if you don't vote, freedom requires responsibility, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

What's My Motivation?

Browning, elevated in 2006 to Florida's secretary of state by Gov. Charlie Crist, could reveal much to Corley regarding the likelihood of producing results by applying the symbolic 2-by-4 of civic accountability to the collective backside of Pasco's registered voters. After 26 years running elections, Browning had pretty much figured out that his job was to make the system reliable, trustworthy, available, accurate and accountable. Unless the Legislature ordered him to go door to door with voting machines, like some tax-supported Domino's delivery man, turnout was going to be what turnout was going to be.

Yes, we sort of expect elections supervisors to lead get-out-the-vote cheers; and, yes, because we're going to all the trouble of opening precincts, printing ballots, training poll workers and turning on the optical scanners, it would be nice if lots of people came to the party.

However, when it comes to motivating citizens to exercise their voting franchise by threatening to revoke their complaining rights, you could sooner move a boulder by bombarding it with paper airplanes. As for admonishments about honoring kinsmen who paid the ultimate price, remember, we're encouraging the participation of folks who are even-money to place the Civil War in the wrong century, and couldn't quote Patrick Henry if we spotted them "Give me liberty or ... " Ummmmm, Take me shopping?

Impressing The Impressionable

Corley laments learning that American voter participation ranks 139th among 172 nations that conduct elections. This, according to International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, based in Stockholm, Sweden, which has tracked such behavior back to 1945.

About that survey: Does it make a difference that among those listed ahead of us are Angola, Somalia, Azerbaijan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Burundi, Tajikistan, Mozambique, Belarus, Tonga and Syria, all vanguards of liberty that have conducted one (count 'em, one) national election during the same period the United States pulled off 26 - all, notably, without subsequent gunfire?

Maybe if elections were a once-in-a-lifetime event here, too, we could inspire more interest in the one upcoming. But in America, important as they all are, elections are like interstate exits to fast-food villages; if you miss this one, no biggie - there's another just 'round the bend.

Besides, maybe those 138 countries don't have much else to do. We're busy trying to decide between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Not to mention a lot of us are able to satisfy our voting impulse in the only campaign that really affects our daily lives - who goes or stays on "American Idol."

You want to spike interest in the Florida Republican primary? See whether any of the Big Four are willing to undergo a televised chest-waxing. (Nationally, what's the over-under line on the subset that includes "AI" voters plus likely presidential election voters? Twelve percent, tops, unless Ron Paul doesn't go third-party, then it's lower.)

None of this is meant as criticism of Corley, except that his recent public plea to stir up election passions fails to recommend, as a qualification for participation, that voters should make at least a rudimentary effort to identify which candidates' views best square with their own.

I mean, sure, an argument can be made that the nation is ill-served when fewer than 23 percent of eligible voters make a presidential majority (that is, just more than half of the 44 percent who voted in 2004), but if the other 56 percent were still basking in the glow of Fantasia's post-Idol success, maybe not.

Let's keep that in mind come Jan. 29 - OK? - and hope the results reflect the triumph of thoughtfulness over capacity.