EDITORIAL: We like to argue politics, just not vote
Apr. 3—It's clear we love to argue politics.
What we don't like to do in this country is practice politics.
That was the message from the turnout Tuesday, which just barely creeped above 10% in Jasper County, despite a number of important municipal and school board races and questions; Newton County didn't even climb into double digits.
Oh, what would William Jasper and John Newton think of us today — the inheritors of the nation they died fighting to create nearly 250 years ago, at least according to Parson Weems.
Weems' history is suspect, but the point stands: The nation has paid a dear price to give its citizens the right to vote, but in the end we will surely pay a much higher price for our disregard of that right and our indifference to the sacrifice required.
In Joplin, where the renewal of a capital improvement sales tax and the spending of $95 million on infrastructure improvements was on the ballot, the turnout was embarrassing —3,556 votes cast out of nearly 34,000 eligible voters.
Perhaps it was the long lines that deterred voters on Tuesday ... oh wait a minute ... there were no lines.
Maybe it was the awful weather that kept folks at home ... it having been a miserable 60 degrees on Tuesday. Wonder what the veterans of Valley Forge or the Chosin Reservoir would think of Americans now.
Not much, in case you were wondering.
Then there's that old trope dragged out year after year, election after election ... my vote doesn't matter. Except every spring election proves the stupidity of that argument. Tuesday was no exception.
A use-tax on the ballot in Carl Junction got 558 "yes" votes and 561 "no" votes — so close that a handful of voters could have swung the election the other direction, and so close that provisional ballots will ultimately determine whether it passed or failed.
In Carterville, voters cast 14 votes each for Devin Keeling and Darlene Taylor for one Carterville City Council seat, while only three votes separated Dwayne Cupp and Cameron Snyder for another seat. Every vote matters.
"A republic, if you can keep it," Benjamin Franklin told a woman after she asked him what kind of country they created at the Constitutional Convention.
The republic part we like; it's the keeping it that is too much a bother.
We come back to an earlier proposal in this space: If you don't vote, you don't necessarily forfeit your right to complain — the First Amendment protects that — but you do forfeit your right to be heard.
No one cares.
