Please Don‘t Vote
Please don’t vote. No, seriously. Why bother?
Let’s face it – all the candidates for every office are either
worthless or no better than the other guy or gal. We know this
because we’ve been told that for months now. One party is pretty much
just like the other and neither side seems to have more than an ounce
or two of common sense. Many of you are now counting on some tea party
candidate, or sympathizer, to really stir things up, restore the
Constitution, cut spending reduce taxes, blah, blah, blah. Or you
want some liberal to maintain or expand social services, tax the rich,
end the war, blah, blah, blah. Please. We all know they’ll be
co-opted by the special interest groups and Washington’s 40,000
lobbyists within a few weeks. Anything they say now will be so much
rhetorical dust by this time next year.
Besides, the polling place is off at some school you may or may not
know how to get to and the weather will probably be crummy and the
entire thing is just damned inconvenient.
So, please, don’t bother to vote.
And don’t worry about it. I, and others, will vote for you. No need
to thank us but you’re welcome.
We’ll decide which people represent you in Lansing and in Washington.
We’ll decide how high your taxes should be. Do you want them to be a
lot lower? Do you want the rich to pay more? Hey, we’ll take all that
into consideration.
What would you like us to do about Social Security and Medicare?
Would you like them to still be around when you or your children are
eligible to avail themselves of one or both? Pretty important
questions but there’s no need to trouble yourself with the
inconvenience of voting. We’ll make those decisions for you. Maybe
we’ll rescue one of them or maybe even both of them. We’ll let you
know.
We know unemployment is at a crisis level here. And we’ve heard
nearly every candidate talk about “growing jobs”. They were all a
little weak on specifics with all their talk about sustainable
industry and energy and the so-called green jobs and re-inventing
Michigan. It all sounded like a lot of gibberish to us but we’re
willing to make the necessary sacrifices to sort out all this
silliness and figure it out for you. We’ll probably elect exactly the
right people to restore Michigan’s job picture and start everyone on
the road to recovery. Probably.
What about illegal immigration? Round ‘em up and send ‘em back or a
comprehensive immigration policy? Haven’t made up your mind? We’re
not sure ourselves but we’ll let you know what we decided after we’ve
made the decision. We’re pretty sure we’ll vote the way you wanted us
to.
What do you want us to do about abortion? Are you a pro-lifer or a
pro-choicer? Well, frankly, we believe this is the kind of intensely
personal decision we’d rather not get into. So we’ll just vote our
conscience on this and you’ll just have to take our word for it that
we had your wishes in mind.
Before we get to any additional issues we should address the myth that
every vote counts. C’mon. Sure, in 1960, had just one person per
precinct voted for Richard Nixon instead of John Kennedy we’d have had
a different president. But that was a fluke. And in the 2000
presidential election in Florida... well, no one seems to be
absolutely sure just what the final vote count was but it was really,
really close. (By the way, for those Democrats who can’t seem to let
it go, George W. Bush won in Florida, was elected president and then
re-elected in 2004. All the whining and conspiracy theories in the
world will never change any of that.)
I was once involved in an election that ended in an actual tie on
election night and went through three recounts before my client won by
24 votes out of about 60,000 total ballots cast. A couple of others
ended up requiring recounts, too.
But don’t let any of that discourage you from staying home on Tuesday.
Those close elections are the exception, not the rule. At least I’m
pretty sure they are. Even the authors of “Freakonomics“ a best
seller of a few years ago, postulated that so few elections are close
that voting becomes an exercise that means little in terms of the
outcome.
Some of you would like to overturn the healthcare reforms of the last
year. It’s entirely possible we voters will elect people who will try
to do just that. Or maybe not.
Others of you want to “restore our Constitution”. We’re not
completely sure what that means and were not aware it needs
restoration but we’ll try to keep it in mind.
How about foreign policy and the military? You want us to nuke Iran?
Or maybe get completely out of the Middle East? I’m sure we’ll find a
way to accommodate both positions because we’ve carefully weighed
every contingency and are fully prepared to protect your interests.
In fact, we’ve done that on all other issues, too. We voters are very
conscientious so you don’t have to be.
If the people we elect don’t happen to agree with you, so what?
They’re all the same anyway, right?
So don’t worry about a thing. Just stay home next Tuesday. We’ve got
your back.
Please don’t vote. No, seriously. Why bother?
Let’s face it – all the candidates for every office are either
worthless or no better than the other guy or gal. We know this
because we’ve been told that for months now. One party is pretty much
just like the other and neither side seems to have more than an ounce
or two of common sense. Many of you are now counting on some tea party
candidate, or sympathizer, to really stir things up, restore the
Constitution, cut spending reduce taxes, blah, blah, blah. Or you
want some liberal to maintain or expand social services, tax the rich,
end the war, blah, blah, blah. Please. We all know they’ll be
co-opted by the special interest groups and Washington’s 40,000
lobbyists within a few weeks. Anything they say now will be so much
rhetorical dust by this time next year.
Besides, the polling place is off at some school you may or may not
know how to get to and the weather will probably be crummy and the
entire thing is just damned inconvenient.
So, please, don’t bother to vote.
And don’t worry about it. I, and others, will vote for you. No need
to thank us but you’re welcome.
We’ll decide which people represent you in Lansing and in Washington.
We’ll decide how high your taxes should be. Do you want them to be a
lot lower? Do you want the rich to pay more? Hey, we’ll take all that
into consideration.
What would you like us to do about Social Security and Medicare?
Would you like them to still be around when you or your children are
eligible to avail themselves of one or both? Pretty important
questions but there’s no need to trouble yourself with the
inconvenience of voting. We’ll make those decisions for you. Maybe
we’ll rescue one of them or maybe even both of them. We’ll let you
know.
We know unemployment is at a crisis level here. And we’ve heard
nearly every candidate talk about “growing jobs”. They were all a
little weak on specifics with all their talk about sustainable
industry and energy and the so-called green jobs and re-inventing
Michigan. It all sounded like a lot of gibberish to us but we’re
willing to make the necessary sacrifices to sort out all this
silliness and figure it out for you. We’ll probably elect exactly the
right people to restore Michigan’s job picture and start everyone on
the road to recovery. Probably.
What about illegal immigration? Round ‘em up and send ‘em back or a
comprehensive immigration policy? Haven’t made up your mind? We’re
not sure ourselves but we’ll let you know what we decided after we’ve
made the decision. We’re pretty sure we’ll vote the way you wanted us
to.
What do you want us to do about abortion? Are you a pro-lifer or a
pro-choicer? Well, frankly, we believe this is the kind of intensely
personal decision we’d rather not get into. So we’ll just vote our
conscience on this and you’ll just have to take our word for it that
we had your wishes in mind.
Before we get to any additional issues we should address the myth that
every vote counts. C’mon. Sure, in 1960, had just one person per
precinct voted for Richard Nixon instead of John Kennedy we’d have had
a different president. But that was a fluke. And in the 2000
presidential election in Florida... well, no one seems to be
absolutely sure just what the final vote count was but it was really,
really close. (By the way, for those Democrats who can’t seem to let
it go, George W. Bush won in Florida, was elected president and then
re-elected in 2004. All the whining and conspiracy theories in the
world will never change any of that.)
I was once involved in an election that ended in an actual tie on
election night and went through three recounts before my client won by
24 votes out of about 60,000 total ballots cast. A couple of others
ended up requiring recounts, too.
But don’t let any of that discourage you from staying home on Tuesday.
Those close elections are the exception, not the rule. At least I’m
pretty sure they are. Even the authors of “Freakonomics“ a best
seller of a few years ago, postulated that so few elections are close
that voting becomes an exercise that means little in terms of the
outcome.
Some of you would like to overturn the healthcare reforms of the last
year. It’s entirely possible we voters will elect people who will try
to do just that. Or maybe not.
Others of you want to “restore our Constitution”. We’re not
completely sure what that means and were not aware it needs
restoration but we’ll try to keep it in mind.
How about foreign policy and the military? You want us to nuke Iran?
Or maybe get completely out of the Middle East? I’m sure we’ll find a
way to accommodate both positions because we’ve carefully weighed
every contingency and are fully prepared to protect your interests.
In fact, we’ve done that on all other issues, too. We voters are very
conscientious so you don’t have to be.
If the people we elect don’t happen to agree with you, so what?
They’re all the same anyway, right?
So don’t worry about a thing. Just stay home next Tuesday. We’ve got
your back.