jamesq | 20 Percent? Pathetic.

[late edit]

Looks like participation is up this election to nearly 30%. Still pathetic but not quite so bad as I thought.

Of course, anything less then 90% still sucks.

[/late edit]

Once again, hardly anyone in this city took the time to do their civic duty. I can think of a few people I know who, if they bitch at all about anything that happens politically in Calgary, they're going to get a STFU out of me.

You know how much effort it took me to vote?

Five minutes to find the candidates web pages.
Five more minutes to read them and figure out what their positions were.
Five minutes to walk to the polling station.
Five minutes to retrieve and draw a couple of Xs on the ballots.

Twenty minutes total. Hell, I could have skipped steps 1 and 2, driven to the polling station instead of walking and had the whole thing take less then ten minutes.

Ten to twenty minutes people - that's all it would have taken during your busy day. One day. Every three years. There are countries that make you take a couple years off your life and learn to march. All you have to do is mark the occasional ballot.

20% - that's a small enough margin that weird-ass special interest groups can take over the government. It's why the Catholic School Board had to put up with that asshat Michael O'Malley. It's why the Ward 10 voting scandal came within a hair's breadth of succeeding in the 2004 election.

You should vote because it might be the only say you have in how government affects your life.
You should vote to protect yourselves.
You should vote because many people gave their lives so that you could vote.
You should vote because it's your civic duty.
You should vote so you can bitch.
You should vote because it's something we only let adults do - not voting demonstrates that you haven't come to grips with adult responsibility yet.

But mostly, you should vote because it's what you're supposed to do. Because otherwise you're a person who doesn't care enough about your fellow man to lift a goddamn finger to help.

Fuck, I might as well be pissing into the ocean for all the good this rant will do. The 2010 election will have 20% voter turnout too. I can't even make my own friends understand that this is important. They either already get it or they never will.