I'm a nice guy. Really, I am. If you were hosting a luncheon for a political bigwig, and you needed to fill the room to demonstrate your power to assemble an army of the well-dressed masses on command, and you wanted me to fill a hole at one of the tables, and I had a free hour or so in my schedule, and I just happened to wear a suit that day, and you assured me that my name would not be divulged under any circumstances to the bigwig or his fundraisers, I just might deign to grace your little soirée with my presence.
So yesterday afternoon while I was sitting at your lunch gobbling down the surprisingly good food while barely listening to the political bigwig prattle on about how he -- the living embodiment of the Great Man Theory of History -- would single-handedly create jobs for the city, make city hall work again, bring a football team to the city, solve our traffic problems (without exterminating residents or confiscating cars, no less!), build more housing (while not increasing traffic, no less!), increase the frequency with which my wife and I enjoy marital relations, solve world hunger with a loaf of bread and a few fish, turn water to wine, and so on, I was stopped in mid-chew by his adoption of a new Stentorian Tone.
Shaking his finger at us, he began to lecture us in civics. "Friends," he said, "I don't need to tell you about our democratic tragedy." I leaned forward, expecting him to come clean as a mountebank peddling twaddle to the gullible masses. But no, not today. Instead he proceeded to scold us for the record low voter turnout in our last mid-term election. How could we stay away from the polls when people were dying in Afghanistan for the right to vote? What would the founding fathers say if they saw us including ourselves out of each election?
He went on this way for fifteen minutes, giving me time to absorb the absurdity of this stuffed shirt lecturing us on democracy while being the very same stuffed shirt who, just a few years before, more than anyone, was responsible for drawing our state's extremely cozy redistricting map. A map so friendly to incumbents that only one of our state's 53 House seats is competitive this year -- and it's one in which an incumbent is retiring.
Nationwide, it's the same. During the 2002 elections, out of 435 House seats up for grabs, only four were lost by incumbents.
It's the same for offices at the state, county and city levels. At least where I live. Probably where you live too.
So the next time you hear some self-righteous gasbag wheezing on and on about today's apathetic electorate and our neglect of our civic duties and the millions of starving voters in Afghanistan, just remember that in nearly every instance the voters are staying home from sham elections that have already been fixed. Seems like intelligent behavior to me. Kind of warms my heart, contemplating such a well-informed electorate....
See "In most congressional districts, it's no contest" (Gannett).
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