VOTE VOTE VOTE

In May of 1978 I turned 21. This was not as auspicious a birthday as it would be today. At the time the Michigan drinking age was 18. I did NOT drink multiple shots of tequila and countless beers. I had already done that on my 18th birthday. There is probably a blog entry that could be written about that occasion.

The interesting part is that the voters of Michigan approved a constitutional amendment just a few months later that raised the drinking age to 21. Having recently been an 18-21 year-old, and feeling my peers deserved the constitutional right to party, I voted against that amendment. Nevertheless, it passed and the 18-21 age group was forced to resort to subterfuge to imbibe in spirits.

Even more interesting, if the 18-21 year-old population had turned out to vote in the same proportion as the rest of the population, and had voted against the amendment in the same proportion as the 18-21 year-olds that DID bother to vote, the amendment would have been rejected, and they would have still been able to drink.

Moral of the story: People do not always using the voting booth to protect their own self-interest, even when there is nothing BUT their self-interest at stake.

This Tuesday, August 5th is the Ann Arbor Primary election for City Council, Mayor, Sheriff, 15th District Judge and more. While the general election will be very important this year, the primary is going to decide who wins in November. And there are many local issues that will affect us more directly than the national election.

Historically, very few people show up for the August Primary. Your vote WILL make a difference. Anyone who knows me knows I have plenty of political opinions. As a result we have endorsed Sandi Smith in Ward One, Carsten Hohnke in Ward Five, and John Hieftje for Mayor, among others. But more important than voting for who I want you to vote for, I encourage all readers to go to the polls on Tuesday and vote for the candidate of your choice.

If you are not registered to vote, it is too late for the primary. But it is NOT too late to register for the general election. We will be hosting voter registration drives on Saturday, August 9th and Saturday, August 23rd at the \aut\ BAR. You can also check with your City Clerk’s office to find out how to register, how to get absentee ballots, and much more.



Eighteen years earlier, in November of 1960, my mother stepped into the voting booth and pulled the lever for Richard Nixon. She vividly described the experience to me many years later. She did not particularly like Nixon, but she bought into the fear that JFK, a catholic, might owe his first allegiance to Rome, and not to the United States. Within moments of leaving the booth she regretted what she had done. She has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1960.

Moral of the Story: People often make different decisions once they are in the voting booth, even decisions that they did not know they were considering.

The two biggest enemies of a healthy democracy are apathy and fear.

The danger in November is fear. The republican noise machine has already started the subliminal campaign to remind voters that Obama is black, and black people want to steal from you, rape your daughter, and take your job.

And many good people will buy into this subliminal fear. Pollsters have not figured out how to get past what people say and figure out what they are actually going to do when they get in the voting booth. So all of the polls showing Obama in the lead could be meaningless. I would not be surprised if up to 5% of voters will vote their irrational fear over their enlightened self-interest.

If you are gay, a woman, African-American, or anything other than a rich white guy a McCain presidency is going to represent another four years of the same policies we've been experiencing for the last eight years. We MUST move beyond our fears, and vote for hopes, dreams, and aspirations.