Keep In the Vote
of rocks. I don’t know how much a whole mess of nines are. Maybe I’d better stay home and watch SpongeBob SquarePants and let the eggheads and the brainiacs figure out if Squidward or Patrick the Starfish oughta be in the White House.” This is a noble sacrifice on the part of the stupid and we should be recognized for it. Smart people are often too smart for their own good. And never more so than in their failure to propose a vote of gratitude to voters who don’t vote... thereby letting the smart alecks elect the president. (And over the past 100 years, we’ve had a number of presidents that prove smart people are too smart for their own good. I’ll let the readers name those presidents’ names.) Anyway, stupid non- voters should be rewarded, given maybe $50, or at least a six-pack. On the other hand, there are some 22 countries that charge people for not voting. Voting is compulsory. These countries impose fines or other civil penalties on eligible voters who don’t go to the polls. Are countries with compulsory voting better governed than ours? Well, some of them seem to be governed no worse – Australia, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein (if anyone cares how Liechtenstein is governed). But Belgium, where you can be fined as much as 200 euros for not voting, has been in political deadlock for most of this century. Then there are the other countries with “choose-or-lose” balloting policies – Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, etc. (And that “etc.” includes North Korea.)
The experts shame us with comparisons to the electorate’s vote-like-heck virtues in various oh-so-perfect democracies such as the little Scandinavian ones. Voter turnout is 82.6% in Sweden. And voter turnout is 80.3% in Denmark. Never mind that Scandinavians have nobody to vote for except other Scandinavians. They’re going to get the same Danish pastry or Swedish meatball no matter who’s on the ballot. They never have to wake up on Election Day thinking, “Oh, lord... Chock Full O’Nuts is running against Snidely Whiplash. Screw ‘em both!” and then roll over and go back to sleep. Or maybe Americans are self-selecting... 50% of people are below average intelligence – a mathematical fact. But, as Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Or, in this case, as stupid doesn’t , like by not voting. I’m not saying that stupid people shouldn’t have a say in how the country is run. A lot of what the government does is stupid... So we need stupid input. However, there’s such a thing as a wise fool. And some of us stupid people are going, “I’m dumb as a box The experts shame us with comparisons to the electorate’s vote- like-heck virtues in various oh-so-perfect democracies such as the little Scandinavian ones.
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October 2020
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