Get Out There and Vote!

This is midterm election day in the United States, an occasion that could well mark an important turning point for the nation’s future. So please forgive me while I depart for just a moment from the ever-engrossing subject of modern crime fiction.

I can’t urge The Rap Sheet’s American readers strongly enough to get out there and exercise their voting rights today. We’re now halfway through George W. Bush’s second term in the White House, and polling shows that a whopping 61 percent of U.S. residents are dissatisfied with the direction things are going in this country. Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, rampant Republican scandals, congressional overspending, and the administration’s too little, too late approach to Hurricane Katrina have all left many Americans feeling disheartened and disenfranchised, and wondering, What the hell has happened to the United States?

It’s easy to dismiss one’s constitutional privilege to vote, based on feelings that your voice won’t really be heard, or that vote tampering will leave only the powerful still in charge, no matter what the majority says (and isn’t it a sad state of affairs that we need to worry about such things in Bush’s America?). Yet such concerns shouldn’t stop anyone from trying to change things at the ballot box. For abdicting your right to vote is the only way to ensure that your voice won’t be heard.

So, if you haven’t already voted by absentee ballot, or visited your local polling place as I did, I strongly encourage you to do so. Right away. Heed the words of critic-editor George Jean Nathan, who once said, “Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.”