I'm absolutely sick of the presidential election. And you should be too. The incessant attack ads, the ceaseless rhetoric, the childish name calling: It's all enough to make me want to crawl under a rock.
But unfortunately, that's where a lot of you are planning to spend Election Day: firmly wedged where the farthest reaches of CNN pundits can pull you from your civic sloth. After all, with interest in this election at an all-time high, why should you bother to vote? It seems like everyone else is doing it, or at least talking about it. You're too busy to have an opinion, so just leave politics to those who actually give a damn. Maybe you should leave decision making to the partisan or well-informed voter.
Wrong. This year -- more than ever -- your vote really does count, regardless of whether you believe it or not. The candidates are polling even closer than they did in 2000. And that debacle wasn't caused by a race too close to call as much as it was the sheer number of eligible voters who simply didn't care.
Elections truly show the power of the public to weigh in on how our country is run. And when our country is divided squarely down the middle as is it now, it's time to have our voices heard. Dissent is the very fuel that empowers change, but a large number of you are so content with the status quo that you'll allow your decisions to be made for you.
Just two weeks ago, the political beast swallowed our campus as the presidential debates blew through town. And thousands of you seemed to have the time of your lives hoisting giant signs and shouting at Anderson Cooper just how badly you wanted to have his children.
Two days of pure political carnival enraptured the student body in a way that will only be matched by ASU's upcoming victory in the Rose Bowl.
But as quickly as the media circus came, they were off again -- chasing Kerry and Bush through Florida and Ohio and all those other states that the political pundits have decided are more important to the race than ours.
Maybe they're right. After all, before the satellite trucks had even finished idling on Hayden Lawn, you were all back in your state of electoral complacency. A couple of you put those nifty signs up in your dorm windows, but we all know that was to spite Residential Life, not indicate any actual interest in the electoral process.
Remember, kids: Signs don't vote. Neither do stickers or even poll numbers. People like you really are the ones who power politics in this country, and it's damn well time you start acting like it.
Luckily, you still have time to mend your slacker ways. The talking heads have written off Arizona as a battleground state, but they seem to forget that very few people have actually cast a ballot yet. Thousands of people have been added to the voter rolls since the last election, and a whole lot of those registrations have come from right here on campus (courtesy of the hard work of some very active political clubs).
And I know, you don't get a holiday to vote, and no one is going to pin a gold star on your chest when you fulfill your civic duty. Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer will not be in attendance to tell you how pretty you are and to thank you for your clever signs. For once, you'll have to do something political that doesn't get you on television or have some sort of instant gratification.
But then again, that's exactly the point. This one is far more important than that, and way too important to ignore.
Brian Clapp is a political science and biology senior. Reach him at brian.clapp@asu.edu.
