Commentary

Shut Up and Vote

I'm not ashamed to admit it. I care about politics. Most of my friends remain indifferent on the subject. They say it is boring or that the system is broken and there is nothing they can do about it.

However, at some point it seems that these same people always end up wanting an explanation for why their favorite Internet home page is black or the reason tuition went up ten percent this year.

Now like I said, I still care about politics but whenever the subject of politics and my generation comes up it leaves me with a profound willingness to discuss Armageddon after about three drinks.

It's not that I don't think people my age mean well.

On the contrary, I think most of them do. They just don't seem to realize when they are being manipulated. Record numbers of youth voters have been registered since the 1992 election thanks to the success of such things as Rock the Vote and the Motor Voter bill.

While I am reticent to criticize the earnest effort of the people responsible for these two highly successful programs, I would like to point out what is responsible for this surge in youth voter registration. Either they were registered automatically without any effort on their part at the DMV, or they succumbed to marketing of MTV's flashy, watered down version of politics. If the only reason you are registered to vote is you stopped by the Choose or Lose bus in front of the EMU and they told you Michael Stipe says voting is cool, then you must do the rest of the country a favor: STAY HOME ON NOVEMBER 5.

Make no mistake about it--politics are ugly, cumbersome and very necessary. Which is not to say that these efforts are all fruitless. Surely some of the college kids engaged by these slick programs have made the effort to stay informed and vote responsibly. And I'd be damned if I didn't admit that there were people on this very campus who are trying to get more kids involved in politics. Our campus has hosted numerous political rallies and visiting candidates in preparation for the upcoming elections.

Many student organizations have also been involved in their own voter registration drives. Over 10,000 students have been registered to vote on this campus in the last twelve months. This is according to Matt Scotten, our beloved ASUO President, who made his best attempt to sound proud when he also told me, I'm pretty sure we'll be in the top five nationally (in voter registration). Of course, barely four percent of the student body got him elected so take his enthusiasm with a grain of salt.

Nonetheless, the UO being top five in anything is worth noting, and the fact that it is among the top universities in political interest is really something... scary.

I recently took an informal poll of five friends of mine about my age who attend the university, and I judge to be reasonably intelligent people. This was hardly scientific, I know, but I did my best to get a good cross section of different sexes, races, interests etc. I asked them what I thought would be a simple question about the United States government: How many congressmen are in the House of Representatives? Exactly one of them knew the answer (note: if you are reading this and do not know the answer, quit wasting your time reading this, go to the library and read the damn constitution all of it. Either that or STAY HOME ON NOVEMBER 5). Now if this was response I got from the people I thought were responsible voters, how am I supposed to feel when I know that there is a good chance that the idiot in the back of my class who is constantly asking questions the professor just answered 30 seconds ago is also registered to vote?

There is no excuse for this kind of political laziness. Look around you. Things are bad. Our generation is the first in American history that faces the very real possibility of earning less than our parents. When our parents were our age most everything was within their reach: decent jobs, cheap mortgages, new cars, an affordable college education. Priced any houses lately? I don't think many of us will be talking to real estate agents in the near future.

We'll be to busy paying off student loans. It's not fair what is being done to our generation, and the only way to stop it is to vote, and not vote blindly. We each need to think about our needs as a generation and vote accordingly.

This is precisely why our parents and grandparents have so much. They all vote and vote consistently with their needs as a generation in mind. Sure they may disagree on partisan and social issues, but they have certain common interests they fiercely protect.

The AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) has millions of dues paying members and is the second largest organization in the United States next to the Roman Catholic Church. What is it you ask? Again, if you don't already know, you might want to consider STAYING HOME ON NOVEMBER 5. It is an incredibly powerful lobby group that has the express purpose of looking after the concerns of your grandparents. As a result of this group and its lobby efforts on behalf of things like Medicare and social security, 30 percent of the federal budget is being spent on a disproportionately small group of people. Many of these retired people have more than enough money to eat and pay for their own medical insurance. In fact senior citizens are the wealthiest segment of the population. Yet that doesn't matter. You don't have to be in need to get assistance from the government, and in this country all you have to be is old. They didn't earn it, they don't need it, but if the government misses one payment they raise hell.

And politicians don't dare try and level the playing field. Old people in this country look out for other old people. Any attempt by a politician to put them in their proper place would immediately result in getting voted out of office in the next available opportunity. Senior citizens have been quite successful at throwing their political clout around because they are organized.

According to Time magazine, during the 80's, the real inflation adjusted income of oldster households increased by over fifty percent. What explains this increase? They lobbied the government and elected candidates sympathetic to their concerns.

As a result Medicare benefits and social security increased. Who paid for that increase? Take a closer look at your next paycheck, and remember, the next time you are trying to get around some late model Buick on the freeway going 35 miles an hour that you are subsidizing grandpa's joy ride.

So you can see that if we were to organize and vote maybe we could defend our own interests. Until we learn this lesson, we can have all the voter registration drives in the world and I'm afraid that it won't do us much good. I, for one, am just sick of the general lack of respect we are getting because we don't represent ourselves at the ballot.

Over the course of the last year, I have had the (mis)fortune of speaking with Senator Ron Wyden and both of the candidates from Oregon's current senate election, Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Tom Bruggere. I can tell you they may act like they care about youth issues but for them that is clearly not the bottom line. When asked whether there would be enough money to provide social security for the youth of today, Smith assured all the young 'uns in the room that (Social Security) will be financially solvent until the year 2020.

Bruggere said essentially the same thing only he quoted the year 2030. In their lifetime those years may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but most people at this university will have already paid thousands of dollars into the social security fund by then and still be years away from seeing any of that money when the whole program goes belly up.

But hey, why should they listen to us and do anything about this now? It doesn't matter to them that senior citizens are getting more social security than they paid for--they vote and we don't.

So if by any chance you were feeling randy and got suckered into filling out a voter registration card by some nerdy ASUO type, you might want to go home and think about what you've done. When you vote, you don't just represent yourself. Your decisions can and will affect other people. Just signing your name to a card and pulling a lever one way or another is not voting. You need to know exactly what you are advocating and who you are representing. This requires actual effort and is not just a matter of going through the motions. If you are not prepared to do this you might want to STAY HOME ON NOVEMBER 5.

Mark Hemingway is right, you know