Legislation may be necessary to cure apathy

Terry Moore
columnist
State Press

The flu season is making local headlines, but another disease, potentially far more dangerous to the lives of Arizonans than the flu, is making the rounds.

Voter apathy is again running at epidemic proportions in this state. The disease appears at the beginning of each election season and slowly saps the will of the people to participate in the political process.

"Apathy is caused by some unknown chemical change triggered on the voter's 18th birthday and is considerably more debilitating to younger voters than older."

Typically, it is characterized by early screaming and complaining about stupid lawmakers making senseless laws. One symptom is coffee-break citizenship. People spend coffee and lunch breaks comparing notes about the latest legislative outrage, telling each other that "something has to be done."

The disease seems to lose its strength at the midpoint between elections. Voters' anger is healthy and strong; voter registration movements saturate nearly every mall and college campus with card tables. The crescendo of concerned comment on call-in shows and in newspaper columns seems to reach a new peak every time a legislator opens his/her mouth.

But apathy always rebounds. It saps voters' energy to the point that, by Election Day, fewer and fewer of them have the strength to go to the polls. Those who do manage to get to the polls find their intellect degraded so much that they can only vote along party lines, or for the candidate whose name they saw or heard most recently in a news report -- which may or may not have also been a police report.

Apathy is caused by some unknown chemical change triggered on the voter's 18^th birthday and is considerably more debilitating to younger voters than older. If you doubt that, consider the percentage of voters in last year's Arizona State University's student government elections.

According to Lanton Lee, Associated Students of ASU's executive coordinator, 1,395 students voted in the primary election and 1,695 voted in the general election, out of approximately 43,000 ASU students eligible to vote. That's a turnout of 3.9 percent, compared to statewide turnout of 44.6 percent in the 1996 national election. Who can deny that there is an epidemic of apathy at ASU?

ASU professor and state Senate candidate Jay Blanchard recognizes the magnitude of the problem.

"The Legislature wants to micromanage their (students') lives, and the only way they will stop that is to get involved in the political process," he said.

How do you do it? During last year's student government election campaign there were election posters everywhere you looked. No one could say they didn't know there was an election in progress. Candidates were interviewed in the State Press and debated each other in open forums. Registration, and the voting process itself, was about as easy and painless as it could have been.

And 96.1 percent of eligible voters succumbed to apathy.

Go to ASU's anthropology department and ask anyone there what happens to a species if 96.1 percent of its population is wiped out by disease or cataclysm. Can you say "extinct?"

For all practical purposes, people who don't participate in the process of choosing how and by whom they are governed are extinct. Their choices are extinct and, after that happens, their rights also become extinct.

What's the cure for apathy? Publicity doesn't help. Appealing to reason is ineffective. As yet, there is no vaccine available. Obviously, education can't be the answer.

Fortunately, I have the solution. Legislation. Of course. How else?

I hereby propose that state legislators pass the "Don't vote, don't complain" law.

That's right. If you don't get off your duff and vote, you can't sit on your duff and gripe about your senator or legislator sheriff or dogcatcher. Look at all the wasted conversations that will eliminate. Think how much more productive your life will be, how much more studying you can get done, how much happier you will be, if you aren't allowed to spend so much negative time complaining and whining about "those crooked politicians" and vowing to "vote the b*****ds out of office." You'll be so much happier and more productive when you redirect all that negative energy to your studies. Just ask Jean McGrath.

Hey, what are you complaining about? Your legislators care about you. They care so much that they want to help you fight this terrible disease.

And they don't even have to write a whole new law; they can just attach this to McGrath's "I can't stand the thought of students as adults" proposal.

See how lucky you are. You have elected officials who recognize that you're not capable of living your own lives, who make decisions for you about what you do with your bodies and your minds. Elected officials who are strong enough to ignore what you tell them you want and do what they know is best for you.

And you didn't even vote for them. Geesh! How lucky can you get?

Terry Moore is an English senior. He can be reached at terry.moore@asu.edu -- if you get over your apathy.