Recipe for apathy

Well…the 2009 Board of Elections are almost in the books and the city is a spinning with love.  Well, not quite love, but there’s alot of emotion running around.  It was, unfortunately, a typical Board of Education turnout from the voters…LOW.  People who don’t know the system want to go ahead and blame the turnout on the parents and infer that they must not care about their kids.  The reality is that these people had no idea that there was even an election.  And why would they, the self fulfilling prophesy of “How to get elected 101″ insures low voter turn out in our inner city as well as helping to create the vicious cycle we call voter apathy.  How?  I’ll tell ya…

The key phrase in todays’ lesson is “Prime Voter.”  A prime voter is usually defined as one who has voted in either the last two or three elections.  THESE are the people who will get the countless doorknocks, phone calls, and mail pieces.  Yes, everyone and their mom voted in the presidential elections but not everyone voted in the BoE elections of 2005 (primarily because it was the first Board election since the City regained control of the Board)  So you have the lucky few who voted in 2005 as well as the 2007 council/mayor race and then the 2008 presidential as your prime voter base for these 2009 voter election.  That comes out to roughly 5000 voters.  5000 coveted voters who will basically decide the future for a city with 120,000 residents.

So…check out the cycle of a typical poor community.  You don’t get a phone call.  You don’t get literature.  You definitely don’t get a visit from the candidate.  So basically, you are, purposely, excluded from the process.  Yeah, you might hear a radio ad or skim by an ad in the newspaper or even see a lawn sign, but anyone will tell you that those are only partial tools of a comprehensive marketing strategy towards getting someone to vote for a specific person.  The key elements are the lit piece, the phone call, and the visit.

So, you don’t get involved…hence, you don’t vote.  But wait, it doesn’t end there.  If you don’t vote, why on God’s brown earth should a politician give a rat’s @$$ about you?  So if a politician doesn’t care specifically about your non-voting @$$, you think s/he cares about the entire neighborhood around you that also does not vote?  How can we prove that a politician does not care?  One can’t.  But one can see where they do care.  What squeaky wheels are getting the grease?  Which neighborhoods are getting the resources?  Which meetings are most attended by the politicos.  There’s a reason every elected official goes to the annual quarterly meetings at the North End Senior Center…cuz they vote!

So now, you’re sitting in your neighborhood.  You don’t vote, you don’t get services, you are bombarded with messages of corruption.  And, even though it might be just one official…they all get the blame…people just love to generalize.  So now the message of the typical politician being the worse thing since unsliced bread is reinforced.  Another election comes, you get no calls, no mail, no visit, and you pass a friend on the street who asks you if you’re going to vote.

“Aaaah, why Ima vote for somebody who say they gonna do something for us and just sits on their fat ass doing nu’in?”

so you don’t vote, and you don’t get nu’in.  And you don’t vote and you don’t get nu’in.  And you don’t vote…and…you…don’t…get…nu’in.”

Until one year somebody spends the most amount of money ever spent on a presidential election filling your heart with hope and dreams and visions of things as they can be.  And you get in line and you cast your vote along with your neighbors and your kids and their kids and you vote that person in and you feel like everything is right as rain.

Until the next election where, because you are not a “Prime Voter”, you don’t get a letter, a phone call….or a visit.

There were 350 less voters in Tuesdays election then the 2005 BoE elections.  Those are 350 voters who will not be in the database when campaigns around the city start formulating their electoral strategies.  350 people who will be less informed about their options for the elections.  350 people who are at risk of being blamed of not caring the next time an election in the city has such abysmal numbers.

When I was younger and I’d blame my sisters for whatever dastardly deed I made at home, my mom would  remind me that every time I point at my sister, I have three fingers pointing right back at me.  Maybe it’s time that we all look at our own hands.