Vote - Essay

Vote - Essay

English 111 s13 Mr. Kamara 10/06/08 Vote Against Complacency Wars have been fought to give us the opportunity to vote. Entire movements have organized to bring us all the right to vote. Yet, the number of people who vote each election year has dropped increasingly since the 1960’s. Only by overcoming the complacencies of the American voter’s mentality can we hope to see an increase in voting. The “one person cannot make a difference” mentality is a major contributor to the statistical drop in voters each year. While some are unaware of the importance of each and every vote, others simply do not think their opinion matters. There is certainly a level of ignorance that also contributes to this problem. Many people are not aware of some of the political issues and current affairs of the world. A different sort of ignorance presents itself in the form ofpolitical comfort as well. Many people choose to align themselves with a set of political preferences and never question or change them accordingly. A lot of people are simply put off by the whole process of voting. Between the “anti-politics” of the party’s campaigns, and the overwhelming amount of information that is spewed from each, it is no wonder some American’s show a lot of disinterest towards the election process. Many people cannot grasp the idea that every last vote counts. They cannot seem to comprehend that every single vote makes a difference in an election. The importance of each vote is hard to understand when one see’s millions in the election polls. Even when an election year can come down to a few hundred voters, people do not realize the importance of their vote. Thomas Patterson writes, “With the outcome of the 2000 election hanging by a thread of a few hundred votes in Florida, citizen regret [for not voting] was widespread” (Patterson 3). Yet in the 2004 election year,there was only a slight increase in voting. Later in Patterson’s “The Vanishing Voter,” he writes on how even given good...

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