Latest Excuse for Not Voting

Ari L. NoonanEditor's Essays, OP-ED3 Comments

Forget voting. Learn to tend sheep. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

While this morning’s novel Young Voter Motivation program at Culver City High School is commendable, liberals have a nasty habit of waving a social injustice feather in the noses of normal people – just to vex them.

Eight percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted last year in California – which correlates to the sky is blue and the ocean is wet.

In yesterday’s advance story, readers were told that non-rich kids, about 98 percent of the student population, have a good excuse for being disinterested in voting.

“Average-income” schools ain’t teaching them how or why it is crucial to plunge into participating in our democracy and voting the way that rich kids’ schools do.

“For decades, most K-12 students have not had access to effective civic learning opportunities that motivate and prepare them to be engaged participants in a democracy,” Geoff Maleman wrote.

“When the opportunities have existed, their distribution has been unequal.”

The solution is as plain as the pimples on a teen’s face: Transfer to the rich kids’ high schools.

No need to delay?

This is one of the nuttiest excuses in defense of willful ignorance that has been raised in awhile.

Students from “average income” high schools are not taught civics because, I presume, schools are teaching sheep herding, candle making, horseshoe carving and related mandatory classes.

Last question posed yesterday:

Should voter registration be easier?

If it were any snappier, the County would dispatch a homeless chap to your house sp he could write down your vital stats and the person you want to vote for.

He will not ring the bell so you don’t have to interrupt what you are doing. The homeless guy will walk in unannounced.

3 Comments on “Latest Excuse for Not Voting”

  1. Madeline Ehrlich

    All learning and teaching is not done in the classroom. Parents need to continue to teach at home by having discussions hopefully with their children and they need to continue to learn from the parents through example. Teaching by example is very powerful.
    Parents need to set good examples 24/7. Perhaps then we will see a difference in voter turnout. What is it “monkey see monkey do”.

  2. Dan O'Brien

    Never did vote by mail. Chose to walk to the polls with kids in tow, specifically to teach them the importance of voting. They got an “I Voted” sticker out of it, too.

  3. Madeline Ehrlich

    A parent, grandparent or whoever can teach children about voting whether you take them to the polls or not. If you vote by mail, you can sit down with your child and in the privacy of your home discuss the issues, the candidates and show them how voting by mail is done and how convenient and easy it is to do. They can seal the envelope. Either way, it can be a valuable lesson. You are showing them that they have choices and there is no excuse for not voting.

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