Procrastinating Nonvoters Forfeit Belly-Aching Rights

I was just starting my first year of college when I became eligible to vote, in 1995. Although I had strong opinions as to whom should be elected president in 1996, figuring out the hows and wheres of registering on a strange campus seemed too hard.

I put it off again and again, until Election Day loomed and the frenzied campaigning on campus of the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats was hard to ignore.

At one of their booths I thought I’d found an easy solution. If I just signed a list, I was told, they would make sure I was registered in time for the election. I quickly signed up and thought no more about it until election night, when I went to cast my ballot and discovered that I had somehow slipped through the cracks. My name was not among those of registered voters.

I’d procrastinated, tried to take the easy road, and it backfired.

Disappointed, I turned around and went home.

Now I, along with the rest of the world, am finding out what President Clinton is really made of. I hear the stories and his subsequent apologies each night on the news and see a man leading this country whom I wouldn’t trust to watch my dog for the weekend.

I’d like to cry for his resignation, for impeachment hearings to proceed, for some exercise in accountability to take place.

But I can’t say a word. I didn’t seem to care enough about who was in office back in ‘96. Why should anyone care what I have to say about it now? It would be like going into a restaurant, shrugging my shoulders when asked what I wanted to eat, and then complaining about what I was brought. Would anyone listen or care? Probably not. I’d better just sit there and eat it, because apathy has its price.

This year I vowed that I would no longer be indifferent. I registered to vote just in time for the Sept. 15 primary. The little effort it took to cast that ballot was worth the freedom I now have to legitimately voice my opinion.

So for those who chose not to vote in our recent primaries and don’t intend to vote in the future, enjoy coughing down whatever is put on your plate. Enjoy sitting back when your taxes are raised, a highway is built through your backyard or your president turns out to be a sex-crazed liar. Enjoy saying nothing because, as someone who never really cared in the first place, that’s all the right you’ll have.