Idaho Mountain Express: Voting matters

Friday, October 26, 2012

Voting matters

As the 2012 election winds down, it’s hard to imagine that not everyone is a political junky, permanently tuned to MSNBC or to FOX. It’s hard to imagine that not everyone knows that the Gallup poll is released at 1 p.m. EST/EDT or the names of the “swing” states where candidates are omnipresent in these last two weeks.

Not everyone loves politics. Some will have paid so little attention, or will be so divorced from the electoral process, that they will not bother to vote, the most basic right of a democracy.

The most common excuse for both not voting and not choosing is that it just doesn’t matter who is elected. It’s a poor excuse. Elections involve choices that do matter, and if anything is clear from the current campaign, it’s that this election involves a clear choice.

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama would emphasize very different things in the budgets they send to Congress. Each would make a very different choice in filling the vacancies on the Supreme Court likely to arise in the next four years. The political party in the White House will emphasize a completely different agenda than the one that is not. And the choices made by the president will affect the legal, civic, business and even personal decisions we each make, or are allowed to make, for decades to come.

Like it or not, when it comes to this election, it’s time to pay attention and to choose. It matters.
buy viagra
comprar viagra
acheter viagra

About Comments

Comments with content that seeks to incite or inflame may be removed.

Comments that are in ALL CAPS may be removed.

Comments that are off-topic or that include profanity or personal attacks, libelous or other inappropriate material may be removed from the site. Entries that are unsigned or contain signatures by someone other than the actual author may be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or any other policies governing this site. Use of this system denotes full acceptance of these conditions. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing, Inc.

You may flag individual comments. You may also report an inappropriate or offensive comment by clicking here.

Flagging Comments: Flagging a comment tells a site administrator that a comment is inappropriate. You can find the flag option by pointing the mouse over the comment and clicking the 'Flag' link.

Flagging a comment is only counted once per person, and you won't need to do it multiple times.

Proper Flagging Guidelines: Every site has a different commenting policy - be sure to review the policy for this site before flagging comments. In general these types of comments should be flagged: