Election Day Apathy

Have you gotten your absentee ballot for the ’09 elections yet? Or, to take a step back—have you even heard of the ’09 elections? On Tuesday, Virginia and New Jersey residents will elect a governor, and residents of New York City, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston, and 70 other major cities will elect a mayor. Maine residents will vote on whether to preserve gay marriage, and Ohioans will vote on whether to allow casinos in its major cities and whether to establish a board to set livestock care standards. And Texans will vote on a whole 11 issues, including whether to allow state militia to hold other civil offices.

Local elections like these often get overlooked because they occur during election years that don’t feature marquee presidential or Senate races, but this is a mistake. Local government officials, like a mayor or governor, often have a more direct, immediate impact on everyday life in an area than national officials, and selecting them carefully is therefore of great importance. I, for example, am registered to vote in my hometown of West Windsor, N.J. Unless President Obama reinstates the draft tomorrow, my family’s day-to-day existence won’t change because of his relatively remote decisions. However, West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh’s decision about the creation of a retail area around our town train station will directly influence day-to-day life in the place I go back to every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and summer.

These issues deserve consideration, for many times we don’t realize the influence these local elections have until it’s too late. In 2007, Utah residents used their regional power to veto the Parent Choice in Education Act that had been passed by the Utah legislature and signed by the governor, which if passed into law would have offered private-school scholarships to nearly all public-school students. Similarly, experts thought last year’s proposition to decriminalize marijuana in Massachusetts had no chance of passing, but it was successful, putting the state into Canada-like territory for acceptable drug use. And, most infamously, opposition to Proposition 8 became a cause célèbre only after it was voted through by California residents.

Ultimately, we should vote in local elections not only because they affect us tremendously, but also because it’s our responsibility as citizens of a democracy. Voting isn’t a once-every-four-years affair; it’s the culmination of a democratic way of life that prioritizes involvement in our government. Only voting in well-publicized elections that generate table chatter indicates that we only vote when it is popular to do so. But elections aren’t like the Olympics or the World Cup, and it’s demeaning to our system of government to treat them on the same level as these events.

We all were given the choice between registering in our hometowns and Cambridge, so supposedly we have some connection to the place where we vote. If you root for the Yankees or Mets, get angry when someone says Boston is the cleaner city and can’t go to ‘Nochs without saying, “You know the best place for pizza is really New York,” then you should probably be voting in the mayoral election this fall. Along the same lines, anyone who cares about their hometown can best demonstrate this by helping to decide its future. It’s a right that’s valuable, and one we give up too easily.

Anita J Joseph ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, is a sophomore in Leverett House.