{"id":16785,"date":"2015-03-18T11:58:08","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T15:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=16785"},"modified":"2015-03-18T11:58:08","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T15:58:08","slug":"why-bother-voting-in-city-elections-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2015\/03\/why-bother-voting-in-city-elections-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Why bother voting in city elections? Here’s why"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Do people blow off voting because they think nothing will change, or does nothing change because so many people don’t bother to vote?<\/p>\n

California, and Los Angeles in particular, are not alone in recording appalling voter turnout numbers. It’s happening in many parts of the United States, particularly in big cities. And in fairness, there weren’t exactly any political heavyweights to draw attention to Los Angeles’ primary election this time.<\/p>\n

But when 9 out of 10 registered voters skip an election in a service-deficient city with a projected budget deficit of $160 million, and several thousand votes are enough to win a City Council seat in a metropolis of 4 million people, why even bother with elections?<\/p>\n

Why not just have public employee labor unions and developers each appoint a handful of council members and call it a day?<\/p>\n

10 years later, L.A.’s skid row remains an urban dystopia<\/p>\n

Oh, wait a minute. That’s already happening.<\/p>\n

When I stood on a downtown Los Angeles street the day after the election, trying almost in vain to find anyone who had voted, I heard all the usual excuses for sitting this one out.<\/p>\n

Some people didn’t know there was an election.<\/p>\n

Some were too busy to vote or miffed because they were asked to vote so often.<\/p>\n

Some abstained because they hadn’t bothered to research issues or candidates.<\/p>\n

And some thought voting is a waste of time because campaign promises die quick deaths, special interests rule and the system is rigged.<\/p>\n

Yeah, it is rigged, especially since the diabolical U.S. Supreme Court decision making it even easier for money to corrupt the process. But I think we’re too quick to give cynical non-voters a pass, as if their can’t-be-bothered attitude is a badge of honor. Is it really cynicism, or is it ignorance, apathy or good old-fashioned laziness?<\/p>\n

>>Read Original Article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do people blow off voting because they think nothing will change, or does nothing change because so many people don’t bother to vote? California, and Los Angeles in particular, are not alone in recording appalling voter turnout numbers. It’s happening in many parts of the United States, particularly in big cities. And in fairness, there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,68],"tags":[1787,243,1633],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16785"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16791,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16785\/revisions\/16791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}