Sunday, November 07, 1999
How to make everyone vote
BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
This year voters in Maineville re-elected a mayor who is a convicted felon — making him the first politician in our neck of the woods to plead guilty before being elected.
On the same day, Ohio University students in Athens, Ohio repealed a local ordinance that banned couches on porches. Next year, they will probably vote for mandatory annual beer riots on campus.
I'm not griping. I'm jealous. I haven't had an opportunity to vote against a shameless felon since the last time President Clinton ran. And if Athens residents can vote on porch sofas, why can't my precinct vote on aesthetic preferences — no spandex outdoors on anyone over 40; capital punishment for punks who disfigure mailboxes; outlaw car stereos that are loud enough to interfere with flight patterns.
Instead we get school board candidates who think they are running for governor and governors who think they are running for school board. We get lots of “issues.” Most of us have enough “issues,” thank you.
We get little stickers that make us feel smug and smarter than non-voters. But maybe we aren't. Walking through cold, pouring rain so we can mark a ballot while holding our noses like tourists at a sewage treatment plant doesn't sound so intelligent.
Maybe non-voters stay home in embarrassingly large numbers because they are waiting to vote on something that matters to them — like the number of cable channels that carry Jerry Springer. Maybe we need weekly elections (campaigns are endless anyway) on things everyone cares about. Such as:
• Let's vote on the Bengals. If voters were smart enough to approve a tax increase to build a new stadium, we should be smart enough to elect a new owner and coach. The way things look now, Mike Brown could run unopposed and come in last. Coach Bruce Coslet could be defeated in a landslide by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Obviously, knowing something about football is not a requirement for either job.)
• Let's vote on Jim Gray and Pete Rose.
Issue 1: Pete Rose cuts a deck of cards with Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to get in the Hall of Fame — yes or no?
Issue 2: Jim Gray's next assignment is to ask Saddam Hussein where he hides his weapons of mass destruction — yes or no?
While we're at it, let's vote to replace network news nitwits with people who know the difference between opinion and news.
• Let's vote on the federal budget. Democrats say a nation that is $5 trillion in debt can't afford even a 1 percent cut in spending. Let's vote for a 90 percent cut in Democrats.
• How about voting on “art”? Artists who demand public money to insult taxpayers with garbage, fear that popular tastes would demand more Elvis on velvet and less elephant dung.
And their point is. . .?
• Let's vote to allow anyone who says taxes are too low to voluntarily pay more — begining with my share.
• Let's vote on the minimum wage. I propose setting it 20 percent below the average for the top 10 salaries in the NBA or HMOs, whichever is higher.
• Let's vote for a restraining order to keep Bill Cunningham at least 500 yards away from the board of elections. His election-night reports on WLW-700 sound like Pete Rose interviewing Jim Gray.
• Let's vote on the tobacco money. Residents in Washington voted on Tuesday to require an election for any tax increase, because the state sat on a $1 billion surplus and refused to cut taxes. Ohio had a $1 billion surplus, and now has a $10 billion tobacco settlement — and Gov. Bob Taft wants to spend it all.
All in favor of tax cuts in Ohio, signify by saying, “Don't blame me, I voted for Lee Fisher.”
• Let's vote to make voting mandatory for all legal, non-incarcerated citizens over age 18 who are not residing in California, New York or other mental institutions.
(Anyone who has voted for Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy more than once would have voting privileges suspended for life; votes for Bob Dole, Ross Perot or Jesse Ventura would be grounds for a 10-year suspension on charges of public indecency in a polling booth.)
• Finally, let's vote to require every American to stop and say thank-you to a veteran next Thursday.
I will attend the Veteran's Day ceremonies in Blue Ash. It will probably be as cold as a tomb. But the men who fought for our freedom to vote will stand at attention, some leaning on canes, toughing it out in their thin VFW jackets under a gunmetal November sky while a bugler plays taps — because they remember what the rest of us find so easy to forget:
Don't take your freedom for granted.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm
Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
