Why don't Americans vote?

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While I agree that voting should not be mandatory, as it is in Australia, why don't more US citizens cast their vote? Is is because they think the system is a sham? Do they think the result is foretold by big business interests?

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.

Looking in from outside the US, recent elections certainly appear to be rigged.

All exit polls, and even foreign interests had Kerry pegged to win by a landslide.

On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(28) In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.

And I thought Australians were a parochial bunch of bastards. Is this paragraph indicative of US separatism?

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''

There's a rank smell about the whole fiasco. I think Kerry would have been a the lesser of two evils, but what's the point of having an election, or going to cast your vote, if the "result" is foretold?

And these are the same honkies who are trying to spread democracy?

Full article here.

 

[ImWithStupid]

Being able to vote was one of the only things I was looking forward to when I turned 18. I have not missed an election since.

I actually don't think that everyone should vote. If you don't pay attention to politics or the issues being voted on or are educated on the views of the candidates then you have no business voting. You will do nothing but negate the vote of an educated voter.

 

[phreakwars]

I say there is 3 reasons..

• [ ]Can't get to the polls
  [ ]Don't know how or when to register / where to go
  [ ]Don't give a ****

I have ALWAYS voted since I became 18, it is my right as an American to ***** about America, but it is my DUTY as a free American to have a say in who governs my life.

Maybe my vote didn't mean squat, and the person I wanted in lost, but I will still vote in the hopes that a majority of free Americans feel the same way I do on OTHER issues..

You can't win em all, but hopefully next time around Americans won't be fooled into voting for a party who claims an allegiance to "***" to win over the hearts of people who live in fear.

Uhm... I won't mention any names...

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[skategreen]

I hadn't realized that as a dual citizen living in Canada, I could vote in US elections as an American abroad. Just too ****** uniformed to know that. Hence, I'd never voted in the States.

I was ever so pleased to vote against Bush as my first American vote cast.

Wish I could have done it his first go round as well.

I'll vote because it's a nice novelty and it gives me ******** rights.