One Voter's Apathy

While looking at campaign posters for the European Parliament Election a couple of weeks ago, I started thinking about the upcoming American Presidential Election and what I would need to do to be able to vote from overseas.

I went out on the Web and found the web site for the Fedreal Voting Assistance Program and spent most of one afternoon reading all the rules and regulations.

The first thing that I learned is that I must vote according to the last place where I was registered to vote and then I must follow the guidelines for that state. For me that is Mississippi. There is, of course, paperwork to fill out, a journey to the Embassy (or Consulate) to get the paperwork notarized, and trips to the post office involved. Here it sounds simple, but add on the required deadlines and it suddenly began to look to me like a major hassle.

As previously discussed, I don't like Bush and I am about 98% sure that Mississippi will go Republican in this election, as they did in the last one. I quickly realized that I was asking myself if the whole thing was worth the time and effort I would need to put into it, since for all intents and purposes, by not voting Republican in Mississippi, my vote won't count anyway. And while I think Bush's foreign policy stinks, I am not sure Kerry's would be much better as he would have so much fence-mending to do that nothing would really happen. As for domestic issues, I still glance over the Internet to find out what they are, but they just don't really matter that much to me anymore.

I have voted in every presidential election and in a few special elections (one was for the possible flag change in Mississippi) since I turned 18 (1992). As a kid, I always looked forward to voting as a way to participate in democracy. As a teenager when I was discovering my feminist side, I was determined to vote whenever there was an election to exercise the right that so many women had worked so long and hard for. But as I grew up, politics really didn't interest me all that much and even before the Election Fiasco of 2000, I was quite cynical about the whole process.

Webster defines "apathy" as "lack of emotion or interest," and that may be exactly what compels me this time to exercise my right to vote by not doing it.