voter apathy

["Joan Klingler" <joank@moscow.com>]

For those of you essaying about voter apathy, I submit the following 
that was used in a LWV newsletter a few years back (with permission 
from the publisher). By the way, I don't believe the polling place makes a 
huge difference in voting.  If it's important enough for us, we'll get there. 
And let's face it, how difficult can it be when we live in a town the size of 
Moscow? Excuses, excuses!

Election Day is a Holiday
by Ogden Nash

People on whom I do not bother to dote
Are people who do not bother to vote.
Heaven forbid that they should ever be exempt
>From contumely, obloquy and various kinds of contempt.
Some of them like Toscanini and some like Rudy Vallee,
But all of them take about as much interest in their right to ballot as their 
right to ballet.
They haven’t voted since the heyday of Miss Russell (Lillian)
And excuse themselves by saying What’s the difference of one vote in 
fifty million?
They have such refined and delicate palates
That they can discover no one worthy of their ballots,
And then when someone terrible gets elected!
They say, There, that’s just what I expected!
And they go around for four years spouting discontented criticisms
And contented witticisms,
And then when somebody to oppose the man they oppose gets 
nominated
They say Oh golly golly he’s the kind of man I’ve always abominated,
And they have discovered that if you don’t take time out to go to the 
polls
You can manage very nicely to get through thirty-six holes.
O let us cover these clever people very conspicuously with loathing,
For they are un-citizens in citizens’ clothing.
They attempt to justify their negligence
On the grounds that no candidate appeals to people of their 
‘integligence,’
But I am quite sure that if Abraham Lincoln (Rep.) ran against Thomas 
Jefferson (Dem.)
Neither man would be appealing enough to squeeze a vote out of them.

Joan Klingler
Co-President
League of Women Voters
PO Box 9535
Moscow ID 83843
208-882-8853
208-882-0727 fax
<joank@moscow.com>
http://community.palouse.net/lwvm/