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The primary election occurs Tuesday, so get ready to ignore reality, to tell yourself there’s no point in voting because the same people get in, that nothing really changes regardless of who votes for whom.
Be sure to avoid any of the endless options for reading up on the candidates — the newspaper articles, the ads, the TV and radio political shows, the nigh-infinite internet — so that you can honestly say “I’d vote, but I just don’t know the candidates well enough to make an informed choice.”
If someone asks if you voted, change the subject by talking about how big last year’s presidential election was, how it really inspired you to act so that either the establishment could get a big, bloody nose or so that the crazy candidate could be stopped, whichever side you were on in whichever way you perceive it. Steer the conversation away from actually voting until the original question is forgotten, then talk about sports or the weather.
After all, it’s an “off-year” election, which even sounds like you shouldn’t care. You don’t tell “off-color” jokes in polite company, use “off-kilter” scales when weighing something, or be “off-putting” at parties.
It’s not as if the people elected to Luzerne County Council do anything that affects you, like setting tax rates, spending priorities or controlling the system that determines how much your property is worth, or how much you pay for all kinds of fees required to live, marry and work in the county.
It’s not as if the district judge who has jurisdiction where you live will ever hear a case involving you, like, say, helping put away a drunk driver who regularly speeds past your house, or a perp accused of breaking into cars in your neighborhood, or settle a dispute between two people up the road before it escalates into violence.
And it’s certainly not as if the members of your school board do anything meaningful, other than setting the biggest property tax rate you pay, negotiate contracts for the people who teach your neighborhood’s kids and help enforce state rules to assure children are vaccinated against common diseases that otherwise could become pandemics.
Sure, there are those who will extol voting on Tuesday, insisting that local political races are — unlike state and national races — the one’s that most immediately affect your life. They’ll invoke the cliche “this is where the rubber hits the road.” They’ll remind you of all the countries where people don’t get to vote, or where their votes are a sham.
They will lament the 21 percent turn out in 2015 — the last “off-year election.”
Don’t listen. Remind them that car tires are made of synthetic rubber. Say you have a right to not vote, to not participate in democracy, to let a tiny minority of people determine all things political in your municipality, school district and county.
Whether you have the moral right to gripe about the outcome after not participating, well, that’s a different argument.
— Times Leader