We were watching a Gabriel Iglesias comedy special the other day, where he does a bit on voting. "Americans love to vote" he says, "We don't vote for Presidents. We vote for American Idol." He goes on to speculate what would happen if we held a presidential election by letting the candidates go on TV for an hour, and halfway through the show, put up the 800 number to call to vote.
Which got us to thinking. How might life be different if we could get just 50% of our local eligible voters to turn out for an election? Would the current power base(s) shift with that amount of general citizen turnout? Does anyone care about flyers, lawnsigns, ads and debates anymore? Or should we just have a reality show shootout for elected officials? When we consider election changes in the coming months, we think that the focus should be on getting the maximum number of local voters to cast ballots for the final election.
To see a video clip of Gabrial Iglesias' bit, go here:
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=90721
There's a Bill Clinton punchline at the end of the bit that's pretty funny, no matter which side of the aisle you're on.
1 comment:
The proble is that local elections are decided by whispers and not by open dialog with residents. There are no real open forums where residents can meet and talk to candidates. There is only a limitied debate format controled by the chamber to help guide people in the direction of a specific set of candidates. We also have no real news cycle (until the blogs) to see how candidates are going to react to situations. In a communtiy with the issues we have, we need to do better than mailing consultant driven pieces to our residents. We deserve some face time.
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