A lot of what we print in this magazine is diversion. It’s enrichment, definitely, but if you’re shivering underneath an overpass somewhere, the new Girl Talk album and all of the film festivals in the world aren’t going to be of much interest. We’re not strictly necessary. We know that.
So let us take a little space to tell you to do something that is necessary: Vote. Early voting has already begun in Utah, and putting it off until the last minute is not smart. Because of our electoral system, the only votes that will “matter” in the national electoral contest are going to be cast in a dozen or so swing states8212;Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Montana, Missouri and a few others. Utah, which broke for Bush in ’04 by a ludicrous margin, isn’t going to matter in presidential politics anytime soon, especially with only five electoral votes.
But even if your vote for president won’t matter much, down ticket races and ballot initiatives are still enormously important, arguably more so than the presidential contest. Determining who is in the state legislature, congress, county mayorships and even local school boards has a far greater effect on your day-to-day existence than whether or not a left-leaning centrist or a right-leaning centrist gets into the White House.
At any rate, even if things were hopeless, non-participation is not an option. As Ralph Nader (the guy who’ll be getting my vote this year) said, “If you’re not turned onto politics, politics will turn on you.”
Kyle Stegerwald