“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
Rush
If you were to ask any passing stranger on the street if they were political or paid much attention at all to politics, a vast majority of them would say no. Some might go as far as to say they can’t stand politics, even hate politics.
All around me I see people who pay very little attention to politics, and some who don’t even want to talk or think about it. They might vote, sometimes not knowing one thing about who they are voting for (Olivia Cortez got almost 2% in the Pearce recall in AZ although she had withdrawn), and feel like they have done their civic duty. Some don’t think about their party affiliation or why they think they are that party. They could probably not tell you the platform or voting records of their party or candidates. They think they identify with a party and vote that way.
I am a political person. I see everything in my life through politcs. Because, whether people realize it or not, politics are involved in every little aspect of their lives: The schools your children attend and what they learn, the food you eat, the clothes you wear (and sometimes what is acceptable to wear), the places you shop and where the things you buy come from, the medicine you take, the business you own or the job you have and how much you get paid, what utilities you use to heat your home, the news you read, the commercials you watch, the safety of cars you drive, the fuel you use and the roads you drive on, the water you drink, the air you breath and whether you live or die.
So if you were to ask me, I would say I am a very political person.
But many people just don’t vote or register to vote in this country. The reasons given are many. A survey done of California gives us an interesting look at non voters (I could not find a date on this survey but others I looked at also highlight the same reasons for nonvoters):
The survey found that 28 percent of infrequent voters and 23 percent of those unregistered said they do not vote or do not register to vote because they are too busy.
Alexander said the survey’s findings might also benefit those campaigns trying to reach infrequent and new voters in advance of the election. The perception that politics are controlled by special interests is widely shared among two-thirds of the survey’s respondents, and represents a significant barrier to voter participation. A feeling that candidates don’t really speak to them was cited as the second leading reason why infrequent voters and nonvoters do not vote.
[Who are the non-voters?
The survey found that nonvoters are disproportionately young, single, less educated and more likely to be of an ethnic minority than infrequent and frequent voters. 40 percent of nonvoters are under 30 years old, compared to 29 percent of infrequent voters and 14 percent of frequent voters. Infrequent voters are much more likely to be married than nonvoters, with 50 percent of infrequent voters married compared to only 34 percent of nonvoters. 76% of nonvoters have less than a college degree, compared to 61 percent of infrequent voters and 50 percent of frequent voters. Among nonvoters, 54 percent are white or Caucasian compared to 60 percent of infrequent voters and 70 percent of frequent voters.
http://www.people-press.org/...
Roughly the same proportions of self-identified Republicans and Democrats are regular voters (41% vs. 39%). But Democrats are more likely to be non-voters: 20% of Democrats say they are not registered to vote, compared with 14% of Republicans; among political independents, 27% say they are not registered to vote.
A registration gap also exists between liberals and conservatives, with 29% of self-described liberals saying they are not registered to vote compared with 20% of moderates and 17% of conservatives. However, there are only modest differences in the percentages of conservatives (38%), moderates (35%) and liberals (34%) who are regular voters.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/...
The good news I found in all of this is that you have more personal power in persuading others to vote than you might think:
Family and friends encourage others to vote
The survey found that family and friends influence how infrequent voters decide to vote as much as daily newspapers and TV news. Among infrequent voters, 65 percent said conversations with their families and local newspapers were influential sources of information when it comes to making voting decisions. Network TV news rated as influential among 64 percent, followed by cable TV news at 60 percent, and conversations with friends at 59 percent. For more than half of the infrequent voters surveyed, phone calls and door-to-door contact by political campaigns are not influential sources of information when deciding how to vote.
The survey also found that family upbringing plays a strong role in determining voting habits as adults. 51 percent of nonvoters surveyed said they grew up in families that did not often discuss political issues and candidates.
To say you aren’t political is to put blinders on and alienate yourself from reality. Every decision and choice you make in your life is political.
So, if someone were to ask me if I was political, I would say, “Isn’t everyone?”