February 05, 2008

Vote or Die

As I sit here in my darkened 25th-floor apartment, staring blankly out at a completely frozen Lake Michigan, and anxiously awaiting the results of perhaps the most important Super Tuesday in my lifetime, I cannot help but be struck by the gross absurdity of the voting ritual that we idolize as the dearest representation of our collective freedom. It is a paradox I have puzzled over for years, never arriving upon a satisfactory answer: why do people, myself included, continue to partake in this farce that idealistic morons would have us believe is our civic duty? Put a different way—a way that is more suitable for the Realm—what incentive does any one have to ever vote? And absent any such incentive, why do people expend resources to do so anyway?