The Politico reports the results of a survey of college students that is supposed to shock and dismay us:
Two-thirds say they’ll do it for a year’s tuition. And for a few, even an iPod touch will do.
That’s what NYU students said they’d take in exchange for their right to vote in the next presidential election, a recent survey by an NYU journalism class found.
Only 20 percent said they’d exchange their vote for an iPod touch.
But 66 percent said they’d forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they’d give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.
But, they also overwhelmingly lauded the importance of voting.
Ninety percent of the students who said they’d give up their vote for the money also said they consider voting “very important” or “somewhat important”; only 10 percent said it was “not important.”
But apparently not as important as an iPod Touch.
Here’s where I come down on this one. Voting is important, but it’s not the sacramental duty that typical Election Day rhetoric makes it out to be. In all honesty, your vote or mine isn’t going to have that much of an influence on a national or statewide election.
I will confess right now that I have been known to skip elections — typically off-year elections where I don’t care who wins or where there isn’t anyone worth voting for — and I don’t feel the least bit guilty for it.
There is no such thing as a “duty” to vote, and the assertion that some make that if you don’t vote you don’t have a right to criticize politicians is equally absurd. Why should I bother voting in an election where I don’t support either of the candidates running when I am sick and tired of choosing the “lesser of two evils” ?
So, if you feel like staying home on Election Day, do it. It’s not the end of the world.
