Old folks vote, generally, to protect rights they think will be lost if they do not vote to protect them. They may be correct.
Young folks – generally – do not show up at the ballot booth because they seem to think they have little to lose. Or have little power in the decision making.
A few years ago, we turned out a large portion of the wastrels in the state legislature. We The People were nearly uniformly unhappy with lawmakers who had, in the dark of night, given themselves a payraise.
[pullquote]Unfortunately for the majority that does not vote, we too often have government by minority rule.[/pullquote]
In the district of my home, our representative seemed to have a different excuse for each audience. He voted for it because he couldn’t stop it, he said. Besides, judges deserved a long-overdue payraise. He deserved a raise to pay for his lawyering education which, he said – after 12 years of being, by his own admission, essentially legislatively useless – would make him more effective representative of his district.