Millions of MIA Voters

July 30, 2010

So what’s your excuse for not voting in the August 3 primary — and it better be a good one.

“I forgot,” does not cut it.

“I was too busy doing (fill-in-the-blank),” doesn’t either.

“I just don’t give a hoot,” may be understandable, but is still not acceptable.

The fact is about four million of you will need an excuse, because you will be missing in action.

Look it, gang, if the government threatened to eliminate your right to vote because you did not participate, you’d cry bloody murder. Maybe you should pretend that might eventually happen, to give yourself the motivation to actually show up next Tuesday.

The sorry story is only about 800,000 to one million citizens will exercise their right to vote, even though some huge races are at stake. Five million are registered. In case you missed it, the Republicans and Democrats are picking their candidates for governor, and in some cases the local primary is tantamount to being elected.

Some contend no one in the gov’s race has inspired them to vote. That’s probably true, but even if it is a choice between the lesser of evils, that is no excuse to take a hike.

You have to go back to l982 to find an electorate that was geeked about voting. It was similar to what we have this year, where seven candidates are in the hunt. In ’82 there were seven Democrats running for governor and four Republicans, and they were making lots of news and stirred lots of passions.

A whopping 29 percent of you did show up for that primary, with 1.6 million votes cast. Democrat Jim Blanchard and Republican Richard Headlee emerged the winners.

Another excuse is, “I don’t want to select one party or the other.”

True, you must vote in the R or D primary; ticket splitting is not allowed. Deal with it or elect somebody to change the darn thing.

Organized labor is especially concerned about turning out its members. Those still out of work may have lost their zest for everything, including voting if they have concluded their vote “does not count anyway.”

Look at it this way. If you were going to vote for Virg Bernero and you don’t, that, in effect, is a vote for Andy Dillon — and vice versa — so not voting is not a benign act. It actually helps to determine the outcome, so why not just vote in the first place?

You might be one of those who are angry about the condition of the state — and you know who you are. Think of the election as therapy without the couch and the shrink. Take out your frustrations by getting in the game and doing something about it — and it won’t cost you 90 bucks an hour.

Finally, if you sit it out, you are, in effect, turning the election process over to minority groups on both sides of the political spectrum. Look at a Tea Party person, a died-in-the-wool liberal, or a pro- or anti-abortion voter. These folks have passion, they will show up. They won’t need an excuse, and if you are comfortable with letting them run things, stay at home.

And if nothing else can motivate you to vote, don’t forget the old adage: You can’t gripe if you don’t vote.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s Senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972. He also covers the Capitol and politics for WLNS-TV6 in Lansing.

Tim Skubick Extra Extra… (A weekly bonus only for Dome readers)

Coming to a School Near You
It’s tough to put a face on the Tea Party movement because there are so many faces in it. With so many splinter members of the party, no one is in charge, yet everyone is in charge.

But a guy named Gene Clem, not a country western singer, showed up the other day to do the Off the Record broadcast. The MSM have done such a number on the T.P. movement, you half expected him to show up with horns coming out of his head, fangs and fire coming out of his mouth.

Not quite.

Clem is a retired Army captain and former engineer. In other words, he has a brain, and he put it to good use as he tackled all the gnarly questions the OTR panel tossed at him.

He gave a measured and reasoned performance, did not lose his temper, did not take the bait when someone tried to bait him, and managed to put a face on the movement that looked downright respectable.

And it was not by accident, he revealed after the red light went off.

“Most of the folks in the movement are Type-A personalities,” he said as he launched into his reason for being on the broadcast. As such, he noted, they are not big fans of the media and do not like being challenged (because they know they are right). And so to put a non-confrontational face on the movement, Clem was picked to do the talking.

It was a smart move.

But he did manage to make some news that may give non-Tea Party folks some pause.

After the November elections, Clem wants to move into the schools with a new course on how the U.S. Constitution was formed. He doesn’t think the teachers are doing a good job on that front, and he figures if he can just get into the classroom, his band of retirees with Tea Party roots can correct all that.

Oh my, even he concedes that will be controversial, but he’s on a mission to do it.

“We’re not going away,” he asserts. So school districts and non-T.P. parents be forewarned: someone from the movement will be knocking on your door next winter.

This should be fun to watch.

Here We Go Again
This should shock no one. Lawmakers did nothing over their 14-day 4th of July recess to resolve the budget impasse.

Didn’t they say some of the committees might meet?

They did.

Didn’t they say progress would be made?

Right again.

Did that happen?

Nope.

And now a key Capitol insider is privately confiding that they may not get the budget done by the October 1 legal deadline. Instead of the planets aligning, they seem to be un-aligning, if that is a word. Here we go again.

Ask budget director Bob Emerson, a veteran of many legislative budget battles.

He knows the Senate Republicans want another all-cuts budget, but “the House will not pass an all-cuts budget.”

He contends you can’t balance this mess without new revenue, and he warns the Senate GOP leader that there must be a compromise.

“Senator Bishop can’t have his way on everything no matter how much he stomps and pouts,” Emerson asserts.

Bishop doesn’t object to that characterization, because standing in the way of new revenue is “my role.”

Can you say stalemate?

Can you say government shutdown?

And the only way to avoid saying either of those terms is to adopt a continuation budget, which becomes more likely every day the budget goes unresolved.

In the past, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has said she would veto a budget that continues spending at last year’s already record-low levels.

But will she say it this go-round?

If she does threaten to veto that safety-gap budget, and lawmakers pass one anyway, and if she uses the veto pen, then she will be the one responsible for closing down the government. That would add yet another lousy legacy chapter to the Granholm saga, which means you probably won’t hear any veto threats from her any time soon.