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Editor: 

Recently there was an op-ed piece in a local newspaper advocating election study groups wherein people would organize on a local level and dedicate a certain amount of time to gather in each other’s homes to study the candidates and issues together before going out to vote. The idea is to help voters make more informed choices and, of course, to involve more people in the process. This is a well-intentioned idea, if only it would do what it is intended to do ... get people out to vote.  

Pardon my cynicism, but people are about as likely to foray out into their communities and initiate these groups as they are to participate in voluntary automobile moratoriums. Sadly, while we talk the talk, espousing our wondrous freedoms, expending billions upon billions of dollars and god knows how many lives in the name of “participatory” democracy, more than half our population can’t sacrifice an evening’s television viewing and a few minutes at the polls to participate in those freedoms and the responsibilities that should go with citizenship in a democracy. 

Our approach to voter participation is, in fact, as insidiously lackadaisical as our laissez-affaire political-economic corporate paradigm and will likely reap the same disastrous results if we don’t get serious about demanding awareness and engagement from all the people all the time, not just some of the people, some of the time. It is because we tolerate such an apathetic citizenry that disasters like Enron become possible, in the first place. Does anyone seriously believe that if there was a 90 percent voter turnout, these corporate clowns would be, in any way, as likely to attempt the ruse they did? Or, that George Bush, their conduit to power, would be sitting where he is today? Our self-righteous distortions about freedom (in the most passive sense of it) enables these avatars of avarice to remain so fiscally out of touch with everyday people and cavalierly dismissive of the consequences of their actions. 

The only way to bring the astonishing number of non-participants into the political process is to legislate that participation as part of continuing citizenship. We demand driver tests of some sort every so many years. Why not mandate voter education exams as well? Ultimately, isn't ignorance as lethal to a country and its communities as is recklessness behind the wheel? Multitudes of human beings have given their lives to support and maintain our democratic process. Citizens who are politically indifferent or too self-involved to engage in that process should be deported to countries where they do the voting for you. 

Marc Winokur 

Oakland