The topic for today is voting. Or, more precisely, not voting.
Voting holds a lot of implications. It is, at its basic core, an agreement to a set of terms. When people — politicians, school board members, university trustees, friends — grovels for votes, they are simply asking you to agree with them.
When Barack Obama beat John McCain in the last presidential election, he won because a certain number of people agreed with him more than they agreed with McCain.
Some would like to complicate the simple process of voting by equating a vote as something more than a simple agreement. This is bogus.
A vote is nothing more than an agreement between the voter and the ideas of the person who’s asking for the vote.
As much as this country is associated with democracy, not a lot of people living in it actually vote.
For instance, out of 49,679 people eligible to vote in the UF Student Government elections last fall, only 10,469 actually voted. This was considered a record turnout, which has the same level of irony as William Hung calling himself a singer.
All it takes to vote is a Gator 1 Card, and polling places are located all over campus. In addition, the tidal mass of green and blue fliers that have been annoyingly shoved at you for the past two weeks all have specific polling information listed for each college.
Despite all this, a lot of you won’t vote.
Which is a pity. Because even if you don’t vote, the people who are elected still get to screw around with $14.4 million of your money.
So you didn’t vote last semester or the semester before? Too bad, because the people who were voted in, namely the Unite Party, have both the power and the will to increase your student fees to pay for a $45 million renovation and expansion to the Reitz Union you’ll never see. They also continue to rip you off by spending $88,000 of students’ money on perks like free BlackBerrys for themselves.
Again, your vote is a sign of your agreement.
Do you agree with the Student Alliance that class sizes should be posted online, and that Gator 1 partnerships off campus should be expanded? Do you agree with them that SG-funded RecSports should implement an online signup system to cut down on long lines, and that the SG budget should be audited to ensure transparency? Do you agree with them that open container ordinances should be fought, and do you agree that SG perks should be cut from the budget and the money saved should go back to the students?
Most importantly, do you agree that $130 more per year in fees is more than we can afford, and that SG needs to look into every alternative before creating an expensive new Reitz Union fee?
If you agree with the Student Alliance on these positions, then vote for them. If you don’t agree with them, then by all means vote for the Unite Party.
Either way, at least vote.
Full Disclosure: Matthew Christ is running with the Student Alliance party to represent the college of journalism and communications.
Matt Christ is a political science and journalism sophomore. His columns appear every other Wednesday.
