The historic election of last week has been sliced and diced in so many ways that there is hardly anything new to digest but here’s an angle that is often ignored. Our behavior in elections gives us a rare opportunity to learn something about ourselves individually and collectively and here in Michigan there were a wealth of “reveals” about our human behavior and conduct.
Here goes. Civic duty is alive and well in this state. They started counting election day noses back in 1948 and the 79% of you who participated in the recent voting set a new record which was helped tremendously by the election reforms you supported several years ago.
To wit: 2.2 million voted via the mail box and not the voting box. Another 1.2 million voted in person but during the early voting period at your local clerk’s office. Then on election day, doing it the old way, 2 million got in line to cast a ballot along with the 22,000 neverbefore- voters who legally registered to vote on the day of the election That produced a raw number of 5.66 million citizens who got in the game. The other question yet to be answered is where the heck were the rest of you? Over 2 million who were registered to vote, ignored all these opportunities to fulfill one of our democracy’s most sacred rituals. Some could argue it will take more than a note from your mom to explain this dereliction of civic duty.
