A Brexit Foreshadow
We've been swamped and sharing more in Twitter-space than adding more developed articles or commentary here. We'll be back here shortly with lots of news to share with everyone. For the moment, let's mark this as one of our shortest and to the point posts ever. '-)
Let's agree first and foremost that we Americans have no business telling the Brits what to do, right?
But if you want to take a look at the potential for an American political disaster, look no further than Brexit. Why? Because 72% of 18-24-year old UK citizens favored the "stay" side of the argument... yet over half of them failed to show up at the polls. You read that right.
It's their future decided, but in failing to actually cast the simplest ballot ever, that segment of the population let older, arguably more conservative (frightened and xenophobic) voters decide a fate that may well have repercussions for decades to come. And here is the foreshadow.
What happened in the U.K. could happen here too, if voters fail to cast their ballot either at the polls or absentee. Depending on your view, we could end up with a President that many, if not most, find unacceptable. So, perhaps this is more a shout out to Rock The Vote, USVote, TurboVote, Brigade, Vote.Org and a host of other civic engagement organizations, but getting people to show up and cast a ballot is unbelievably important.
Sure, we firmly believe that higher integrity, lower cost, easier to use voting systems will help restore participation in a big way. But that won't be ready by November, and regardless of the effort to cast a ballot, actually going through with casting a ballot has never been more important than it will be some 130 days from now (or less depending on when you see this). The TrustTheVote Project can only very indirectly help that. Its really showtime for our colleagues mentioned above.
So, let's agree next that Brexit foreshadows what could happen if U.S. voters fail to show within the number of days we're ticking off below. And that wouldn't be good for anyone, let alone our democracy.
