Stop Rocking the Vote

Rudy Takala

During this election year, many attempts to shove ballots into the hands of new voters are being made. Observers say that there are 100 organizations of various stripes targeting young people in the United States. A recent example of this spectacle is New York’s Monroe County East End Festival, where county Democrats worked in collaboration with High Falls Brewery to offer small amounts of beer to anyone who registered to vote. After registering to vote, people went into a real voting booth and picked the brew they liked the most. The promotion was called “Register Your Taste.”

“The festival is a great place to promote voting because of the captive audience,” said Christopher Burns, co-founder of the Rochester Young Professionals. “Young people like to drink and politics is not something they usually think about.”

“I think there are other ways to motivate people to vote other than give them alcohol,” said Elaine Milton, director of the chemical dependency clinic at the Family Service of Rochester Inc.

On an aside note, I must say that I believe it to be indicative of something truly sad when the state of politics in a nation is such that voter registration methods cause one to get on the bad side of chemical dependency center employees.

That being said, the statement of Christopher Burns’ warrants a reply. He asserts that because young people are disinterested in voting, it is an imperative that they be allured with beer. But then again, more young people are disinterested in piloting commercial jets than are disinterested in voting. Should we then offer to give the youth of America beer in exchange for piloting Boeing 747s? This would certainly be no more preposterous than offering beer as an incentive to vote. Misguided political policies have the potential to result in consequences far more disastrous than any threat posed by a misguided aircraft.

Beer, however, is not the only attempt being made at coercing the apathetic youth of America into voting. There are many more organizations, perhaps the most well-known of which is the MTV-sponsored Rock the Vote (www.rockthevote.com). One cannot be positive of such a thing, but it appears as though the name “Rock the Vote” is a subtle reference to the mental condition of its potential target voters. Its aim is to get more rocks -- or rather, people with intelligence equal to that of rocks -- to vote. MTV wants to register twenty million voters nationwide; all of whom are, in effect, little more than rocks who vote.

These rocks are not the only youthful targets in this election. Rap the Vote is a subdivision of Rock the Vote and is also attempting to get masses of ignorant denizens to cast their ballots in November. A number of rockers and rappers such as Jada Pinkett Smith and Snoop Dogg recently went on the campaign trail to raise awareness of elections. Stars such as these will be touring the nation throughout 2004 to support the event of elections.


The biggest problem with America today is not an insufficient level of political involvement on the part of youth, or for that matter, on the part of anyone else. The biggest problem with America today is that idiots who shouldn’t be voting are voting. Too many people unquestioningly accept the idea that more sentient beings voting is a good thing. Perhaps it is not.

The founders of this nation would never have resorted to such pathetically desperate measures as these. They did not wander around begging people to “rock their vote.” They did not offer free beer in exchange for people’s willingness to vote. They didn’t even ensure free beer to the people who fought in the revolution. They would likely be disgraced to today consider themselves a part of the same American nationality as the pathetic human beings who are a part of these campaigns.

We need to stop giving beer to rocks and telling them to vote. Some people just aren’t good at deciding the fate of nations. If a person is incapable of ascertaining what month a presidential election is held in and then walking to a polling place, it is quite likely that this person is one of those types. The ignorance that they are victim to is not one susceptible to so easy a correction as a “Snoop Dogg” giving them free beer and telling them to “rock their vote.”

And that ignorance is fine, so long as they don’t try to run other people’s lives. If they don’t want to vote, that’s a good thing. Let them be. America will be better off for it.