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Vail Daily letter: Low voter turnout

In the walls of a train station of Buenos Aires, graffiti repeats a shared Latin American problem: “If voting would change something, it would be forbidden.”

Why earlier this month was the overall Eagle County turnout just 38 percent? We vote because we care or because we are scared. The second option would be the most positive explanation. In my country, Argentina, on Election Day, fear draws everyone out of their beds. We are so afraid of what politicians can do that everyone feels the necessity to participate in order to prevent the worst options to prevail. Spoiler alert: Somehow, we always fail.

Hence, low participation in Eagle County may be a good signal. Voters’ dreams are not affected by who is ruling the Town Council. You wake up on Wednesday and you can start reading the newspaper on the weather page.



But we also need to explore the other possible reason. If we vote because we care, it means that we don’t vote when we don’t care. And that’s not good. It may speak about a failure on the agenda that candidates and Town Council are following. There may be issues that are not being debated, problems that are not being addressed, and you are not going to waste your time voting for solutions for problems you don’t think are problems.

I’m not from here, therefore it’s not up to me to know why such a low turnout. Still, I share the Rodriguez Zapatero idea (former Spanish prime minister): “If we live together, together we shall decide.”

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Michele Pennella

Avon


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