Retiring from Voting

I'm thinking about retiring from political voting to give others a chance to vote, especially young people, to pursue other projects, and to spend more time with my family.

November 2013 may have been my last vote. Month 11 and year 13, a couple nice prime numbers. That's a good mathematical time to retire.

My main reason to go to the polls has been to select local candidates and to vote on local issues. Statewide issues are secondary. I don't care much for anything at the federal level, which seems to occupy most people's time.

I've been mostly interested in municipal and county politics, but even this interest has waned in the past few years. Although plenty of local political fodder exists to keep media and fans fascinated, it has become repetitive and boring after observing Toledo and Lucas County politics since 2001. The names may change, slightly, but the responses by pols and most voters remain the same.

The number of Toledoans voting for local candidates and issues has dropped significantly, since 2005. And the 2005 turnout numbers were much lower compared to participation back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Of course, Toledo's population has declined significantly over the past 20 to 30 years.

Even in 2013, plenty of eligible voters existed in Toledo, but only 25 percent voted in the November 2013 election, which elected a new Toledo mayor and the six at-large Toledo City Council seats. Obviously, voting is not the only way to help a city. In fact, voting may be the least that someone can do.

But if one believes that elections are important, then the mayoral and at-large council election is Toledo's most important vote.

It's interesting how the same names or the same family names remain active and successful in Toledo and Lucas County politics. A few new people sneak in briefly, but it's not easy to crack the one-party, politically-dominant machine that is so big that it has two local factions. Even within this party, if a candidate upsets the party only a little, then that candidate loses machine support at the next election.

If I lose interest at the local level, then I definitely don't care about politics at any other level.

I think that we'll create our own projects to help improve the city in a small way. And we'll rejoin groups that do good work at the local level, like we did in the past. I used to tutor adults in the library's Read for Literacy program. I'd like to do that again for adults and/or students. A teaching gene runs in our family.

Since I stopped working at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory in November 2012, I'm not "teaching" anymore. Educating students and adults about nature, mainly birds, is part of the BSBO's mission.

My 2007 post titled Theory - The non-voters are happier than the voters, which included my comments or theories from a 2005 ToledoTalk.com thread and my little "poem" from 2008.

Vote.
Don't vote.
Makes no difference.
Happy people versus unhappy people.
Non-voters are more enlightened and cheerful than voters.
What you don't know can't hurt you, which leads to ignorance is bliss.
Too much time required to know the issues.
Take a class or volunteer.
Visit family, friends.
Diet, exercise.
Live.

#toledo - #ohio - #politics - #blog_jr