Post Election Gripes

The Santa Barbara Independent & Montrose, CO Daily Press remind us that in Nash's view, if you didn't vote, you have no right to complain. They incorporated his poem, Election Day is a Holiday in a pre-election editorial on why voting matters. Some excerpts followed by a link to the full poem:

People on whom I do not bother to dote
Are people who do not bother to vote...

They have such refined and delicate palates
That they can discover no one worthy of their ballots,
And then when someone terrible gets elected
They say There, that’s just what I expected!

And they go around for four years spouting discontented criticisms
And contented witticisms....

And they have discovered that if you don’t take time out to go to the polls
You can manage very nicely to get through thirty-six holes.
Oh let us cover these clever people very conspicuously with loathing,
For they are un-citizens in citizens’ clothing.

They attempt to justify their negligence
On the ground that no candidate appeals to people of their intelligence,
But I am quite sure that if Abraham Lincoln (Rep.) ran against Thomas Jefferson (Dem.),
Neither man would be appealing enough to squeeze a vote out of them.

Election Day is a Holiday

If Nash's eloquence failed to motivate you to scale back your Election Day outing to 18 holes, your patriotic significant other may have bad news for you...