Voters giving the finger

Bill Page writing in the Kane County Chronicle today.

I don't understand why people don't vote, and I never will. It is the one activity that defines us as a democracy, and the one denied so many other people in the world. When open elections were held in Afghanistan and Iraq, we were inundated with images of beaming citizens proudly holding up their dyed fingers as proof they had voted. In Kane County, we seem to be using a similar hand signal to show our disdain for the whole process.

I've been one of those who thought if someone's too lazy to vote then we're better off without them. But when I called it quits election night, you would have been hard pressed to find a precinct that had gone beyond a single digit turnout.

It's not healthy for our politics.

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The Economist did a survey of Chicago last week. A good review but ultimately not optimistic one. Here are a few paragraphs from it,

RUNNING Chicago is no easy task. Even knowing who is responsible for what is difficult enough. The metropolitan area covers six or nine Illinois counties, depending on where you draw the lines, and more if you take in the sprawl in neighbouring Indiana and Wisconsin. The smallest of these areas, the six-county one, encompasses (at a recent count) some 113 townships, 272 municipalities, 303 school districts and 587 special-purpose governments, including individual authorities for such matters as cemeteries, street lighting and TB sanatoria—and, it is often pointed out, 13 mosquito-abatement districts.
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A system involving nearly 1,300 units of government, serving some 8.5m people, is bound to be fragmented and inefficient. Worse, the dependence on the property tax encourages these mini-governments to compete with each other for expensive developments, which in turn reinforces white flight and suburban sprawl. The suburbs generally have little love for the city itself, often overlooking the benefits of their proximity to it while bemoaning the traffic, the pollution, the aircraft noise and above all any designs on their tax base.

Daley comes out pretty well and nice discussion on some econmoic turn arounds with trading, services, transportation, and the influx of hispanics and overall population growth as America's index of urban prosperity. But the author says we've hit the limit and ends with,

But Chicago, like almost all America's older cities, still faces the prospect of decline, or at best stasis, unless it can find the elixir of urban life—how to grow richer without growing bigger. Failing that, it must content itself with the knowledge that it has succeeded better in reversing decline than anyone else—and that its broad smile is even more attractive than its erstwhile broad shoulders.

Our non-voting voters are going to have to quite giving pols the fingers and accept some responsibility if we want to do more that reverse decline and grow the economy without growing bigger.