Voting for Perks

The ability to vote in [mostly] free and fair elections is something we Americans have been [mostly] blessed since the day we declared independence and sent King George III’s men packing back to England.  (Skipping over the details of women’s sufferage and the whole 3/5 thing, don’t get bent out of shape, it’s just not the point of this blog.)

 

For the last couple of hundred years the perks of voting have remained the same.  Now they are good perks, don’t get me wrong.  We get to promote our best and brightest individuals to the highest office in the Free World.  They then work tirelessly for the betterment of every citizen and sometimes even manage to make lives better in far off countries that most of us cannot find on a map.  Places we’ve never heard of like Iraq or Tripoli or Viet Nam or somewhere.  That’s a pretty nice perk to voting.  Make our lives better and help the third-world children to boot, that’s a good deal.

 

Some perks are not quite as altruistic, but still nice.  Take for instance the entertainment value of Presidential Elections.  This must be a perk because it keeps expanding.  Ever since the Lincoln/Douglass debate sold out train stations across the US, Americans have been clamoring for Presidential Election theater.  Newspapers used the Adams/Jefferson election to hock fish wrap all the way back in 1796.  Every year the perk of election entertainment gets a little more expanded.  Modern times have seen televised debates and lavish conventions/pep-rallies.  This year a few examples of the theater perk include a 24-hour election radio channel (P.O.T.U.S. ’08 on XM radio), more televised debates than I can count, a primetime Pres-o-mercial, and daily fodder for 24-hour talk shows and news broadcasts.  We like Presidential theater so much we can’t even wait four years for it to start.  This year a few states helped out and moved the caucuses up a few months so we could extend the entertainment season to over a year of presidential intrigue. 

 

Another perk comes in the form of cold hard cash.  This must be a perk, I’m just not sure how it works.  I mean when you spend this much money on something someone, somewhere has to be cashing in.  This year the candidates spent over a BILLION bucks on the race.  This perk is a little trickier to understand then the last one, but someone, somewhere is making out like gangbusters every four years.  Maybe there’s something for me in here…I think I’ll spend the next four years figuring out the proper way to print signs and buttons and bumper–stickers and stuff.  That’s where the money is getting spent right…?

 

The last perk is entirely new.  How’s this grab ya, vote for someone and get free stuff.  You heard me right they’re giving away free stuff to voters.  “Oh, you voted today?  Good job, don’t worry about feeling good having exercized your civic duty and all that ethereal stuff, here have a taco.”  Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea, and I like encouraging people to vote.  It’s just that this seems awfully close to bribery.  Here are a few of the voting giveaways:

Starbucks – get a free coffee for voting.

Krispy Kreme – get a free doughnut for voting.

Ben & Jerry’s – get a free scoop of ice cream for voting.

California Taco – get a free taco for voting (and tacos aren’t even American Food!)

Various Bars – get a free beer for voting (you’ll have to find your own bar, I don’t want all of you crowding my haunts).

There are more, but I got tired of looking for them.  I think you get the picture.

 

Has anyone noticed the regression of perks?  They go from the original idea of making the world a better place to focusing on frivolous entertainment to virtual bribery.  I’ll think more about that as I stumble into the third Starbucks within a square mile of my house, licking sugar off of fingers trying to figure out how to work a cage-match into the primaries and worrying about how our next president will help the poor deprived people of Country-Not-Yet-Determined.