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Volume 27, Issue 3, August 26, 2004

Opinion

Voting is only for the grown and sexy


Crystal Preston
Columnist

Lately I have been noticing the dozen or more organizations focusing on registering 18 to 24-year-olds to vote.

If you are between these ages, you have noticed, too, because you can’t walk more than two feet on campus, in LoDo and any concert without some Avril Lavigne look-alike asking you if are registered to vote. And if you know me (and you don’t considering this is only my second column), you know that these groups piss me off.

These groups are trying to make voting “cool, hip and sexy”. Todd Oldham and DKNY Jeans T-shirts, TV ads directed by Kevin Smith, concerts with artist no one has ever heard of with special appearances by the artists that you really want to see and P. Diddy threatening to kill you. You’re young, apathetic and the only way you will go vote is if your clothing or television tells you to do it.

I do applaud these organizations for focusing on a group of people who normally don’t vote; but the fact is, voting is not cool, hip and certainly not sexy. It shouldn’t be seen as boring either. Voting is a right all Americans have (well all of us who haven’t killed someone).

It’s a right we should cherish because people have fought, bled and died for it. At the very least, voting should be viewed in the same category as driving. You can’t wait to do it for the first time and after the excitement wears off, it then becomes a normal part of your life. Do the Black Eyed Peas hand out driver permits at their concerts? No, and I don’t think they should have to register people to vote either.

If you think voting is boring, stupid or un-cool, then you know what? Don’t do it. No one should have to cater to you, standing out on the street pleading with you to do something you should be glad you are born with the right to do. This November, don’t vote. If enough people don’t, I will be the only one voting. Then gay circus animals will get married and perform all over Denver and I will become President.

Though the thought of finally having control of the country and lesbian horses living together in legal bliss makes me very happy; it would be bittersweet. It wouldn’t be as satisfying to have all that knowing that other people didn’t want it, too. I mean, who would go see the gay circus animals with me? The Secret Service? I don’t think so. So, if you are 18, 30 or 95 get off your ass, register and vote in November. It doesn’t take that much time or effort.

But don’t vote because you got a T-shirt or some celebrity in a commercial said you should. Vote because it’s your right. Vote for others around the world who can’t. Vote so I will stop sounding like one of those motivational posters you see in the doctor’s office.
November 2, 2004. Vote.

If you don’t, P. Diddy is going to come to your house and shoot you or make you walk to Brooklyn to get him some cheesecake.