It's amazing what you learn from the first time you vote. Even though I have voted at times over the last decade, the first time you vote, you expect to go in to select a candidate for a office and get out. In all of the elections that people participate you can sometimes vote for a candidate, depending on if its a general or primary election, but you will find out out anytime you do vote there are propositions and amendments to vote on. Meaning every time you do vote there are cases were you will not be voting for someone to office.
I remember back in the 2004 general election, I went in to vote for a candidate and then looked at the rest of my ballot I had to fill out. About 2/3rds to the majority of the ballot were propositions and amendments to the state of Florida. I had no idea what the hell I was reading. Everything was in a complex language with terms I did not understand. I literally felt like a fool standing there trying to decipher the wordage for the numerous amendments while people were waiting in line for me to finish. By the time I finished darkening the circles, I must have had 5 to 7 sets of elderly citizens on each side of me pass me up. I felt like they knew everything that was going on in the local community. Presumably being retired military seniors while enjoying the emerald waters off the gulf coast of Florida, they probably had nothing better to do then gossip about the same propositions I was having a hard time understanding. My point in being that the generation voted with me that same day understand the proper balance between the national government and state / local governments. They knew that in the local community it was there that they could make the most improvements for their welfare of themselves and those around them.
Moving back to today, I was stunned that out of the 9 amendments that were proposed none were readily talked about in the local news outlets (local talk radio and the local tv stations). The big headlines for the Austin local area were of course the entrenching side affects of Obama care, which has been going strong for the last 3 weeks, and the criticism of a town council member taking an extravagant trip to south Africa using tax dollars. Not once did I hear anything relating to the water conversation projects and amendments that the city and state have debated on, or the reverse mortgages that seniors might be able to apply for during an agreement to purchase another house.
I look back to the wisdom and knowledge that the seniors had when they voted and can only assume one thing: We are being distracted, today, from the local concerns that we should have to enrich the lives around us locally; and sacrificing that distraction to make us focus on the trustworthiness of the national government. In looking up numbers and statistics to support this I went directly to the Pew Research site and pulled up a graph showing how the trustworthiness of the governments has been in rapid decline over the last 50 to 60 years. It shows that back in the late 1950's, when this data was recorded, that 73% of the time, you would be able to trust the national government to to do its job and probably not have to worry about national affairs to the extent to what is reported today. Logically, in the same period, a citizen would have a better understanding of what was going on in the local community; and by the time it was time to vote, people knew what the important topics were and how they would affect the local community as a whole. As one looks at the same graph today, being at a low 19%, I think its safe to presume that the media has focused our attention from local concerns to national concerns.
In all I think this trend hurts the nation in more drastic ways. If you go into vote and see that the majority of a ballot deals with local concerns that are proposed to amend the states constitution, then how much harder is it going to be to focus on a local level then it was 60 years ago?
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