Take a look at the chart to the left. Over the course of the last thirty years less than 40% of registered voters have actually voted in any mid-term election. If this trend continues you may actually have a better chance of having diabetes than voting by the middle of this century. I wonder, is voting really that painful?
In past posts we have discussed several tools available in this election to help you out. These tools range from fact checking tools like Politifacts Truth O-Meter to contribution trackers like InfluenceExplorer. There is no excuse not to be informed.
Well, what if you don’t know where to vote? I know, there are tons of applications for the roughly 30% of Americans that have smartphones, but what about your average person that just has a regular cellphone? As FastCompany reported, you can now text “where”, or “donde”, to 30644 and receive a message back asking you for your address. Fill that in and it will tell you where the nearest voting station is located.
I know, I know…. What other excuses can you possibly come up with to not vote today? We’ve told you how to find the nearest voting location. We’ve given you examples of where you can find more information about the candidates, the issues… Maybe you need motivation, you need to see others actually getting out and voting. We have options for this too. If you join the Government in Action community on Facebook you can post your own pictures, and find pictures of others, getting out the vote. Still not inspired? Has anyone ever told you that you are a difficult human being? 
Alright, are you one of the 4 million Foursquare users? If yes, when you check into a polling station and include #ivoted in your shout out you will receive a special badge. Hey, for some people this is all it takes. You can also navigate to the Election Page on Foursquare to see how fellow Foursquare users are doing nation-wide, and state-wide, in terms of getting out to vote.
Stop making excuses and vote. See you out there.
John
Originally posted on Government in Action.
I vote at most every opportunity and have done so for probably about 40 years. My wife and I were recently encouraging our oldest son to do so. At the age of 39, he has never voted and still wouldn’t. Why? Primarily because there are no candidates that he is willing to vote for!
Unfortunately, many of my votes that I can remember were for the ‘lesser of two evils’. I remember thinking in 1996 that it was deplorable that the U.S. could come up with no better candidates for President than Bill Clinton and Bob Dole … I thought it said a lot about the deep hole that our country was in … and that whole continues to get deeper!
I hear you Sam. However,always better to elect the lesser of two evils vs.electing the greater of the two.