LETTER: 'Apalled' By Low Voter Turnouts

TO THE EDITOR:

I am constantly appalled a low voter turnouts. It's a symbol or symptom of something but I'm not sure what -- complacency? Self-satisfaction? Diffidence? Insouciance? Abandonment? Lack of hope? Civilizational discontent? Surely people aren't so comfortable and happy with today's elected governments as to simply sit back and let a very very small few determine who is in office! When one considers the blood that was shed to GET the right to vote, and the decades it took to EXTEND that right to citizens of every race and both sexes, one would at least expect that pretty much every eligible person would exercise that precious right every time possible. I believe that I have never missed a single primary or general election beginning in 1972, the first time I was eligible, including non-partisan elections when I lived in the Town of Bel Air. This sort of thing makes me feel, desperate though it might be, that I would be in favor of making voting MANDATORY, if that's what it would take to get people out of their barcaloungers and into the polls!

Michael I. Blum
A Harford County resident since 1984