Letters For Democracy

I told myself I wouldn't comment here on letters to the editor in local papers but I changed my mind after reading this one. This guy, who's name I won't mention, is another one of those who think that if everyone voted, everything would change for the better. He laments the fact that a relatively small percentage of people voted in the gubernatorial recall election and that's the reason Ahhnold got elected. He assumes, of course, that all those that didn't vote would have voted for Davis, or at least someone other that Ahhnold. There's no way anyone can say that.

He goes on to blame Ahhnold, and the non- voters, for the state being in what seems to be a permanent downslide. I suppose we all have different ideas about what constitutes bad conditions, as far as the state and its government goes, but how he can blame the Governor for California's implosion, is beyond me.

This state's been going downhill for some time and there's certainly plenty of blame to go around, but it seems to me that Gray Davis and the democratic majority in the state legislature deserve the lion's share of the blame simply because they were the majority during the spending spree of the dot com boom years. What percentage of the people voted last time Davis was elected? And, of course, many of those in the state legislature responsible for the state spending binge in the Davis years are still there, having been reelected or if they weren't, because of term limits, someone of like mind was elected in their place. People voted for the politicians that ran the state in the ground and now, with the current method of redistricting, those politicians win by an even larger margin than if the districts were realigned "fairly".

There's no easy answer to how California can get out of the hole it's in, assuming we can agree on just what kind of hole we're in. Getting everyone to turn out to vote isn't an answer- never was. Besides, some people shouldn't be voting, especially people who don't pay attention to the issues. I can't help but wonder if the writer of that letter isn't one of them?