10-23
With local elections coming up in Lawrence, Methuen, Haverhill, and other cities in the Merrimack Valley, election experts are predicting a very low voter turnout … again.
That means the vast majority of registered voters don’t care enough about how their cities are run or who is going to run them.
Not to mention the fact that most people aren’t even registered to vote.
The level of apathy, not just in the Merrimack Valley, but across the country is staggeringly dangerous.
When free people fail to participate in choosing their government leaders, it makes way for dishonest and corrupt activists to gain political power and use our government services to achieve their own corrupt agendas.
We have seen this throughout the last decade in Lawrence, Haverhill, and Methuen.
When there is a high voter turnout, cities tend to elect more honest candidates who – for a time, at least – represent the public more effectively and efficiently than those who get elected in low turnout elections.
When asking potential candidates why they chose not to run for office this year, the most frequent response we got was that local politics – especially in Methuen and Haverhill – had become far too “dirty” and that the corrupt insiders were far too powerful for one person to fight.
We empathize with that line of thinking.
We realize that it’s very hard for newcomers in the political arena to make any real difference with the embedded and corrupt political insiders having such a stranglehold on power. Especially when they are so willing to smear and destroy anyone who asks the right questions.
We also understand that giving up and not running for local office, not voting in local elections, and not paying attention to how our cities are being run only enables the corrupt powers who use government for nefarious purposes.
We want to urge every registered voter in Lawrence, Methuen, and Haverhill, to take a little time to research the candidates on line, educate yourself as to who is seeking public office, and spend five minutes on November 7th casting an educated vote.
And while we truly want every voter to educate themselves and vote on election day, we also want to caution stupid people who don’t do their homework, and don’t understand the functions of government to stay home.
The last thing our local communities need is uninformed voters choosing more corrupt candidates to run our local governments.
This is how democracies are lost. Vote now, while you still have the choice. ◊