um so what is your what why do you people don't vote in the elections
well first of all i think they understated the turnout It's i don't i don't think that in a national election it's ever been under fifty three percent well it's it's it's almost half but it's been you know it's somewhere in the fifties for sure so it it it understates it a little bit
uh-huh
why do people not vote um well it's the analysts usually say they don't think it will effect anything they're certainly wrong about that
yeah
um i think that that it's easy if you if if you think things are going bad enough to just turn off to the news and just not pay any attention It's the less you pay attention the less you know about what's going to effect you
yeah yeah i i think i think apathy is is real big thing i mean just in the fact that you don't think you're going to have anything done i to me it's really hard to find um
uh-huh
any information on the candidates i mean i i voted yesterday and and uh
uh-huh
half half the people you know you really have to hunt to get information on them and you know as far as the local things go and if you know if you don't know them then
yeah
oh yeah
that's right yeah and i i i agree uh i have made calls to various organizations the night before elections well one thing i do i usually do is go to the library and study for an election before it
really
yeah and and try to get voter guides from newspapers and things and that helps a little bit
yeah
that's a good idea
they don't ask their they don't ask enough questions they ask on one or two issues and and many people can respond with platitudes
yeah
what you really need to do excuse me is find interest groups that that you know who's interest whose issues you are interested in and then find how the if they have done a candidate survey and lots of times they have and then you have something to base it on
there was a back when i was living in Pittsburgh there was a group called the association for public justice i don't know if you've ever heard of them perhaps
huh-uh huh-uh
perhaps not i it's it's it they they really didn't you know it it sounds like they're some kind of liberal group well they were a little bit liberal on some things but they were a little bit conservative on some things too
uh-huh
and they put out this this uh survey of candidates where they asked them like uh eight questions uh all the candidates for all the offices
now it wasn't that great in that they didn't tailor the the question for you know for the particular office so they asked people on the local level things that only come up at the national level and vice versa
yeah
but uh other than that it was a very good way to to see who you sympathized with and you could vote on the basis of that
yeah i that's um i don't know what it was that we had that i had yesterday got it from someone in our church that uh it it asked uh
uh-huh
it went all the way down well it went to some of our constables but mainly it was in the Dallas area not in the Plano area
uh-huh
but um it asked it had all sorts of questions about uh economics uh education and and uh
uh
family and
things things things like abortion presumably
yeah yeah but it had other things like um do you would you support um
huh
i know one that kind of stuck out in my mind was was would you support uh a a two thousand dollar uh
tax credit for women that stay you know at home and and so it had kind of a variety of of um
yeah right
right
of questions and it it probably had twenty or thirty questions on it
it was really you know that was really good and helpful and it you know it had them you know support if they could support oppose oppose or or you know be undecided about it
uh-huh
i
do do do you know what group did it
yeah it was it was it was uh i thought it was really good but you know it course it doesn't go through all the candidates and some of them you know you think well this guy's this guy won't have any won't have any um
uh-huh
yup
uh-huh
say so about any of this anyway but it's kind of good to know their opinions anyway they you know run for a different kind of office once you're in politics you probably stay in politics i would think
uh-huh
that's right because yeah yeah i mean once they
yeah that's right that's that's one point that was made that that you know uh i read one article saying even if you don't that abortion makes any difference at uh you know at a at a really local level like City Council or something like that
these people will in the end they might get elected to something bigger and the way that they get known is by getting elected these little to these to little offices
yeah
so you got to look at their views and and that was a point that i hadn't considered the reason i ask about the organization is i just got uh started working last year in an organization called Christian Coalition which does just what you were suggesting and i was wondering if it was
uh-huh and that may have been who had done it i'm i don't remember um
if it was theirs yeah
i had like three or four different things i was looking at uh and that was that that was probably the most helpful i wish it had been more detailed i know that um
uh-huh
see the candidates don't like to respond to all these questions
i you
