The Audacity of Audacity: In Praise of Elections

I write this piece in the hopes that all of us who have come to think of as the word, "change" itself as an advertising synonym for "new and improved" will wake up and realize that the whole idea of an election is an opportunity for a mini-revolution. In countries which share this twenty-first century with us and also drive cars, have universities and accept the idea of global warming, as, at least, something worth considering, elections do offer the opportunity to elect leaders who will bring something entirely new to their governments. Even in counties where said leaders go back and forth on how much they want to take in public opinion, like Venezuela, their leaders can make strong choices about the economy, education and take them into new directions which actually bring both change and hope. For those of you not so keen on Chavez, you can even look at the Israeli government and, whatever you think of their politics, their elections do reflect changes in poltical mood and, at one time, so much hope it threatened those who were scared to see it, in the form of the late Yitchak Rabin.
Of course, we all know from our elementary school history classes how much our founders fought for the right to free elections and how long it took for everyone in this country to get their respective rights to vote. In practical terms, we still do not all have the rights to vote, and perhaps that should be the biggest election issue of all. There aren't proper voting machines in every county in this country -- perhaps the most revolutionary and practical thing the Democrats or Republicans could do would be to simply BUY ENOUGH VOTING MACHINES so that EVERYONE COULD PROPERLY VOTE. They could save money on all the ads and just get some equipment. Then do some grassroots work informing people how to use the machines and, oh, by the way informing them about the wonderful party and candidate that cared enough about the election to do this. See if the other party wants to cross the dirt roads to get there. There are people in this country who have probably never voted in their lives. Is that how we want to keep it?
People in this country don't vote for a lot of reasons. Some don't vote because they don't think it matters. Maybe they get that impression from the candidates who don't reach out to that many people. They just go on television. That's not reaching out, that's doing what's convenient. I know John Edwards reached out and didn't win. I also know the media didn't want him to win. But, these two candidates have the media on their side. They can make this happen. And in doing so they can really create change. They can create a real American election, for one.