Shadowscope

I agree with you there Richard, the lack of voter turnout up here in Canada is disgraceful as well. It’s mostly the younger people that aren’t voting, too. They don’t realize the privilege they have of living in a country where they CAN vote. Ugh…

firstly, there is no age limit to vote for american idol. secondly, you can vote AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT. its isnt that 50 million DIFFERENT people voted for american idol, it’s that they got 50 million VOTES. big difference! also , considering that while the top two american idol contestants were a bit disappointing, they were not nearly as disappointing as the last presidential election. as they said on south park, what’s the difference between voting for a douchebag or a turd sandwich? (i myself, happened to vote for the douchebag, kerry, but with that said, i feel voting is a choice, not a duty).

considering well over half the votes came from people aged 18 and under, i would say yes. however, nickelodeon usually does a voting type thing during presidential elections for kids, and do you know that the kids have accurately predicted the president since they started doing it back in 92? i think this is because kids mostly vote the way their parents do. with that said, i think if they let everyone vote, regardless of age, that the elections would have turned out the same. another thing, i think that a lot of kids my age don’t vote because, face it, young people are selfish. if you paid them to vote, they would, but you can’t entice them into doing it by appealing to their (mostly) nonexistent patriotic “duty” or whatever. i find a lot of people my age are also really disillusioned about politics, because the media is more prevalent in our times, and a lot of bad stuff that the government does is out there, all the time, for us to see. people in the media(i think) used to be more guarded about what they would or would not say about the government. plus look at the 24 hour news networks. they gotta find something to talk about all the time too.