Commentary: A Solution for Voter Apathy

By Guest

Dear Canton residents:

Do you dislike the rotary on Pleasant Street? Do you believe the excuses of “listening to the town engineers?” Well, if you were part of the 86 percent who so ignored your birthright that you didn’t vote, you have no right to complain about anything done by our selectmen.

And now we’re heading for town meeting. Do you know anything about the condition of the land on Revere Street after many years of pollution by both Plymouth Rubber and the companies that were there before? I don’t either, and I don’t want to vote for something (despite the slick card I got in the mail) until I’m given both a report on what the pollution comprises, what chemicals (methane, botuline, any chemicals from oil) are in that soil, and what measures will be taken to keep families that will buy those homes from getting cancer from carcinogenic substances left there.

So the town wasted a lot of money on an election that most of your forgot. So let’s realize that the electric sign at the library will not be seen by all our daily commuters coming home. We need to have those banners we used to have put back at every entrance to Canton so that tired commuters will be reminded and drop by the polls on their way home.

To engender even more attention, let’s sweeten the pie with a few warrants that will either infuriate the voters or cost them so much they’ll definitely turn out. As a poll worker at Precinct 2, I noticed that some streets had almost 100 percent turnout while others had none. So I won’t start with suggesting we change our form of government to a dictatorship (which is what in effect happens to an apathetic town). Instead, here are some warrants that the citizens should vote on:

Resolved: The zoning board shall allow all businesses to exist anywhere in town they can buy a building. (This includes houses of ill repute or places that sell adult DVDs.)

Resolved: Canton will cut educational funding by 65 percent. And boom, there goes the reason most of us moved here.

Resolved: Canton water will no longer be tested. That gas tank that was allowed to be buried at that service station on Neponset Street is way too close to our water wells for my comfort. Leakage is a fact. When my drinking water has a sheen to it, I’ll know there are problems with it. I still want to know what we are not testing for that could kill us. Otherwise, why bother?

Give me some more ideas for warrants that will inspire people to appreciate their right to vote. Unleash your imagination. Or let’s just give up the charade and install a dictator. These elections are too expensive for so few to show up. When it’s not at least a plurality, you don’t have the will of the people represented.

And it’s your fault, those of you who don’t vote. How about a tax of $50 if you don’t vote?

Alice Copeland Brown

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