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November 15, 2005
Pamphleteering our politics
In the last presidential election, P. Diddy and the MTV culture imposed an ultimatum on our generation, as evidenced by the loud threat printed on white t-shirts warning us to “Vote or Die.” Living in an age where we are conditioned to feel endangered by the results of political indifference, young people and college students in particular largely embrace political involvement and fervently engage themselves in the processes.
Young voter turnout is still grossly disproportionate to the number of people in the age group though, and new ways of encouraging people to appear at polls need to be further developed and experimented with.
Temporarily tabling the dramatically complex question of how to motivate political involvement and
informed voting, the one thing that arguably detracts from the process of candidate association with voters and interest in campaign issues is the overwhelming abundance of campaign materials distributed in quasi-private locations.
The slips of paper dispersed in equally high amounts between my dorm room door and car window quickly accumulated leading up to the mayoral elections last week. The papers, most featuring just a candidate’s name, pushed me to search for a determinate boundary between bombardments of candidate advertising and the aim for name recognition.
The reasons for widespread pamphleteering are beneficial and constructive; campaign materials in public places remind people of upcoming elections, substantial issues, and the candidates that are running. This visualization of politics also urges people to research candidates and their platforms, become interested in a particular candidate, feel involved in the political sphere and significant in local issues.
However, as more and more campaigns take to stickers and leaflets as means of expression, the effectiveness of these materials becomes diminished. It is personally hard to believe the genuine validity of claims about environmental concerns, or privacy rights for that matter, if so many papers with so little new or interesting information are distributed under my door, in my car window, and in every other semi-public place that allows visual pollution by quantity. If candidates want to reach the public by individual pamphlet distribution, it would be a better use of resources to include some candidate information, background, slogan, or statement. As it is now, annoyed college students may be irritated and inclined not to vote, or even to make a statement of protest by voting for the candidate that didn’t assail them with papers and repetitive messages. Instead of generating support for a candidate, too many pamphlets can preclude further interest.
Posted by msveum at November 15, 2005 12:02 PM
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