Show Informed Voter By FLORENCE There was a strong feeling among some members of the Constitutional Convention that most citizens could not be trusted to cast an intelligent there was a move to limit the right to vote to men of property who might be expected to take the trouble to become informed on THERE ARE those today who feel such men as Alexander Hamilton were right in their Many voters do not cast intelligent We have heard of voters who vote for a man because of the way he combs his We know of citizens who support a candidate because he has a charming When John F. Kennedy was a we heard of a woman who voted for him because of the prospects of having a baby born in the White THESE ARE examples of voting from prejudice instead of intelligent assessments of charter and Unfortunately most are much better informed about national candidates than about local This is just backwards of the it should Local politics is where the action is at least as far as the dual is THERE IS a glamour in national politics and the power of the presidential but in as far as the daily life of the private citizen is local politics has a much greater immediate Candidates are eager to meet They will go to great lengths to talk to even coming to individual holding neighborhood distributing All this effort to enable the voter to cast an informed IT HAS been estimated from the average four hundred voters in a voting two hundred people will always another hundred will come out if it is an interesting The goal of the candidates is that final hundred Often these people are not if they have they usually don't take the trouble to If they do they are apt to vote only for special issues or certain THIS final hundred in each voting district is an ample number to swing any except a landslide If these non-voters knew their they would be And It is this inactive hundred who needs my Or perhaps they wife and I vote opposite each so we cancel each other Why all a bunch of I wouldn't vote for any of WHO NEEDS your One vote in each voting district put Richard Nixon in the White You and your wife cancel each other Not in view of the larger and certainly not in the case of all In nearly every election there are close races which are decided by only a few extra and that one you thought your wife cancelled just might make the THEY'RE ALL a bunch of We don't believe Certainly there have been opportunist office but by and we have had a remarkable score of perhaps than most of us deserve when we have this kind of negative There will be many opportunities to become informed prior to election day and there is simply no better way to spend time and IF YOU don't believe voting is a privilege and a sacred consider the number of men who have given their lives to protect this |