A mere month after America chose change and political activism over the same old Washington politics, Georgians have made it clear that they have little interest in keeping the torch burning. On Tuesday, Georgia voters reelected Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in a runoff contest.
What was disappointing about the runoff was not so much the outcome, but rather the process. On Nov. 4, 3.7 million Georgians voted in the Senate election, compared with a mere two million people in the runoff. The low turnout could signal a return to the pattern of apathy that many (the Daily included) had hoped was stamped out with the election of Barack Obama.
Many politicos have stated that the election of Barack Obama signaled a changing of the guard in Washington and a shift in the political attitude of the nation as a whole. If we return to the attitude of apathy that has permeated our nation for a generation, however, Obama's election will mean little in the long run. Obama ran on a platform that encouraged the type of activism and participation in the democratic process that has been absent from our country for years. We cannot allow "Yes, we can" to turn into "Yes, we did."
For every step forward, we take two steps back. We cannot allow ourselves to slip back into apathy and forget the lessons we learned on Nov. 4. Real change can be generated if we participate in our democracy. However, as Merle Black, a political expert at Emory University, told The New York Times, "The importance of electing the first African-American president in history generated enormous enthusiasm. Everything else was anticlimactic." While nothing can ever be as monumental as the moment when America elected Obama, all the work to reach that point is essentially worthless unless we build upon it. The voters of Georgia forgot that and let their government be chosen for them.
The issues that mattered enough to voters to prompt them to turn out this election are not solved and will not be solved if we do not continue to participate in politics. The economic crisis will not fix itself. Neither will our addiction to oil. Americans need to continue to speak up and to keep utilizing the energy that elected the first African-American president of the United States.
In the weeks leading up to the runoff election in Georgia, extensive get-out-the-vote drives and campaigning by prominent politicians aimed to maintain the turnout rates from Nov. 4; but that effort failed, and only a fraction of the voters that turned out for the first election returned for the second. While it remains to be seen whether the Senate runoff election in Georgia is indicative of a larger return to the political culture of years past, we must do our part to continue our participation in the democratic process. Take the low voter turnout in Georgia as a warning: We cannot allow the momentum of this election to dissipate.
