One Percent. Actually, Half of That

Mitt Romney won the Maine Presidential Primary with 2,000 votes.

Not BY 2,000 votes. WITH 2,000 votes.

In a state with 1.3 million people, exactly 5,585 of them cared about the Republican nominee for president enough to bother to vote. In an open caucus, not limited to voters who had registered as a Republican. Even an unregistered voter could show up, register, and vote.

It wasn't a case of bad weather. The weather forecast was that there was a chance of two to three inches of snow. Which never fell. And anyway, in Maine, two to three inches of snow is a light sprinkle.

The real winner of the 2012 Maine Republican Presidential Caucus was a French fellow named Je M'En Fou. (Translation: "I don't give a damn.") Mr. Fou got 99.5% of the vote. If Kim Jong Il were still alive, he would be jealous.

To show you how low this turnout was, when I ran for Congress in 2008, I got almost 100 times as many votes as Mitt Romney did on Saturday. In a congressional district half of the size of the state of Maine.

The Republicans must think that GOTV doesn't mean Get Out The Vote, but rather Go Observe TeleVision.

The right wing has been a manservant to the One Percent for as long as I remember. In fact, a friend recently suggested to me that GOP actually stands for "Greedy One Percent." But now, it seems, they can't even get one percent to show up and vote.

You get the feeling that if you actually cornered most voters and asked them to choose among Romney, Gingrich, Santorum and Paul, they would run screaming from the room.

Which makes me feel optimistic about the November election.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

 

Follow Alan Grayson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/alangrayson

Comments

[WhistlersFool]

05:47 PM on 02/16/2012

If I didn't live here in Maine, this would be insanely funny. The GOP is still a dangerous beast, do not let their apathy fool you.

[GHarry]

05:39 PM on 02/16/2012

We joke about this, but there's really nothing funny about our election system, which allows two gangs called the Republicans and Democrats to control who gets elected. That system certainly isn't in the Constitution, which doesn't mention it. The system is rigged so that the individual's vote is merely a token exercise aimed at lending the process some legitimacy. The real choosing of our president, Congress members and state legislators is done outside the public's control. Perhaps we should stop griping about how these people act once in office and actually do something to change the system. Job One should be getting all private money out of elections. Job Two should be setting up a parliamentary system that provides a really democratic channel for getting elected. Of course, in a nation that still is debating whether women should be allowed to have contraceptives, the odds of those sensible steps ever being taken are extremely small. Hence America's ongoing demise.

[Randyman5]

05:14 PM on 02/16/2012

Grayson for President. He tells it like it is, and isn't afraid to do so!