Last Chance To Register

Last Chance to Register

Voter registration for the November presidential election in Michigan closes next Monday, October 4. Persons over the age of 18, or who will be 18 by November 2nd, must register before Monday if they wish to vote for any of the candidates for national, state, county, and city offices or for any of the ballot proposals to be settled in this election.

The Sun has joined the NAACP, the UAW, the Democratic Party and many other organizations and individuals in urging citizens to register and vote this fall. We do so because we feel very strongly that it is up to the citizens of this country to determine how and by whom their government should be operated, and -- in the absence of any kind of mass revolutionary movement -- the electoral process is the one mechanism by which citizens can express their political will.

The popular routine about how voting doesn't really make any difference is an attractive one to those of shallow minds, but a few moments' reflection reveals that the "don't vote" platform actually serves the ruling forces in American society.

A minority group to begin with, the ruling class maintains its political power by carefully and thoroughly organizing those elements of society which support its dominant position in American life. It supports candidates with vast sums of money, pushes them to the public through its monopolized mass media, gets out the Republican vote by organizing homeowners and the upper middle class, and uses the apathy and ignorance of the great mass of potential voters to keep its own candidates on top.

Since the vast majority of present voters would line up against the more conservative candidates for office if they were to cast their vote, every non-vote is in reality a vote for the right wing, and particularly for the Republican Party.

The lower the number of ballots cast in any given election, the greater are the gains for the Republicans, especially when one considers that only 18% of the registered voters in this country claim affiliation with the GOP.

It is obvious that the Democratic Party does not represent any kind of intelligent solution to the problems which face the citizens of this country. The Democrats, after all, only constitute the left wing of the ruling class, and they will not deliver the American people from their present condition any faster than the Republicans can, will, or mean to do.

The fact remains, however, that there are serious differences between the two capitalist parties, and until the socialist left begins to address itself to the question of organizing a mass electoral party, the people are ill-served by exhortations to ignore those fundamental differences.

Those candidates who gain office, no matter how many people vote -- or refuse to vote -- for them, are finally the people who make the laws, set the policies, and direct the course of action undertaken by this nation.

The one certain way to replace those who do not serve the needs of the people is to vote them out of office, and to participate fully in the process which chooses their successors. To do otherwise is to be played for a fool by the minority which runs this country.