I think I was officially oversaturated for this election. Don’t get me wrong. I looked forward to voting, and I did it with a sense of pride and hopefulness, but it was a long and kind of annoying trip to the polls. It wasn’t the pundits or the many TV ads that drove me to this point of frustration. I can turn them up or turn them off. It was the overload of mail and phone calls from both parties that was the true tipping point – and the edge of frustration is a dangerous place for an already frustrated constituency to be.
Now, I intended on voting come hell or high water (and that’s saying something here in Nashville where we are still recovering from May floodwaters), but what of the less enthusiastic voter? Such a barrage of mail and prerecorded calls, as were received by the average household, could totally turn those voters off.
Everyday I received multiple phone calls from all parties, along with one call from the AFL-CIO and a political survey. Of the dozens of calls our home received over this election cycle only three were made by a living, breathing person – the political survey, the AFL-CIO, and someone from Joshua Evans (R) camp. Kudos to Joshua Evans who is running for the Tennessee General Assembly. Good luck Mr. Evans.
I understand the time constraints and staff limitations, but I was disappointed by the impersonal nature of the many prerecorded calls. I may have listened to two of two dozen, and let’s face it, those things prompt me to hang up every time and leave me with a smirk on my face while thinking ill of the candidate who just interrupted my dinner. Not good if you’re looking to make a good impression.
Did I mention the mail? Environmentalists I’m sure are outraged by the harm coming to countless trees to produce oversized postcards and candidate brochures. I’m no tree hugger, but there was one candidate who took the cake here in Middle Tennessee for tree murder. I can’t tell you the number of oversized postcards I received from a candidate who shall remain nameless. For the past two weeks (at least) I have received mail from this man every other day. On some days there were four and five distinctly different flyers from the very same campaign. What was so important that couldn’t have been put on one flyer and freed up some space in my mailbox while saving a little sapling!
Now, I hope I haven’t rained on anyone’s parade. It looks to be a sunny day with some conservative gains to be made all over the map. It is a great privilege to get out and vote – one which I shared in as my four children tagged along. And I’m really not bitter, actually I feel a little liberated. I guess I just needed to get all that off of my chest. You know, I even voted for some of the candidates who sent those annoying phone calls. But come on people let’s try to be as attentive to the American public once you’re not posturing for our vote.
