Increased voter registration is reason to hope

There have been so many reasons to be concerned about America’s direction in recent months. The economy is, at best, barely avoiding a recession, and some sectors – and the people they affect – are in crisis. The Iraq war is dragging on, increasing anti-American sentiment around the world and forcing us to borrow more and more money from China. Oil prices are skyrocketing and the value of the dollar is falling.

Other nations are rising in prominence. As made clear in a commentary by Fareed Zakaria in the newest issue of Newsweek, America is simply not the king of the world it once was:

“Look around. The world’s tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn’t make the top 10. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world’s 10 richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only 10 years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.”

Zakaria suggests that, rather than America being in decline, the rest of the world is rising.

I’m not so certain. Our infrastructure is in serious need of repair, and we don’t have the money to do it. Diseases of convenience are becoming more and more prevalent. Home values are joining the dollar in sinking. And we learned last month that, for one in five women and one in 20 men in America, life expectancy is actually dropping.

There is one major trend that gives me reason to hope. People are voting.

We’ve seen headlines for months about increased interest in the presidential primary contests. An Associated Press survey released this week finds that there are more than 3.5 million new registered voters across the nation.

That’s huge. There has been a culture in America, among many, of complaining about problems but doing nothing to fix them. This year, the situation has deteriorated to the point that millions of additional Americans have decided to instead stand up and make their voices heard by participating in Democracy.

As reported by the New Mexico Independent, the secretary of state estimates that voter turnout in the June 3 primary could be as high as 70 percent in the Land of Enchantment.

According to the Associated Press analysis, voter registration is up across America among blacks, women and young people, in the north and south, and in rural and urban areas. In the 21 states where such a comparison was available, new voter registration was up 64 percent in the first three months of 2008 compared to the same time period in 2006.

I wrote recently about a poll that found that 81 percent of Americans think the United States is on the wrong track. It appears many are now mad enough to do something about it.

Citizen apathy helped put us on the wrong track. When citizens don’t demand their government’s attention, that attention will be consumed by special-interest groups, corporations and extremists.

Americans are now demanding that attention. Hopefully it isn’t too late for them to take it back.

A version of this article was published today on the Diary of a Mad Voter blog published by the Denver Post’s Politics West and the independent Web site NewWest.net.