On Oct. 10, Mr. Michael Dale decided to share with us a letter which started off about voting and somehow became a plug for Doug Gross. That’s fine, we all ramble now and again, but I think it only fair that someone who is not registered to vote by choice speaks for the other side.

The easiest way to describe my position is to say, ‘If you vote, you have no right to complain.’ Now popular opinion among the voting class is that if you don’t vote you have no right to complain. However, if you really look at that idea, you find that it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. To quote comedian George Carlin in his reasonably eloquent explanation of the matter, “If you vote, and you elect dishonest incompetent people and they get into office and screw everything up.” Well you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem, you voted them in, you have no right to complain. On the other hand, I who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain as loud as I want about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with. This probably doesn’t represent every non-voter, but some of us do have reasons.

As for the sales tax, let me just say this. It’s a penny! Yes, mistakes were made by management in the past regarding the school system, but assigning blame doesn’t solve the problem. I think just about anyone, Republican, Democrat or otherwise, would agree that everyone in this country is entitled to a basic education, which is what this tax aimed to do. It’s time for people to stop being so self-absorbed about their own welfare and consider the welfare of others for a change. You could go back and forth all day about the failures of Doug Gross while working for the Branstad administration and Vilsack’s problems during his tenure. Assigning blame doesn’t help a situation. It merely makes solving the problem take longer.

Tom Goodman

Sophomore

Computer Science