I just got home from voting in the spring election and as I sit down to write this, Bob Uecker is taking to the airwaves, inaugurating another season of our national pastime. Not to scourge the great sport of baseball, but lately I’ve come to believe that our collective national pastime has become complaining or just plain whining (and I’m not talking about the economy, please feel free to complain away, I insist). It just seems everywhere I go, from the restaurant where I work, to the coffee houses whose free internet I enjoy, to the seemingly endless lines at area grocery stores, all I hear are people complaining. People complain about everything.

They complain about the connect-the-dot potholes we in Eau Claire call roads, then they complain about the road construction to fix the same problems they were just complaining about. The list goes on and on. People complain about the lack of economic opportunities in the Valley, the location of the new jail, our lack of an arena, the smoking ban, and downtown development. The list of complaints heard around the Valley on a given day can be dizzying. Well folks, I’m hear to say that the only real complaint anyone in the Valley should have is that not enough people in the Valley do anything to change things.

Considering I started writing this even before the spring election results were announced, I suppose you could call me a pessimist and I guess you’d probably be correct. I am the type that would say the cup of coffee next to me is half empty, but who really ever says their cup is half full. Anyway, the projected poll numbers say a whopping 20 percent of you will turn out for the spring election. I’m not psychic, but I would bet good money that the other 80 percent who didn’t vote are some of the same people I hear complaining on a daily basis.

I know life is busy and most of the people who didn’t vote probably didn’t even realize it was an election day until they saw the quaint little “vote today” signs with the tiny flags outside their neighborhood churches and schools. On a hurried drive home from work, it can seem easy to drive past the poll without stopping or to just think you don’t know enough about the candidates to vote, but that’s the problem. One by one, the people who drive by without voting add up until only 20 percent of voters are making the decisions for everyone.

Sure everyone shows up for the rock star-like national elections, but local elections are treated like a middle-child with an acne problem. It seems most people don’t realize the results of local elections will most likely have a more direct effect on their daily life than the big, shiny national elections.

    These are the elections that decide who will oversee your child’s education or whether you get that stop sign to slow down your neighbor who’s still living the dream in his ’84 Camaro. And I’m not just picking on the Valley; this is a national problem. For a country that prides itself on being a beacon of freedom and democracy for the world, we can barely drag our own population off the couch for the 10 minutes it takes to vote. I can’t drive a block without seeing a patriotic bumper sticker in the Valley, but what about citizenship? I’m as patriotic as the next, but part of being patriotic is being an informed and productive citizen.

These days it seems people are more concerned with identifying themselves as liberal or conservative, than they are with the actual issues. Why does everything have to be black and white when the best solution is usually gray?

Take the jail issue for instance. Say you just got married and you and your spouse are picking out a new living room set. One person wants a faux Asian motif with bamboo floors and the other a rustic Northwoods theme complete with a moosehead above the mantle. Are you going to just sit on the floor without talking it out like adults or are you going to compromise and work together to find a solution everyone can live with? Whether it’s at work or at home people work together everyday to find compromises that work for everyone, so why should community decisions be any different?

As this election night winds down and the results start to pour in, unfortunately I see my predictions came true. A good number of you showed up at the polls, but not nearly enough. The biggest right we own as citizens is the right to cast a ballot and give ourselves a voice in government. So, I hope when the next election rolls around, more of you will take a few minutes from your hectic schedules and inform yourselves with the issues and candidates so we can all work together as a community and compromise to face some of the daunting challenges facing the Valley.

Oh wait, I guess I’m complaining, too. Oh well, at least I voted first.