Last night we had the pleasure of attending a Republican/Democratic debate put on by the Tennessee Tech Debate club, college Democrats, College Republicans, and sponsored by the American Association of University Professors. It was moderated by our own Mayor Sam Sallee (SuhLEE). Most of the attendees were university students who were collecting extra credit for attending. The auditorium was mostly full. Our Older College Student Daughter was one of the participants in the Q & A portion and while a little nervous at first, soon was fielding questions on the democrat side.
We figure this is the first presidential election for most of these kids. It is great to see them out there asking questions, thinking for themselves.
The final speaker was a professor of history that Sara had last semester. He spoke of elections that were pivotal, as this one is. He did give one statistic that did not surprise me. Fifty percent of people in this country who are eligible to vote, do not. I'm not sure what the percentage is in Cookeville and Putnam county, but since our population in the county is about 63,000 and about 26,000 voted in the last presidential election, I would say we're about at the same level as every where else. While 26,000 is more than one-third of the county population, I don't know how many children there are in the county.
Tennessee is an early voting state, and we took advantage of it during the primaries and cast our votes yesterday. With high voter registration, we still waited in line for a while. But worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment