Every U.S. Voter is a Winner!

How egalitarian is the 'right to vote' as it is relating to, or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities? Under our U.S. Constitutional law, it guarantees the people their voice in how the government operates. Every U.S. voter lives in a free society that recognizes their legal rights under law as well as their natural, universal inalienable rights that are inseparable from the individual. It's like winning the Super Lotto!

To boost voter turnout, a large municipal authority, the Los Angeles Ethics Commission has proposed an idea to lure more voters to the polls. With a miniscule 23% of registered voter turnout for the 2012 Mayoral election, down from 37% in 2001, and a dismal 15% turnout for 2013 district elections, L.A. City Council President Herb Wesson said, "Voter turnout was abysmal, and it's embarrassing." So, in a bid to raise voter turnout, the commission has voted to send to the City Council a proposal for a ballot measure to be sent to voters that changes the city charter to allow 'cash prize lotteries' to entice voter turnout in only municipal elections without any Federal offices or measures.

It's a sad commentary when voters have to be enticed to get out to vote with a promise of winning a lotto! Worse, who are they going to vote for when they get to the polls? The guy that brought them to the party, the 'voter van' or the 'voter taxi' rides sponsored by a political candidate or party? Don't dispair though, maybe you have to know a little more about Pre-American history...

Here is a tale from 1758, before the United States of America was born in 1776, the 'colonial times', and it seems voters haven't really change a bit in 256 years!

George Washington, the father of country won his first election in 1758. Washington biographer Dennis Pogue, vice president of preservation at Washington's home of Mount Vernon said about elections, "Voting day was a reason to binge in Colonial times, and the candidate who served up the most hooch often won."

Dennis Pogue reveals that the father of the nation lost his first campaign in 1755 to the House of Burgesses largely because he didn't put on an alcohol-laden circus at the polls. That year, Washington got 40 votes. The winner, who plied voters with beer, whiskey, rum punch, and wine, got 271 votes. 

A quick learner, Washington won three years later with the help of alcohol. "What do you know, he was successful and got 331 votes," says Pogue, author of the new book "Founding Spirits: George Washington and the Beginnings of the American Whiskey Industry." Washington's 1758 election to the House of Burgesses cost him 39 pounds, 6 shillings, a sum, which bought him 'a hogshead and a barrel of punch, thirty-five gallons of wine, forty-three gallons of strong beer, cider, and dinner for his friends.