Draco of Athens and 8/18/26

In recent elections, around 200,000 voting-eligible Wyoming citizens didn’t even register to vote.

That is more folks than live in Cheyenne, Casper, Gillette and Wamsutter combined. If they all lived within the same county line, it would be twice the size of Laramie County, the largest county in Wyoming.

If those 200,000 citizens voted together as a bloc, they would move the political life of Wyoming wherever they wanted. But they, for whatever reason, don’t even register. This abysmal fact is a far greater threat to our democracy in the Big Empty than the manufactured red herring of “election fraud.”

In Athens, the birthplace of democracy 2,500 years ago, the first Athenian legislator had a solution for voter apathy. His name was Draco, and from his name we derive our English word “draconian,” meaning harsh or extreme. As the story goes, Draco introduced into the Athenian constitution a provision that would punish by exile for 10 years any citizen who did not vote.

Draco’s reasoning may have been something like, “If they won’t participate in our democracy, maybe spending 10 years someplace without self-government might make them more willing citizens.” Draconian, to be sure, but I appreciate the wisdom in it.

Given the dumpster fire that the Chemtrail Caucus has made of our Legislature this session, it is important to understand how this mess came about and where to place the blame. We are not in this situation because right-wing zealots enjoy vast popularity among us, but because only a small fraction of our fellow citizens actually vote.

The blame for this voter apathy belongs nowhere but on our own collective shoulders.

Granted, the current corrosive atmosphere of hyper-partisan politics — both national and local — is a huge turnoff to the average citizen. The woman or man on the street likely feels powerless against this dismal tide. Couple that with the push to squeeze down access to the polls with tighter restrictions on who can vote and how, and it’s no mystery why a lot of our fellow citizens throw up their hands and ask, “What’s the point?”

The result is that too many of us avoid our responsibility to vote like we avoid a trip to the proctologist.

But unless we do the necessary work to turn things around, our government will continue to be controlled by a smaller and smaller slice of our population. And that minority control creates fertile soil for political zeal and demagoguery to triumph over the will of all the people.

The question thus becomes, what is this necessary work and how do we do it? How we answer that question will determine Wyoming’s political future for a long time to come. With one of the most critical election cycles in Wyoming’s history shortly upon us, we must answer that question now!

First and foremost, we must vote. If you have voted in our past elections, don’t stop now.

And we need to do what is in our power to engage our friends and neighbors who avoid the polls, and encourage them to vote in this election. These folks aren’t strangers; they are our family, friends and acquaintances, and we interact with them every day.

We can’t exile them, but we can reason with them and impress upon them that, unless they participate in our elections, the future of the state we all love is in the hands of a few others who have a different view of our future than we do.

We can walk them through the process of registering and voting, and offer our help. We can put a tad of neighborly peer pressure on them. If everyone reading this column would register 10 new voters before the next election, I guarantee the outcome of the election will be different.

(Author’s note: If anyone reading this would like my help to get registered, please just hit me up.)

Beyond that, you can toss your own hat into the ring and run for office. It’s a commitment, so count the cost before you decide. But also count the cost of sitting on the sidelines and yielding the field to someone who doesn’t share your values. If you can’t run for office yourself, then contribute your money and time to someone who can and whom you trust to represent you.

That is the problem and the work that must be done to solve it. 8/18/26 is the date of the Republican primary election in Wyoming, the election that will essentially determine our future, and the moment we act to prove ourselves worthy of democratic citizenship. Otherwise, we punt the ball to a minority among us who want to control our children’s future.

If we fail to act together, we have essentially exiled ourselves.