Michael Moore Wants You and Your Friends to Vote for Obama

Posted on Nov 2, 2012

Flickr/david_shankbone (CC-BY)

Michael Moore.

Did you know that 90 million Americans are planning to not vote on Election Day? While that fact may have eluded you, filmmaker Michael Moore is painfully aware of it. So much so that he’s asking you, the voter, not just to cast your ballot, but to get at least one of your nonvoting friends to tag along.

Moore writes at The Huffington Post:

I want you—yes, YOU, the person reading this right now—to get ONE of your fellow Americans who would not otherwise vote to show up at the polls.

Moore is somewhat empathetic with the plight of the nonvoter. He understands why you might be planning to sit this one out.

The non-voter today knows exactly what’s going on, and he or she wants no part of it. They are discouraged, disillusioned, and have almost lost hope that things will change. Many are jobless or working for peanuts. They’re angry, and we should tell them they have every right to be.

Still, Moore argues that, as disillusioned as this group of potential voters is, they should go and cast their ballots. He says that this group in fact secretly does want to vote, and that it’s up to the voting citizen to make sure they do so.

... Despite everything, they haven’t utterly given up on politics. When USA Today asked the non-voters who they’d choose if they HAD to vote for someone in this election, 18 percent said they would vote for Romney—and 43 percent said they’d vote for Obama! That means there are nearly 40 million people who prefer Obama—AND THEY ARE NOT GOING TO VOTE.

It’s clear that Moore is asking that you, and of course the friend you’re dragging along to the polls, vote for Obama. 

Each of us knows Obama-supporting non-voters. They’re your cousin, your coworker, your friend from the choir at church. Identify just one of them (best of all if they’re in a swing state) and pledge to get them to the polls. You can try to convince them with all the good arguments as to why they should vote for the O (click here), but I think the best way to do this is to ask them personally, just this once, to do this for you. Not for the country. For you.

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