We live in a very weird, funny country.

It’s not because of news of things like job fairs at a strip club in Rhode Island, dogs eating $400 worth of cash (instead of your homework) and the occasional siting of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in a jar of Cheese Whiz or on a piece of salami. America is crazy enough to be hilarious while sane enough to be kept out of the international insane asylum.

But here’s what tickles me quite a bit these days: elections.

We love to point out the fact that we are the first modern democratic nation, endlessly criticize elected officials and push our form of government on various despotic nations around the world.

Yet more than half the population doesn’t even vote, and the ones that do vote focus on the elections that will have a very indirect effect on their lives, while the ones who don’t vote end up whining the most about our elected officials.

More than 129 million people voted in the historic 2008 election. This sounds like a big number, but as a percentage of our population of 303,824,640 (per the CIA Factbook in July 2008), this accounts for 42.59 percent of the American populace.

The number has been climbing for several election cycles, but it still is nowhere near what we’d expect to see after the endless lectures about the people’s power in American democracy we hear in civics class.

But the federal elections are now a thing of the past, left to historians and random Wikipedia editors to quibble over the minute details. An upcoming election and referendum we might want to pay a bit more attention to is coming up very close to home: the Student Government Elections.

Say what you will about Student Government: it’s disconnected from students, it has no real power, it’s just a resume builder for people who get elected, etc.

But this “do-nothing” institution controls $282,100 of student fees, reworked the ticket distribution system, organized Campout, helped launch the WolfProwl bus route and held several events in the Brickyard.

Now I’m not saying Student Government is like chicken soup: it has its flaws, and like so many other institutions on campus, it is even more subject to the cruel whip of the almighty budget reduction. And I’m certainly not the first to admit that Student Senate, an important part of SG that usually goes under the radar, is not always a place for considered discussion of campus issues — like the US Senate, it has its CSPAN hours and its CNN sound bites.

Unlike the federal elections, though, Student Government elections have an ABYSMAL turnout — the best elections were in spring 2005, when 26.9 percent of the campus came out to vote the first time and 25.7 voted in the runoff (this was the year of the Pirate Captain). And the fall elections make the spring elections look as if people voted four or five times — turnout is usually on the south side of two percent.

Two percent!

So bank bailouts, health care reform and stimulus packages aside, the stuff that’s likely to affect your life in the next few months isn’t going to come from Capitol Hill or the White House. And I don’t think your Senator is going to be able to meet with you repeatedly over the course of the next few months, nor do I think President Obama’s going to just stop by every week to chat about what’s bothering you.

Student Government people, on the other hand, will — they live in the same area and might even be in some of your classes. This makes it a lot more difficult for them to ignore you.

Let Paul know your thoughts on elections at [email protected]