In 2000 it was the soccer moms. The Office Park dads arrived in 2002, so perhaps it was inevitable that I would be next. Campaign gurus, fast running out of demographic miracle groups, have chosen me and my unmarried sisters-in-arms as the hot new election year commodity. E! producers start digging for tv tell-all dirt, because I am the newest political celebrity.
In a recent study, Democratic pollsters Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg showed significantly fewer single women turning out to the polls than married couples or single men. Only about half of registered single women voted in 2000.
Both sides have called my demographic their key to victory. If single women under 65 voted at the same rate as those with husbands (68 percent), pollsters would have seen six million more voters in 2000. Twenty-one million of us never made it to the polls and 16 million never registered. Experts, unable to walk away from the cute and derogatory, dubbed us the "Sex and the City" vote.
This couldn't be. I refused to accept this shameful status upgrade - the newest thing on the voting block since the Walmart mom. Outraged, I started asking around.
My best friend said she hated listening to fighting politicians and never felt well informed enough to make a decision anyway. My cousin, an urban nomad, told me that she moved around too much, and couldn't keep her registration current. A coworker of mine thought that her one measly vote didn’t really matter, and my roommate introduced me to her hard and fast election day rule: she only voted in important elections.
"Come on," she said, "like you really vote for municipal judge."
Of course I did. Didn't I?
Well, I thought I did. I mean, I couldn't really remember going to the polling place, couldn't remember what color the curtains were, but I'm sure I voted. After all, I like voting - I voted for American Idol and for the new M & M color. Plus, I write about politics, I read the newspaper, I volunteer, so of course I cast my ballot every election day. Right?
One thing was certain: I couldn't string up my sisters by their stilettos if I weren't teetering to the voting booth myself. This called for the kind of drastic action. It was time, I decided, to unleash my inner Matt Drudge, to call upon the dirt-digging celebrity tabloid reporter within.
Over the past seven years, I'd lived in four states, so I called the voting offices in each district I once called home. Predictably, my registration records were a mess. As it turned out, was my voting record.
In my childhood home district, according to the lone town clerk, I'd cast no ballots in the last 12 elections. In Philadelphia, during college, I voted only once -- in a presidential race. I lost big in my third district, too-the District of Columbia, where I had no record of any participation in any election activity. But at least in New York, my latest home I knew I was batting 1000. In one potential election, I'd cast my one potential vote.
Sort of. It turns out my registration was late, and my ballot was destroyed.
It was starting to look like the Lisa of the tri-state area was the biggest case of voter fraud since the Chad of Florida.
This fakery wasn't anything new; like most people I fudged things all the time. I've pretended to be a natural blond, five pounds lighter and happy working a mind-numbing, online solitaire-inducing job. But unlike my hair color, which really only affected my stylist, just a few votes - 537 to be exact - could have picked a president last election. Faking democracy was, although unintentional, a new personal low.
And, sadly, I guess I'm just part of the trend. If apathy stays in vogue, only 22 percent of women under 30 will vote this November.
My closet holds jeans, not couture, and my brunches involve bottomless pots of coffee, a far cry from mimosas. How could I, like the fabulous foursome, have caught political fatigue?
Most of us single women have more to worry about the perfect cosmopolitan. We are divorced single mothers, students, welfare recipients, small business owners and urban employees. We are disproportionately young, mobile and struggling. Child care, affirmative action, domestic violence legislation, abortion rights, education and health care-these are all issues that directly affect us.
So why aren't we voting?
We make almost a quarter less than our male colleagues and rely more on social security. There are whole segments of the armed services that are still off limits to us. Nine million of us own small businesses, yet we don't receive nearly as much venture capital, don't land as many federal contracts, and don't get the same levels of bank credit as men do. More than 20 percent of mothers don't have health insurance.
Only 14 percent of Congress and 12 percent of governors have that critical second X chromosome. We have every reason to show up at the polls. And yet we're not making it there.
This election year, the two major parties plan to act like bad dates - showing up in nice suits, bragging about themselves and buying us frivolous gifts, tax cuts flowing like jewelry. Regardless of Democratic flowers and Republican love sonnets, by going to the polls, and expressing the issues that matter to us, single women influence the future president's agenda. We can shape the government policies that govern our lives.
But not if we repeat our 2000 performance. Surveys say women don't vote because we feel powerless. The women in my life say that politics seems too complicated, that politicians don't listen and that their one vote can't make any impact. Even my political go-to-girl, an advocacy lawyer-to-be passionate about policy, will sadly admit that politicians don't often seem to hear our concerns.
It seems like most of my friends agree with Sex and The City socialite Samantha Jones. Her political doctrine? "I don't believe in the Republican party or the Democratic party. I just believe in parties!" Whether we care about voting or not, we clearly do care about government, and we should care who ends up there.
We worry when our paychecks are lacking. When we can't get adequate protection from abusive spouses. When our kids don't have daycare and we don't have healthcare. None of these problems are going to change by themselves. How can we count on these candidates to deliver for us, if we can't even promise we'll show up?
American women have sacrificed and starved for over 100 years to get the right to vote. My last seven have been shaky, but this year I'm making a change. November 2, I plan on voting with my non-Manolo shod feet. Hopefully, I'll see Carrie, her girlfriends, her mother and her sister lining up behind me.
Democrats and Republicans alike named us the Sex and the City vote. Both sides call us the key to victory in November. I'd like to prove them all wrong, flood the polls with women, and show them that we care about more than $300 shoes or $12 martinis. It's too bad, but we'll have to prove one of them right
