I asked ten high school students about today’s importance for Missouri voters.  And not surprisingly, only two knew, for in fact today was not important at all.

There will be zero delegates awarded to the winner of the Missouri Republican Primary hosted today.  So, we taxpayers are spending seven million dollars to put on a puppet-show election when our states faces a budget shortfall of over half a billion dollars in 2012.  In this process of cutting spending, legislators pledged to cut all unnecessary programs.  For example, our representatives cut the state-funded Tour of Missouri, considered by professional bicyclists among the best races in the country.  This race brought international attention to Missouri for the sum of one million dollars each year.

Cutting spending is all fine and dandy if this is the policy and legislators are committed to it.  However, when our representatives decline the opportunity to void the election and save seven million taxpayer dollars, an issue arises: hypocrisy.  We could have hosted seven Tour or Missouri’s instead of this pointless Tuesday election.

Maybe it is a good thing so few students knew about the elections today, or else the police might have been managing a protest outside CHS for the second day in a row.