By: Jennifer Hatcher, Senior Vice President, Public and Government Affairs, Food Marketing Institute
On June 10th, we had just concluded day-one of FMI Connect and a speech by Hillary Clinton coinciding with the release of her book, “Hard Choices,” when my phone buzzed with a full screen of missed calls, voicemails and texts. An overactive iPhone never leaves a dull impression of the developments to come. The completely unexpected revelation was that the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, had lost his primary to a completely unknown and underfunded economics professor from a tiny college in Ashland, VA by around 7,500 votes.
The lesson – by not voting and not engaging your elected officials, you must work with a government determined by those who do vote and do meet with their elected officials. In a congressional district with 750,000 voters, the leadership of the House of Representatives was completely turned upside down by 1% of the eligible voters not voting.
To help engage with the electoral process, FMI has created a non-partisan Voting Resources web page that anyone can use to find out how to register to vote in their areas, deadlines for absentee voting, information on candidates, an election outlook, and basic information about how our government works (or doesn’t work at times).
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