VOTE? WHY? WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

HANG with celebrities like hunky Josh Hartnett, Ben Affleck or Jessica Simpson! Rock hard with rappers 50-Cent or P. Diddy at slamming house parties! Win a new car! All these can be yours - and more! - just for voting, and it doesn't even matter for whom!

Oh, the embarrassing things we have to do to get America's most spoiled generation to turn off the Xbox and get to the polls on Election Day.

This year the Democratic campaigners in particular have ramped up the tricks, trying to lure in younger voters, especially in those pesky swing states. Young folks are generally considered to be more liberal than their time-hardened parents and grandparents and are therefore potentially voting goldmines to the left.

But it's tough because historically the 18- to 25-year-old crowd would rather staple their fingers together than take the time to grab a ballot from the blue-hairs staffing the polls at the community center and stand in the cramped little booth for a minute. So clearly, it was time to employ the heavy artillery of celebrity shills and free stuff.

Like the new Ford Mustang raffle for people who scrounge up five other people to go and vote, offered jointly by the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. The groups launched the contest on the Web site www.take5anddrive.org to encourage black and Latino youngsters to vote. Here's why, according to the site:

``There are those who do not want you or your friends to vote. They do not want you to have a voice in your future. They would prefer to see you on drugs rather than with a job ... in prison rather than in school.'' (Queue up creepy movie evil-guy laugh here.) ``You cannot let those people win. You have to fight back. You have to seize the power to determine your future. Voting gives you a voice. Voting gives you power.''

With a message like that, do they really need the added enticement of a new car? Yes, they do.

I don't mean to cast aspersions on an entire age group, but, really, what the heck is wrong with the under-25 set? They might vote if they get freebies or someone famous tells them it's cool, but maybe not even then. Losers. Isn't the fate of our very lives enough reason to exercise the vote?

I realize that campaigners are doing what they feel is right to entice younger voters to the polls. And this generation certainly doesn't do anything unless there's some tangible gain in it. Yes, Mom, I'll clean my room - for $20.

Should we really be encouraging that kind of behavior and not expecting personal accountability? We would do better by collectively teaching by example, by showing how every vote counts, that democracy is something to be exercised every single day or it will be lost to facism or communism or anarchy, that our Founding Fathers had a dream about each person's vote meaning something, and we can't let that dream die.

Ha, ha. Just kidding. The only way we can get people to vote is to show them what will happen if they don't. There's an old saying that people get the kind of government they deserve. That's why I'm suggesting the following slate of initiatives for Congress to adopt in the next year or two, which I believe will have the result of motivating a full 95 percent of the so-called youth vote in 2008.

--Double taxes for anyone under 24. This added revenue from this measure would go to pay for refreshing and rejuvenating spa activities for all over-25 voters, or golf for the boys if they prefer. We will need it because - phew - voting makes a person tired!

--Raise the drinking age to 25. That ought to wake people from their Mortal Kombat/Corona stupor long enough to fill in the bubbles of an absentee ballot.

--The ``Don't Vote, Get a Mullet'' law under which it is perfectly legal not to vote, but it does come with the socially unacceptable hairdo favored by soccer stars and 80s pop singers.

--Mandatory conscription duty for every man and woman upon the age of 22 - to work at a fast-food restaurant. Those with college degrees would not be exempted.

In several countries, including Australia and Brazil, citizens are required to vote as part of their citizenship. Some have said that a similar system would work in the United States.

It might work, but it doesn't go with our American individualist style, which allows people to either succeed or fail spectacularly. Here there must be very real consequences for ignoring the duty of citizenship - or at least a good laugh for the rest of us.