To follow up on all these voting asks from yesterday and today, here are a few points that inform the answers I’ve been giving:
- You do not have a duty to vote.
- The suffragettes and civil rights activists who fought for universal enfranchisement were admirable and heroic, but their actions do not create a duty to vote. They were fighting for equal rights of political expression, and intentional abstention from the electoral process fits that bill as well as voting does.
- Voting is not inherently moral. More than once the ballot box has been the means of a dictator’s rise.
- Abstention is not inherently apathetic. In fact, there have even been abstention campaigns in which people withheld votes to indict a political system whose flaws extended well past a single party or candidate.
- Voting for a third-party or write-in candidate or writing something like “none of the above” is not necessarily more moral or effective than total abstention. Yes, abstention can be misinterpreted as apathy, but is does not risk misinterpretation as acceptance of the whole electoral structure, which those other options do chance.
- Refusing to vote for one candidate does not mean supporting their opponent. That is a logically fallacious guilt trip.
- Voting is not the solution to our problems. That’s not to say it never helps, but politics is no panacea, and there are many problems it can’t fix.
- Voting can become an excuse for avoiding work to actually address those problems. More on that here.
Look, I know the importance of voting (and specifically, voting for a viable candidate) is drilled into us from kindergarten on up by people we admire and respect. That voting is an obligation and refusing to vote at the very least a sign of poor character is well-ingrained in the American psyche. There are good and understandable historical reasons why voting so revered in the United States, but those reasons do not make these assumptions correct.
If there was ever a time for critical thinking about whether and how to vote, 2016 is it. I encourage you to use that opportunity well. Maybe you’ll still end up voting—maybe even for one of the major party choices. Fine.
But don’t do it on autopilot. Don’t do it because you think it’s your duty as an American to pull the lever for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
(via bonniekristian)
