Seven people express their attitudes towards voting.
Joseph S. Bommarito
Hi. My name is Joe. I’m a . . . a voter.
I didn’t start right out voting. You know how it goes, you start on the soft stuff for a little buzz and it leads you on, and pretty soon you’re hooked on the hard stuff, the real high.
My sophomore year in high school was when it started. My buddies were getting older guys to buy them beer. They were sneaking booze into the punch at parties. They were trying to feel up Brenda Jones. Me, I was campaigning for John Kennedy, passing out brochures, manning the phones on Election Day. It’s embarrassing to admit it now, but that was my introduction to “being a good citizen,” to the idealism of voting.
As soon as I was old enough, I voted. Every election. The national elections, of course. Who didn’t want to be part of that process? I mean, to vote for the President. Wow! And I voted consistently Democratic. Sorry about the language, but there’s no other way to say it.
Then there were the state elections. State senators, representatives, governor, judges. I couldn’t get enough. I was fulfilling my “obligation,” being “part of the process.” Pretty soon I was voting in local elections; you know, mayor, city council, even school board members. And I didn’t have any kids yet. Most of these were nonpartisan elections, but it didn’t matter by then. I voted. I studied the candidates. I boned up on the issues.
I couldn’t wait to vote. I looked for special elections, the kind where they want to raise property tax rates. Sometimes, when there was a long, dry spell between elections, I fantasized. I thought about starting a recall drive. Maybe pick on some local or county official that wasn’t too popular. Not because I wanted him or her out of office. Because I wanted to vote. I needed the fix.
I remember waiting in those long, snaky lines at 7 a.m., seeing the big, old clunky machines, waiting to pull down the little levers to make my choices—I’d always pull the little levers down even when voting straight party tickets. I wanted to feel I was making critical decisions. Each lever was a little high, leading to the big one. Then I’d throw that big lever back. Wham! And the curtain would open and I would step out, a beatific smile on my face, and face the line of voters still waiting. I’d feel superior because I’d gotten there first. I’d proven my citizenship. What a high!
Disenchantment set in. I’d been taking uppers, voting Democratic. By 1972, I was tired of them. What they gave me wasn’t enough. The promises of euphoric utopia, if only we would vote for them, began to fail. I was tired of being high on liberal platforms. I wanted to come down. In 1972, I voted Republican.
Well, who knew? Still in the future, Watergate was looming. A president disgraced. A resignation. A national scandal. And I had voted for the man. What a letdown. Even the off-year elections didn’t do anything for me. I had gone from drinking liberalism to snorting conservatism. It wasn’t enough. My mind was screaming out for a really meaningful voting experience. I needed more! I started to mainline. In 1976 I began to vote straight anti-incumbent. Turn the rascals out. Which rascals? Didn’t matter. Get rid of them and let a new bunch in for a while. Then vote them out. But vote. Do the right thing.
The effects were fleeting, the high lasting less time than ever. The between- election discontent grew. The big D people or the big R people. It didn’t matter who was in there. Voting didn’t seem to matter much now, but I couldn’t stop. In 1992, I made a watershed decision. I went off-brand, third party . . . I voted Libertarian for the first time. It was exhilarating! It was meaningful! It was principled! My vote meant something again! And no, it wasn’t wasted, because I was voting for something I believed in.
It was a strange, energetic new high. And it got me back into activism. I joined the big L party. I worked on projects. I joined the local group. Worked on outreach. Brought in new members. And voted. It was in my blood and I couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t wait for the next election cycle.
I wanted to start joining organizations just to vote for chapter president or on what week to have a bake sale. I started hanging out at the polls, even though they were closed. I spent all my time reading newspapers, political opinions, news magazines, political sites on the Internet. Everything else—job, family, friends—suffered. I couldn’t stop. I was a hopeless addict.
Addiction is when you do something that you know harms you, but you don’t stop. The harm in voting, what I never saw lurking in the corners, was the moral responsibility. Sure, if my candidate wins, and he does something stupid, like bomb a foreign country to take everyone’s mind off his Oval Office peccadilloes, then part of the moral responsibility lies with me. What I didn’t know is that I’m still responsible when my candidate loses and the other moron does something equally idiotic. Why? Because I took part in the system that put the weasel in. I not only took part, I embraced the system. I became the system.
On August 20, the day of the Georgia primary, I came to terms with my addiction. I voted for NOTA—None Of The Above—and I did it the easy way. I stayed home with about 71 percent of Chatham County voters. For the first time, I ignored an election. On purpose. Instead of the post-non-electoral guilt hangover I expected, I felt just fine, proud, in fact, that I finally did the right thing.
The election day choices were business as usual. The Republicans shamelessly stumped on the platform of lower taxes and less government while the past year under their reign has seen more expansion of government than in any period since the LBJ years.
At least the Democrats were honest about their equally shameful collectivist intentions, which are to have everyone live at the expense of everyone else while they expand the category of “rights” to include . . . well, everything that other peoples’ money can buy.
On Election Day, I refused to be part of a system with which I disagreed, the American political system as now practiced. A system of excesses, failures, and abuses. A system that has slowly and quietly repealed the American Revolution and ground beneath its heel the standards for which that war was fought. A system that no longer honors individual liberty and personal responsibility and no longer protects private property. A system that in the past 100 years has so thoroughly perverted the meanings of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as to make both of these fundamental charters of freedom unrecognizable to their authors.
I took the first step. I admitted I was powerless over politics—that my life had become unmanageable. I’m not sure if twelve-step programs work for voter addiction, but this is a good first step. I just have to hold on, get past November, and maybe there will be hope for me. Just thinking about it, about the chance to try the new machines . . . computer voting! I’m getting the shakes already. Is there hope for me?
William Keenan
I don’t/won’t vote. My problem with the political system is that it doesn’t work. Not at all. The people are told by television & radio when to be upset and what to write their congressmen about; intelligent thought has nothing to do with it (Walter Cronkite to Tom Brokaw have always tried to sell you a story with one outlook….What they want you to hear/see). So the government patches up any holes it thinks the public will write too many letters about and tells us they are inside now, changing out the bad for good, so everything is going well again. Anything will be said to keep us grinding away at minimum wage and proclaiming ourselves the Best System In The World as they raise their salaries again to buy their 4th house. The government has become a self feeding machine… it eats what it creates and lives on its own, moving in its own direction, not stopping to pick up the hitchhiking citizens going its way and not even hesitating to run down those headed the opposite direction. And why doesn’t anyone want to derail them? Well, aren’t we all too happy telling the world we control this behemoth? Instead of caring what it’s doing now, America is too concerned with the game of tug-o-war between the Democrats and Republicans. My side’s better, you flushed the toilet down the country, my dad can beat up your dad, and my god can run a crusade against your god. Ha ha ha. It’s not power, it’s entertainment. Rock the vote. Do the talk shows. Play the game. You are being placated, not honored. That ballot you’re casting… lemme tell you something: that lever you pull is the equivalent of the toy steering wheel you put in the back seat of your car for your kids. The baby thinks he’s driving, and the horn honks when you press it, but Mommy’s in the front seat, and she’s in charge. No amount of whining will change her course, but if you make too much of a mess she’ll pull over for five minutes to change your diaper.
Arnetha F. Ball
One of the most common responses that I get from people when I say that I didn’t vote in a local or national election is the argument that I am disrespecting the Black men and women who died so that Black people could have the opportunity to vote. I feel that this argument is misguided. At the historical moment when masses of Black people in the American South were attempting to register to vote, and as a result often persecuted and sometimes killed, there was a belief that the ability to vote would empower our community. By “empower our community” I mean, that the ability to vote was presumed to guarantee us representation in government which would bring an end to the brutally oppressive system of segregation and the systemic violence which sustained it. As a result, many of our ancestors who were attempting to vote, were also attempting to run for office. I don’t believe that simply casting a vote on election day for whatever candidates are on the ballet is going to change anything real in the Black community. My ancestors who died attempting to register to vote, didn’t die because they wanted to vote, they died because they wanted our community to have the power and self-determination to live a quality life.
If I believed that I could cast a vote for a good candidate and not just the candidate that is the lesser of two (or three or however many) evils, I would vote. I feel guilty some times about not putting political actions with my political ideals, but I will not vote just to ease my conscience. I want to have a real voice in the decisions made about my life and the lives of my people. When a white person votes they are giving their opinion on issues relevant to a country where people that look like them, think like them and want the things that they want have power. When you cast a ballot, your vote is an opinion, it is not a decision – as Black people in America, in 1997, we are powerless and oppressed. Our vote is giving our opinion to a group of people who don’t look like us, don’t think like us and don’t care about us.
I am 27 years old. I have voted only one time in my life. I am an educated, politically conscious Black woman. I am well aware of the struggle that African Americans went through in order to gain the ‘right’ to vote. And I don’t take any of that lightly. I know that people died attempting to register to vote. I don’t choose not vote because I don’t care. I don’t vote because, voting the way it is popularly conceived at this point in African American history , is an empty and impotent act.
Alvin Lowi, Jr.
If an informed and conscientious democratic electorate patronizes only ‘good’ candidates for office in a monopoly institution of governmental power, will the politicians they elect thereafter dedicate themselves to looking after the people’s business in preference to their own?
Can politicians, however elected, actually do the people’s business for them through the institutions allegedly built for that purpose?
What’s to keep politicians from behaving opportunistically to make the most of what they find for themselves while in office?
If the politician’s government is found to be incapable of delivering its promised protections and benefits, how can the people peaceably recover their prerogatives from the coercive monopoly once they created it?
If political institutions fail to fulfill their promises, how can the people go about their business anyway as they must in order to survive and prosper?
If entrenched politicians are ignored, will they go away?
If the polls are boycotted, will despots succeed to rule?
These are frequently-asked and searching questions. They beg for answers. In the following exposition, these questions among others will be examined. Politics as it is known rather than it ‘ought’ to be will be explored in search of answers.
The author presumes the reader is as familiar with politics as he. Accordingly, the reader is advised to consider carefully the observations presented and come to his own conclusions.
- Doing Something Versus Doing Nothing
- Political Qualifications, Participation, and Consequences
- Political Abstention and Consequences
- An Alternate Form of Voting
- Causes and Effects
- Political Etiquette for Political Victims
- Man Versus the State
- Political Reform
- What Can Be Done
Go on to the next page, Doing Something Versus Doing Nothing, or return to the introduction.
Alvin Lowi, Jr. is a writer based in California.
Krayg
I can safely say that I’m sick to the teeth of all this fuss over a tick (or is it a cross?) in a box every five years. We give these politician types more attention than their pathetic attempts at ‘governing’ deserve. And I ain’t interested in what they think of bisexuality, especially since they probably won’t be telling the truth anyway!
Real government would involve us in being able to give our opinion on a variety of issues in a way that differentiated between the different issues.
For example, I might feel that one penny in the pound devoted to education is a good thing (and opinion polls purport to show that a majority of the population agree), but that constitutional reform of the House of Lords is not. At present, the former point would move me to vote Lib Dem, but that would mean the latter might happen against my wishes.
All the media space given over to the sleazy besuited ‘governors’ of ours trying to convince us that there is a genuine difference between them could truly be devoted to exploring the issues, then we could spend fifteen minutes down at the polling booth filling in a multiple choice type questionnaire where we indicated our opinion on all the different issues. An organisation called Practical Alternatives, which I believe still exists, has put forward a model along these lines.
Corey Musolff
Well friends, another election has come and gone. I sure hope you all went out there and contributed your insignificant part to a completely unproductive process. The election last night basically said that nothing has changed. I don’t really think that much would have changed even with a different winner. True “change” will not take place in my lifetime.
I have many problems with democratic elections. First of all, regardless of the candidates, the choice is ridiculously narrow. Does it bother you that the pool consisting of the entire “American male” population has been reduced to two “politicians” without anyone so much as even asking your advice? That isn’t any kind of choice at all. That’s like being given the choice of forms of execution. Either way, you’re fucked. This way, however, you’re given the illusion of choice.
Second of all, even if the choice was completely yours, who would you pick? Chances are that you don’t know anyone that would make a “perfect” leader. That’s because they don’t exist. That’s why we have elections. A new election means that our current leader isn’t the perfect person that we were hoping for, so we’ll try again. That’s the problem. Elections are just a way for the masses to continue their search for the perfect person. As people grow older, they slowly realize that this person doesn’t exist. That’s what makes old people cynical, and keeps young people ignorant and hopeful. The masses want a leader who is strong yet compassionate, confident yet humble, old and wise yet youthful and motivated. They want someone with superior traits who can still relate to the common man. They want change and stability. They want a well defended country while remaining peaceful. The whole concept is a contradiction from the very beginning.
Also, how well do you really know the candidates? All most people know about them are the exaggerated good deeds that they say that they’ve done and the equally exaggerated evil deeds that their opponent claims. That’s a terrible form of representation. Think about it, you’ve never even met the person who will become your supreme leader. You have know idea what kind of people they are really. That’s why there is no such thing as an educated decision in this situation.
Some people have asked me why I don’t vote for an alternate party. That’s easy. Whether or not I have something against the main candidates isn’t my point. It’s the whole process that bothers me. The same problems arise in other parties. I heard an interesting quote recently from a particularly close minded individual that I know. He said that “Non-partisan candidates kill democracy.” I couldn’t disagree more. Non-partisans don’t affect the system at all. That’s why they lose. I prefer to believe that the current party system is what’s killing our country. I have an idea; how about if every four years, in order to support democracy and unity, we choose up sides and compete. We’re already divided. We’ve lost. It’s time to try something new. The party system is simply a case of two opposite sets of overly extreme ideals that know one can live up to or even agrees with.
A lot of people tell me to stop bitching about the state of things and to do something about it. My power to do that would be the equivalent of a vote (pretty worthless). Something needs to happen on a large scale. I know that I don’t have the answers, but I’m at least part of a minority in the population that even recognizes a problem. Until enough people realize that a problem does exist, we can’t even begin to fix it.
Robert Klassen
Voting in political government is akin to driving the getaway car in a robbery, the voter is an accessory to a crime. In the case of political government, the crime is coercion against individuals carried out by the armed force which stands behind every political law, every political lawmaker, and every political institution. Unlike the world of free-markets, in political government when some individuals win, other individuals lose.
We allow the state to teach our children that majority rule in political government is good, proper, and fair. The state does not teach our children that the authors of the Constitution were mortally afraid of majority rule and that they expended every effort to prevent it, an effort which was subsequently subverted. The state does not teach our children that when a majority rules, a minority is ruled. The concept of political democracy was flawed at its birth in ancient Greece and has remained flawed ever since precisely because a majority of people elect which self-interest will be enforced by arms, which ultimately and inevitably leads to the use of those self-same arms against the majority, the minority, and every living thing in sight. It is no accident that the fantasies which we have been taught by the state are now enabling a domestic army to be used against us; history teaches us that this is inevitable.
For thirty years I have wondered which President of the United States will be our last one, for history also teaches us that a majority in political democracy will elect a tyrant to rule, to solve the millions of problems which political government created and democracy cannot solve. Every President recognizes this and watches for the opportunity, our idols of Lincoln, FDR, and Kennedy being no exception whatsoever. The state would like us to forget that the Germans elected Hitler. Each President has gathered power to the office for two centuries, slowly at first, quickly these days, so that the office may create its own disaster, dissolve congress, and come to our rescue exactly as Hitler did, then give us the option of electing him as tyrant, which will be no option at all.
Americans have always been busy people preoccupied with their own lives and they pay remarkably little attention to what our full-time political government is really doing, which is creating and passing more and more laws which restrict our personal liberty and curtail our commerce. It has been our singular ability to create wealth faster than our political government can destroy it which has kept the predatory state at bay and allowed us to live with our illusions of freedom, liberty, and justice. The facts do not support this happy condition, however. Who is going to pay for entitlements in thirty years? Who is going to pay off government bonds in thirty years? With a total taxation rate of sixty-percent of wealth produced annually today, what will it be in thirty years? The question is not, what is going to happen, the question is, when?
We are simply repeating the history of mankind, the true history, not the wishful ignorance of state school teachers. We have been conned into standing on the scaffold with the noose around our necks, the rope looped over political government, with the bitter end in our own hands, waiting to be told to hang on tight and jump. This is voting in political government; this voluntary suicide is the crime, a crime against life, a crime against nature. Don’t do it. Don’t vote!
Why I Don’t Vote: Google It!