Vote

I'm in the middle of election coverage, so I'll keep this short and brutal.

Get off your ass and vote.

I don't want to hear any excuses. I don't want to hear any tortured rationales about disillusionment or the exclusion of the mainstream or how withholding your vote deprives the system of legitimacy. It does nothing except prove that people are very capable of developing elaborate reasons for doing nothing.

I'll ditch, for the moment, my usual grumbling about how voting is the bare minimum, and that a whole range of other political activities are necessary to make a better world.

Leave aside for a moment all the grandeur or optimistic paeans about its overall importance or your democratic rights. There's truth there, but I can see why anyone who's been hit in the face by the corrupt or sadistic can growl "bullshit" at it, so I won't try to shove sunshine down your throat.

In the end, all voting involves is this: You decide which available candidates will at least not make things worse. If you're lucky, some might even be an improvement. You wait in line, probably not for long. You take a pen and fill out some circles on a piece of paper beside the names of the in-your-opinion-sometimes-better-but-often-least-worse people. You get a sticker.

That's it.

Not exactly much of a trial, is it? Especially as the alternative — sitting on your ass — while less strenuous, accomplishes absolutely nothing. If you're unsatisfied with all your current political options and are working to change the overall way the whole mess works, fine, I wish you the best and you can get back to that after voting. It's not like it's horrendously time consuming.

But if you can't put forward that extremely minimal effort — a few pen marks on paper — then what good are you?

Comments

[Damien]

I just wish, today as in most elections, that we had a reasonably impactful "No Confidence" vote, in our system.

[headslap]

a "no confidence" vote will achieve what? a slap on the wrist? a smirk from a newsreader? another election? grow some balls and vote for the least worst outcome. look at it this way, not voting is an endorsement of communism.

[Damien]

No, a "No Confidence" vote with real meaning means we FIND PEOPLE IN WHOM WE HAVE CONFIDENCE.

[martin]

Obama is a corporate capitalist. A vote for the Dems, or Republicans, is a vote for state corporatism. There are well meaning politicians, but tinkering around the edges of our flailing imperial system will do nothing. Power concedes nothing without demand. Voting rights, while important,are no substitute for popular movements. Vote your conscience, this lesser of two evils b.s. isn't getting us anywhere.