How To Make A Difference By Voting

Several of my Facebook friends are adamant in their belief that we should not vote.  These are very sophisticated and informed citizens who have concluded that the system is so corrupt that the act of voting is providing material support of that corruption, and so is immoral, not to mention devoid of the possibility of improving the situation.  I suspect the majority of my friends, most of whom don't talk much about politics, see voting as a civic duty, and are planning to practice the tried-and-true method of lesser evilism in choosing their candidates.  My purpose in this essay is to convince both of these groups that 1) their attitude towards voting will not have the effect they want it to have, 2) there is a way to have a greater impact, and 3) it involves voting.

I wrote about lesser evilism about a year ago, when I was deep into the Ron Paul campaign.  I'll quote the relevant portion of that essay:

Many people believe that politicians are generally self-serving liars, but they are willing to live with this because they feel they have no choice.  The TV show South Park is generally too low-brow offensive for me, but I recently agreed to watch an episode my wife said would explain why she doesn't get involved in politics the way I do.  The episode centered around the election of a new mascot for South Park Elementary School.  The candidates jokingly offered by students were "Big Douche" and "Turd Sandwich".  Despite the obvious offensiveness of the candidates and the resulting meaninglessness of the race, the episode revolves around the community's efforts to show how important voting is to the one student who refuses to participate.  The accuracy with which this fictional scenario mirrors our actual presidential elections is frightening.  Is Obama "Big Douche" and Romney "Turd Sandwich", or is it the the other way around?  Why do we get so worked up about elections when these are the choices offered to us?

This dynamic, and the lack of real choices is in fact that reason why many people don't vote.  The 2012 Presidential Election is a very clear example of a race where nobody really wants to vote for a candidate, they just want to vote against the other guy.  Obama has disappointed the Left, and the Right knows that Romney isn't really one of them.  However, they feel they have no choice because these are the candidates the two major parties have offered.  And given how all the attention is on the Democrat and Republican candidates, people feel that voting for the less evil one of them is the only viable way to defeat the more evil one of them.  Unfortunately, doing this for decades is how we got into this mess in the first place.

Which brings me to the central theme of this essay.  Those who follow my Facebook posts will have seen this coming, but in fact there are other choices available to you.  Voters in Massachusetts, which is typical, will have two candidates on the ballot who are neither Republican nor Democrat.  The fact the most voters will be surprised by this plethora of choices when they enter the voting booth is an epic scandal.  The perpetrators of this scandal are not the major parties, who are simply looking out for their own interests, as everyone does.  They are evil, but garden variety evil.  The real scandal is being perpetrated by our so-called journalistic media, who are in fact nothing but the public relations department for the military-industrial-government complex which is now in power in the United States.  The fact that they are pretending to be journalists makes their evil sneaky, insidious, and much more dangerous.

Voting for a third party candidate for President is by far the most impactful thing you can do this November to upset the political status quo that is killing this country and jeopardizing the entire planet.  I'm not going to spend time in this essay on anti-Romney or anti-Obama rhetoric, though I would be happy to tell you how either one of them is directly opposing your interests and principles.  If you are unfamiliar with the arguments that the two major parties are really two sides of the same fake coin, see this recent essay by Glenn Greenwald.  The point of my essay and his is that the limited choices are the problem.  Voting for either Obama or Romney puts your stamp of approval on the two-party system and guarantees more of the same for decades to come.  Whatever your reasons for preferring one party over the other, please consider the possibility that by perpetuating the two-party system you are participating in a larger evil than any one party can commit by itself.  The self-serving parties we have today are the result of people choosing the lesser evil for generations.  It's time to stop voting for evil.  Only if a vanguard of citizens is willing to vote third party, cycle after cycle, knowing their candidate won't win, will we be able to eventually point to a history of sustained and growing interest in alternative parties, and the media and mainstream parties will eventually have to pay attention.

Many people like to talk about what message they are sending with their vote (or their not voting), and I agree that this is important.  The media will certainly spend ample time debating what message the voters were sending, and this will shape rhetoric for years to come.  The key point to realize about this angle is: the message you intend to send may not be the  message that is received.

The point about messaging is most clearly illustrated by the non-voters.  When interpreted by the media, your sophisticated, principled non-voting will be lumped in with all of the other non-voters and boiled down to a single number, the turnout or participation rate.  Analysts will try to interpret this single number with the one or two most likely reasons why so many people chose not to vote.  The most likely reasons identified will be slacker apathy and an inability to get to the polls because of daily responsibilities.  Maybe some of the most sophisticated analysts will identify a general sense of dissatisfaction with the candidates as a possible reason some people decided not to vote.  But in general, your neo-anarchist message of resistance to the Illuminati will be completely lost in the noise.  And for the candidates themselves, your non-participation is a delight, since you don't matter at all for them if you don't vote, so they need not consider your opinion the whole time they're governing or campaigning in the future.  Seriously, do you think that if by some miracle you can convince everyone else to stop voting that the powers that be will demurely acknowledge the lack of support and voluntarily retire from power?  If it came to that, they would simply make voting mandatory or illegal, and either result would ensure they could never be driven from power again.  Please, while we still have something resembling effective voting, use it to change the system from within.  Be as anarchist as you want the other 364 days of the year, but take this one day to vote while you still can.

Messaging is equally important for those of you who are thinking of voting for one of the major party candidates.  And given our Electoral College system, messaging is actually all you have, unless you're in one of the half-dozen swing states where the outcome is uncertain.  If you actually live in a real swing state and firmly believe that Obama is better than Romney or vice-versa, then I will not begrudge you voting for him.  For most of you, however, this is not the case.  For example, it is a certainty that Obama will win Massachusetts by at least 10%.  Therefore, nothing could be less consequential than voting for him in Massachusetts.  Your vote will simply be lost in a sea of identical actions, and interpreted however the media and candidates want to interpret it.  However, a vote for Jill Stein will stand out, and actually send a message to Obama and future Democrats that their constant appeasement of the Right has been noticed, and that they had better pay attention to their base if they want to keep them.  A vote for Gary Johnson would send a message to both parties and the media that there are people who are dissatisfied with the status quo of big, violent government.

For many citizens, voting is the only political act they do.  For many of my Facebook friends, it is only a small piece in the continuous life of activism that makes them feel they are contributing to society.  Your vote is private, and need not necessarily be consistent with every opinion you've ever voiced.  I hope this essay has helped you think about voting strategically, and to clearly consider what effect your actions on November 6 will have.  Even if you don't think the Presidential election is important, there are likely to be some consequential ballot questions (Massachusetts has four).  So please make this one day about voting, and consider casting a vote for President that will send a clear message that you want more choices.