|
CounterPunch
October
28, 2002
In Defense of Not Voting
by PIERRE TRISTAM
A week from today some of us will head to the
polls and vote. Most of us won't. Voter turnout has been declining
so stubbornly since the 1960s that barely half the electorate
votes in presidential elections, and only 36 to 38 percent does
in off-year elections such as this one. Actual voters, in essence,
are America's newest, most powerful minority.
All controversies of the 2000 election
aside, George W. Bush was put in office by just 25 percent of
the electorate. Fewer than 23 percent of Floridians elected Jeb
Bush governor in 1998. Fewer than 20 percent regularly put congressmen
in office. The numbers frequently drop down to the 10 percent
range for judges, county commissioners, school board members
and city commissioners. This is no longer a representative democracy.
It is a vote-owners' association whose members tend to be richer,
older, more educated, more conservative democracy's equivalent
of a gated community, with most Americans outside the gate. No
wonder Republicans are in control.
Convention has it that non-voters have
only themselves to blame. "If you don't vote, don't complain."
The dictum assumes that voters are more virtuous, more entitled
to democracy's spoils, than non-voters. But voting is neither
a virtue nor a responsibility. It is a neutral civil right, like
the right to marry, have children, earn a graduate degree. Not
voting like not marrying or not procreating future taxpayers
is a right of equal weight, a choice as defensible as the choice
to vote. Both are exercises in freedom. To blame a citizen for
not voting is like blaming another for voting for a crook. The
blame is sanctimonious either way, suggesting the existence of
an ideal voter out there, prescient and unfailing. No such voter
exists, but the cult of the voter as superior citizen persists.
When Hollywood wants some gravity in
a movie, it injects an English accent. When democracy's missionaries
need to give voting the weight of civic virtue, they inject some
Aristotle. In both cases, the injection is more pretentious than
accurate. True, in Athenian democracy, citizens were not only
entitled to vote but to serve in public office, some of them
judges in particular chosen randomly. But it was easy for Aristotle
to argue that true citizenship is possible only through direct
political participation. Greek democracy excluded women, slaves,
the poor, the landless, the too-recently foreign, the unorthodox
(who were exiled or hemlocked, Socrates-style), leaving a neat
little club of white men to play politics.
Judges-by-lot and hemlock aside, America's
version of representative democracy, until recently, was virtually
indistinguishable from Greece's. When, say, the presidential
election of 1840 officially drew an 80 percent turnout, actual
turnout by today's more inclusive standards would drop that figure
below the dismal turnout of 2000. And 1840 was considered a banner
year. So when it comes to voter participation, Aristotle has
nothing to teach Americans. The American voting problem is its
own to solve.
The Census Bureau analyzed the non-voters
of 2000. Twenty-one percent cited a lack of interest in candidates
or felt that their vote wouldn't make a difference. Twenty percent
said they were too busy or had conflicting schedules (an argument
for making Election Day a holiday). Fifteen percent cited illness,
and 11 percent were out of town. Seven percent had registration
problems. Seventeen percent cited "other reasons" or
refused to say why. The remaining 9 percent cited reasons as
varied as the weather, inconvenient polling places, forgetting
to vote, or transportation problems. Whatever the case may be,
calling it "apathy" distorts the picture and misunderstands
the non-voter. When the majority of Americans no longer vote,
that majority's voice speaks louder, in purely democratic terms,
than the minority that is voting.
Those who are getting elected are not
representative of the majority of Americans. (Do you really believe
that Floridians as a whole are as rabidly and stiffly Republican
as the Florida Legislature has been lately?) Those who are not
voting are the voices that must be understood best if democracy
is to work again. Theirs is less a reflection of their apathy
than it is a reflection of the choices they are offered. Apathy
implies laziness and ignorance. But I find it impossible to call
the American citizen lazy when Americans are the most manic workaholics
in the world. I find it equally impossible to call that citizenry
ignorant when Americans are ridiculously and trivially over-informed.
The fact that they choose not to be informed about politicians
is itself the message: The politicians are too often the source
of apathy. They are the uncompelling, ignorant, vapid, irrelevant
variables in the equation, and they're not variable enough, because
they control their own gates.
Membership to that vote-owners' association
is a matter of money, that legal swindle euphemistically called
campaign finance. One man, one vote is an ideal at a table rigged
for high-rollers. If, as Benjamin Disraeli put it, "there
is no gambling like politics," one grand is ante for the
game, one million is a congressman's eternal friendship, a senator's
returned phone calls, a president's earlobe for a few minutes.
That cool million is also out of 200 million American voters'
league. The wonder is that 100 million Americans still have the
heart to vote.
Pierre Tristam
is an editorial writer and columnist at the Daytona Beach News-Journal
. He can be reached at ptristam@att.net.
Yesterday's
Features
Naseer Aruri
Remapping
the Middle East:
Whose War Is It This Time?
Yigal Bronner
A Letter
to the General
Kurt Nimmo
Horowitz, Powell and Belafonte
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Lies and Simple Truths
Patrick Cockburn
Putin's Gas:
115 Killed by Poison Gas
Anthony Gancarski
Johnny Muhammad Got His Gun
William Hughes
Report from DC:
The Anti-War Movement Arrives
William Blum
Bush's Wars:
Anti-Terror or Empire Building?
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- The Shafts of Death: Bush, Coal Mines, and Death
in the Tunnels;
- Speak Memory!: Carter and the Draft;
- Daniel Pipes' World: Smearing Pro-Arab Academics;
- Ashcroft's Gays: the War on Free Speech;
- Saddam's Amnesty: Could It Happen Here?
- Criminalizing Dissent: a history and preview;
- Iraq 1987: When the Going Was Good;
- Egypt in Turmoil: an Anthropologist's Account;
- Green and Grounded: Profiled at the Gate.
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
October 26
/ 27, 2002
Michael Wolff
A Place
of Tears
Ilija Trojanow
Bali Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
Crocodile Tears
Hope Shand and Silvia Ribeiro
The Great Containment:
GM Fallout from Mexico to Zambia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Wolf Who Cried Wolf:
Charging Anti-Semitism & Extending the Iron Wall
Gavin Keeney
The Fusion Thing:
Landscape + Architecture
Adam Engel
A Good Man is Hard to Misfit
Anis Shivani
Is America Becoming Fascist?
Jason Leopold
Is Thomas White Fit to Lead the Army?
Philip Farruggio
Let Them Eat (Crumb) Cake
Josh Frank
The Grassroots of Hope
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen: episode 5
Night School
M. Shahid
Alam
The Civilizing Mission
October 25, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Pappy
Bush on Wellstone:
"Who Is This Chickenshit?"
Stuart Timmons
Harry
Hay Dead at 90:
He Paved the Way for Modern Gay Activism
Vanessa Jones
Australia
Votes Green:
Historic No Vote to US War Plans
Ben Terrall
Rep.
Tom Lantos' Big Lie
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Behind
the Drive for War:
The Escalating Bush Military Budget
Will Youmans
Israel's and Divestment
Norman Madarasz
Lula
on the Verge
October 24,
2002
Jo Freeman
How the
Christian Coalition Boosts Israel
Ben Tripp
George
W.: Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place
Harry Browne
Ireland's Dreary Yes to Nice
Anis Shivani
A Guide
for the Perplexed:
the Major Countries of the World as Defined by the Office of
Strategic Influence
T.W. Croft
America's
New Improved War
William Hughes
A Free
Press, But for Whom?
Alan Farago
Jeb Bush and the Environment
October 23,
2002
Daniel Wolff
Pataki,
Witt and the Indian Point Nuke
Wayne Madsen
A Saudiless
Arabia
Sam Bahour
and Paul de Rooij
Abritrary
Imprisonment
Chris White
Why I Oppose
the US War on Terror:
an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out
Anthony Gancarski
Back to Bali
Adam Engel
Twilight
(of the Idols) Zone
Robert Fisk
How to Shut Up Your Critics
October 22,
2002
Jack McCarthy
A Letter
to C. Hitchens
Carol Norris
This Message
Brought to You by Breast Cancer, Inc.
Joanne Mariner
Just
Say "Not Until We're Married":
Legislating Morality and Understanding HIV/AIDS Prevention
Kathleen Christison
Excuse Me?
How Israel Justifies Killing Palestinians
Linda Heard
Iraq War
Mongering:
A Game of Chess with Lives at Stake
Roger Peacock
Marketing the War on Iraq
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|