Getting Out of Voting

Getting Out of Voting

          The biggest problem faced by liberal democracy is disaffection.  It is a pernicious problem because the vicious cycle it breeds is obvious.  If you feel your vote doesn’t count or that it won’t change anything, then perhaps you get apathetic and choose not to bother voting.  The forces of darkness prevail, and they not only push policies that further disadvantage those disaffected non-voters, but they put in place voting restriction policies that further cause it to be harder for those disaffected voters and others inclined to progressive agendas to vote them out of office down the road (voter restrictions and gerrymandering). This is the makings of great autocracies and years of further repression of the public will.

          In other words, we need to find a way to better galvanize the broader, often less-well-informed electorate in a manner to allow them to protect their interests and getting the policy benefits they seek.  It’s hard for that not to sound paternalistic with a big dose of “We know what’s best for you”, and thereby denigrating.  That’s the real vexing part of this issue.  How do you turn apathy into engaged self-governance without doing what we all believe is wrong, the manipulation of the masses “for their own good”?

          This morning I heard something expressed that really concerned me.  I have always assumed that voting apathy was mostly about people thinking that their vote doesn’t make a difference due to the impotency of one vote or that the candidate selection was too managed to give people better than the better of two evils.  What I heard was a Detroit woman saying that they had their man, Barack Obama, in office for eight years and he couldn’t make a big enough difference to their lives to take them out of their misery.  That is a horrible line of thinking because it ignores the good things that were done like Obamacare and it acknowledges the difficulty of the political process in getting consensus.  Now Obama had two years of House control, but never had the supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate that assured passage of laws by the Senate.  This is what kept him from being as effective in a galvanized political sphere that was already building in 2008, as he wanted to be.  Then, of course, the 2012 election shifted things right since not enough progress was being made and total blockage in Congress took hold.

          How do you explain to someone in desperate need of a better life that democracy demands that we play by the rules of our constitution for democracy to persist in the form we can all benefit from?  Do you bend the rules to suit your demands for effectiveness as the Republicans are doing now?  Do you stonewall the righteous nomination of a Supreme Court justice because you can, by a technical definition of the rulebook?  Does that serve the greater good?

          It is a difficult and persistent problem with democracy.  To enjoy a liberal democracy, you must tolerate the ability to manipulate the democratic process.  You don’t have to like it.  But you do have to explain it and sell it to the broader electorate without having them throw their hands up in frustration and saying, “See, that’s why I don’t bother to vote.”  This seems to be a classic Catch-22.  If you act the way rule-abiding Democrats tend to act, you lose the strength to bring enough real change.  But if you bend to the pragmatism and manipulative tactics so often employed by Republicans for effectiveness, what you gain in the moment you lose in the underpinnings of the democratic process.

          I know young people who are apathetic about voting.  They have opinions about the political landscape, but they just are too lazy to vote and are unclear that it makes any difference (in this case, mostly because they live in a liberal democratic state like New York).  It’s hard in young adults to inculcate them with the notion of good citizenship if they don’t have it in them by that age.

          So we are faced with a choice of huge proportions.  We can either let young and marginalized people get out of voting or we can work to get out the vote  It’s easy to do the former, but it will be painful for a long, long time and the cycle may never allow them to get back on the merry-go-round once they step off.  The latter is even harder because it requires the intangible inspiration of greatness that is hard to conjure and may only come about due to some great upheaval like a war or horrible threat to our existence.  People galvanize around momentous events and momentous events that are hard to fabricate and often not easy to exploit.  In the last few years we have had Russians rigging our elections.  No big deal.  We’ve had Nazis marching on our cities like Charlottesville and even killing white folk.  Not a problem.  We’ve had gun-wielding domestic terrorists shooting countless of our youth and friends for political, religious and purely random reasons.  Just part of life.  We’ve had children torn from their parents and cast adrift in the world, perhaps forever, never to see their families again.  Their fault for coming.  We’ve even had war threatened with Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and even Mexico. Just trade business as usual.

          This morning I heard an unlikely team of Jon Meacham, the presidential historian and Tim McGraw, the country and western singer come up with an idea.  They are talking about characterizing our times in song as a form of historical capture of the moment.  It suddenly dawned on me.  God Bless the U.S.A., God Bless America, This is My Country, America (Simon & Garfunkel and Neil Diamond), Living in America, and Take me Home Country Roads.

These are all songs that bring a lump to our throats.  There are many more.  Who can hear The Ballad of the Green Beret or even One Tin Soldier without shedding a tear? 

So, now I’ve decided that what we need is a huge live aid concert that the liberal democracy advocates can sponsor that has at its core a song about all the freedoms and rights we hold most sacred, all the characteristics of America we hold dear and all the diverse peoples who make up this land.  The proceeds of the concert would all get contributed to a “Get out the Vote” fund to finance voter registration.  Getting out of voting is choosing resignation.  Getting out the vote is choosing life.