BAND-AIDS are meant to cover up unsightly wounds, not to heal them. All the hubbub about voting to make a difference, so that politicians hear your voice, is severely misguided.
There are no strong moral reasons to vote. None. Voting is a way of patting yourself on the back for believing that you are contributing to representative democracy, all the while ignoring important ways to affect change. Thus voting is a big band-aid, for a scratch that we all seem afflicted by every four years - the presidential election.
There are ways to prove you really care about politics. Get involved at the University by going to an Honor Committee meeting, a Student Council meeting or fighting for an issue that you care. Get involved in local politics by volunteering your time for a Senatorial candidate, or volunteer for Bush or Gore or Nader. It's the local level, after all, that has the most effect on your life. But don't think that being one in a hundred million voters once every four years is going to make a difference - that's just a delusion of grandeur.
Consider this. Should you give a beggar some spare change? If you give him the 50 cents so that you feel good about yourself and then use it as an excuse not to help out in more meaningful ways - volunteering your time, for instance, or giving anonymously in lump sums to charities - then you're selfish, not helpful. Any time you give openly, i.e. not anonymously, part of what you are doing is seeking recognition for your charity. Your motives are therefore impure.
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Comparing this to the act of voting, everyone proudly wears their "I voted" badge of honor. Then voters use this recognition of their contributions as a justification for tuning out of politics and the world for another four years. After voting, voters go home and sleep well, thinking that they've made a difference, when all they really did was give a piddling quarter to a beggar looking for a dollar, and praised themselves for doing it. Voting is a pathetic excuse for not really getting involved.
This "I voted, did you?" arrogance must stop because it's not constructive. It is sanctimonious and confuses rights with duties. There's no obligation whatever to vote. It's an entitlement that I may use or forego the use of. Yes, it sometimes is troubling to see rights forsaken. For example, we all cringe when an indigent is questioned without a lawyer because he waived his right to one and confesses to a crime he didn't commit.
When it comes to voting, however, we should not be concerned with the passing up of rights. It will not have any material effect on anything. I'm sorry to all the idealists out there who think the politicians are "listening" to your vote. They aren't. If you want to be heard, write a letter. Not voting, unlike the case of the indigent and his confession, frees you up for more profitable enterprises, such as working on your portfolio, working a job, studying or political activism.
I know I must be sounding like a cynic. Still vote. Vote and get involved and write letters and try to change things that you think need changing. Vote, but don't do so under the false assumption that what you're doing matters or is going to be heard by politicians. Do so because it makes you happy, no matter how selfish that may seem. But recognize also that it's for selfish reasons that you should vote. This understanding will hold you back from condemning others who aren't voting. This is important, because it's a real pain to be lectured for something so silly every day in the months approaching the election.
Democracy will survive, with or without any one person's vote. Frankly, I want the people who are tuned out all four years but who come on the scene to vote for the President of the United States to stay out. We'll be voting on other things such as constitutional amendments, which revolving door citizens - in and out on Nov. 7 every four years - are bound to make arbitrary or dumb judgments about. And with so many such persons voting come November, the adoption of constitutional amendments probably will prove arbitrary.
The world will continue to spin and America will continue to be a great nation, even if you don't cast a ballot, read about Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia, or watch the presidential debates. Really, you're not that important.
We seem to be plagued by this fatal conceit, that voting for the president is participatory enough to compensate for everything we don't do. It's time to rip off the band-aid and consider getting stitches.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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