With the mid-term elections coming up in about a week the Peace and Anti-war movements and other parts of the left are going through a bi-annual argument about voting. Should people vote for Democrats to stop Republicans? Whether or not to vote third party? Or perhaps is it best to simply not vote at all? I do think a discussion concerning for whom to vote is healthy and needed, but I am amazed that it has changed little since I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Democrats and the Republicans continue to dominate the discussion. Vote for Democrats because they are the lesser of the two evils. Vote for a third party because the Democrats and Republicans are the faces of the same two headed party dominated by corporations. Why vote? It does not matter who wins, nothing will change.
I vote for candidates, not party affiliation. Stereotyping everyone in a party does not work for me, so I like a good discussion about issues, positions, abilities and vision. It helps me decide for whom to vote. Admittedly I started my voting career a bit late, casting my first ballot at 28. I made a decision in high school not to vote while in the military. I did not want to have political feelings about my Commander in Chief, so no voting. My first vote was for Bill Clinton in 1992, after I left active duty.
It is clear to me I must vote. Those who came before me, the ancestors who gave me this gift, expect me to vote. They faced humiliation and great danger for me. Many spilled their blood and others lost their lives, so to me refusing to vote seems dismissive and arrogant. I don’t know how I can claim to know more than Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott and Sojourner Truth. Should I tell Du Bois and Alice Paul they were mistaken? I’ll just say, “Times have changed. In 2010, voting turned out not to be all of that.”
Should I tell Fannie Lou Hamer that she had no idea what she was talking about? Should I forget about the pain of the Evers and King families? Of course not. Moreover, even if I one day decide voting is a waste of time, I still have a responsibility to take a trip to the booth in their memory.
For those who choose to disregard the shoulders upon which we stand, I have more pragmatic reasons. Voter turnout is an obvious indicator of public interest, but does low turnout mean apathy or a sense of powerlessness? It could mean dissatisfaction with choices or with the whole system. The problem is that the refusal to vote statement is indistinguishable from the person who did not vote because of illness or couldn’t get a ride to the polls. Though not voting retains some individual meaning, it is swallowed up in all the other nondescript non-voting, blurring its meaning to nearly nothing. So to make a statement one must make a clear statement. One way is to vote for a third party. This is a clear rejection of the Republicans and Democrats. Another is to write in a person. In the 1998 Missouri Senate race between Kit Bond and Jay Nixon I wrote in Julie Weber, who at the time was a Washington University Law School lecturer and activist who now resides in San Francisco. I thought she would make a better Senator than all the candidates. Perhaps this year I should write in Alice Paul or Frederick Douglass for my House vote. However, the best statements are the clear statements like No More War. Imagine hundreds of thousands of No More War votes around the nation. A race lost by the margin of No More War votes is wielding power at the ballot box.
Finally the idea that voting changes nothing is historically inaccurate. Simply look at the history of movements and their forcing change via the ballot box. It is slow and steady change that begins with grassroots organizing and continues through education, agitation, motivation, voter registration and mobilization; ending with Executive Orders, legislation and Supreme Court confirmations. It takes tremendous work to create social change before we will see change in government, local or national. Granted the Anti-war and Peace movements have seen little charge in the past 9 years, but the vote has been a decisive instrument of change for far too many struggles to call it useless. We should examine our electoral efforts. Are we effectively using our votes? Are we doing what it takes to build candidates and create the local and national politics where our vote means more?
Not voting is not an option. Too many people sacrificed for my right to vote. I owe them at least that. However most important, it is an opportunity to make a clear and official statement about whom should govern and what issues I deem important. It provides a snapshot of national sentiment in which I need to make sure my thoughts are represented. I hope there is more than my one No More War vote this November 2
nd. See you at the polls.
With the mid-term elections coming up in about a week the Peace and Anti-war movements and other parts of the left are going through a bi-annual argument about voting. Should people vote for Democrats to stop Republicans? Whether or not to vote third party? Or perhaps is it best to simply not vote at all? I do think a discussion concerning for whom to vote is healthy and needed, but I am amazed that it has changed little since I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Democrats and the Republicans continue to dominate the discussion. Vote for Democrats because they are the lesser of the two evils. Vote for a third party because the Democrats and Republicans are the faces of the same two headed party dominated by corporations. Why vote? It does not matter who wins, nothing will change.
I vote for candidates, not party affiliation. Stereotyping everyone in a party does not work for me, so I like a good discussion about issues, positions, abilities and vision. It helps me decide for whom to vote. Admittedly I started my voting career a bit late, casting my first ballot at 28. I made a decision in high school not to vote while in the military. I did not want to have political feelings about my Commander in Chief, so no voting. My first vote was for Bill Clinton in 1992, after I left active duty.
Yes, we must vote, and we must be strategic with our votes. I agree with “We should examine our electoral efforts. Are we effectively using our votes? Are we doing what it takes to build candidates and create the local and national politics where our vote means more?”.
But Michael didn’t explain why he thinks voting for “No more war” fits these criteria.
Because of the winner takes all voting system, 3d party votes, let alone voting for a symbolic name such as this one, are often distractions, though it depends on how many people are organized to do it, and on the state election laws. I guess in New York State there are 3d parties that are real players. The real agenda must be to build an electoral coalition that unites the peace issues with enough other progressive issues that we can elect a candidate that receives 51% of the vote and get into office.
Right now in the Massachusetts 10th CD (open seat), the relatively moderate Democratic House candidate Keating wants a gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan and supports Barney Frank’s proposals for cutting the military budget — he’s neck and neck with a conservative Republican. There is a “troops home now” independent candidate in the race, but most pro peace voters will vote for Keating, and justifiably so. It’s about power.
That in turn leads us to the goal of supporting not just individual candidates, but a progressive wing of the Democratic party which is accountable to progressive issues, is not controlled by corporations, and which can win elections.
Michael: Along these lines, Matt Damon has made a video on youtube for Working Families Party (in New York). He will wear a NY Yankees hat (time and place ??) if 25,000 voters vote a straight WF part ticket. This is significant as it endorses a 3rd part, which this country sorely needs. Note: Matt is an ardent Red Socks fan. Anything that promotes a progressive 3rd party is good.
Michael, my dear friend, you assume the deceased activists you refer to in your essay would still find the vote important under today’s totally corrupted system. Nobody knows whether they would believe voting is a worthy endeavor today but I know I do not and I will not vote.
You are right that I do not know what past activists would think about voting today, but why would I assume that they would not vote after everything they went through to gain the vote? That would be much more presumptuous than following their past example. I do not see the system as corrupt as people who think it is not worth voting. They once hung people like me to stop them from voting. It was pretty damn corrupt then. Also as I said in the piece, voting helps to change something. Perhaps those things that have and continue to change due to voting mean little to you. But they mean something to other people. The changes maybe incremental like healthcare and changing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Domestic Partnership and soon same sex marriage laws, but it is change.
If our vote means little it has more to do with our failure to work together to make the politics of the moment have more meaning for us than because the process does not work. We are so busy being fractured and having philosophical disagreements instead of binding together to create a political force so that our agenda is part of the voting process. How many people believe there should be an alternative to Dems and Rups or radical change to one of them? Instead of developing a coalition and a national strategy they all run in their own parties. I know the Tea Party people had mainstream and multimillion dollar help, but we could learn lessons from them. They took the politics of the moment and molded it for their own ends and now after a humble beginning in Feb 2009 they are about to put people in the U.S. Senate and House. They are changing the Republican Party and moving our country through the vote.
Remember, voting is the culmination of years of work. The vote itself means no more than the work that came before it. After nearly two years of work, the Tea Party is seeing it payoff. They agitated for change at the local level. We better do so over the next 2 years or we may see just how consequential voting really is. But of course many people will simply say the our failures are due to a corrupt system. You gotta struggle with the system you got because if you don’t it will never change.
I don’t have any problem with you not voting. It’s your choice, but don’t dismiss why people do vote. We seem to always think we know more than everyone else. I think telling people their vote does not matter means most of us don’t understand the people we are trying to reach. It’s like our Hail Mary pass. We are always telling people to wake up. Perhaps we are partially asleep too.