I saw your post on Beliefnet about the border fence being a good reason to vote for Republicans. I wondered if you'd had a chance to read this article in which even the Republicans admit that the "fence bill" gives the administration the ability to spend the money on different projects (such as roads and technology) and that probably only 300-400 miles will ever be built (if that).
To me, the money quote was, "In this case, it also reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that voters do not mind the details, and that key players — including the administration, local leaders and the Mexican government — oppose a fence-only approach."
I'm planning to sit this election out, and I'm the sort who used to take my kids with me to vote so they'd learn about civic duty.
But wait, Reader! Don't you want to run out and vote Republican to protect traditional marriage? Oh wait, that's right, the GOP cynically punted on that one too. Phonies.
The reader raises an interesting question, though: is it ever the right thing to do to sit out an election? My DMN colleague Mike Hashimoto wrote a funny but serious column yesterday saying that contrary to the eat-your-spinach, good-government propaganda, the nation is not well-served when ill-informed idiots vote out of some sense of civic duty. On a more serious (and ideological) note, the Thomist philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre put forth an argument for sitting out the 2004 presidential race. Here's an excerpt:
Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions. What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish. These two sentences, if fully spelled out, amount to a politics. It is a politics that requires us to be pro-life, not only in doing whatever is most effective in reducing the number of abortions, but also in providing healthcare for expectant mothers, in facilitating adoptions, in providing aid for single-parent families and for grandparents who have taken parental responsibility for their grandchildren. And it is a politics that requires us to make as a minimal economic demand the provision of meaningful work that provides a fair and adequate wage for every working parent, a wage sufficient to keep a family well above the poverty line.
MacIntyre says the best way to vote against a system that produces what he considers false choices is not to vote.
Is he right? Is it morally justified to sit out this election, if you believe you are presented with two bad alternatives? I'm not sure, but I'm tempted to say yes. Let's talk this through.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Then there is this excerpt from Stewart's column about the June primary in California:
In a way, irritation and disgust are healthier human responses than apathy. Voters are at least awake. But the unhealthy side is that in their disgust, voters left some very big decisions in the hands of a tiny group of voters who didn't in any way represent a cross-section of the California electorate.
I call them the Election Day Weirdos. Myself included.
At my polling place, I was the only non-elderly person. I observed at a respectful distance for an hour. Yet in my suburban neighborhood, jammed with families and young professionals, only the gray hairs showed. In other neighborhoods around California, there can be little doubt: non-representative folks were the only ones to show.
Little wonder why the primary election outcomes showed no rhyme or reason - and resulted in several awful, freak votes sprinkled with a few good ones.
The most egregious, though not crucial politically, was the ouster in Los Angeles County of a highly rated woman judge, Dzintra Janavs. She lost a judgeship to small business owner Lynn Olson, not even a practicing lawyer, who only reactivated her state bar membership recently, and was rated as "unqualified" by the local bar.
There is little question that Janavs lost due to her odd name. This, thanks to an even odder - and, it turns out, uninformed - bunch who dragged themselves to the polls.
Statewide, we weirdos also had our say. For example, for state controller, Democrats chose John Chiang, virtually unknown a month ago, over better-known state Sen. Joseph Dunn of Orange County. I strongly suspect Chiang won based on his name - a case of reverse racism and ethnic stereotyping in choosing who writes the state's checks.
The truly strange voters who participated on Tuesday chose the right guy, nevertheless. Since California is so heavily Democratic, come November the Democrat always has the best chance of winning a statewide job like controller. The aggressive trial lawyer Joe Dunn would have been a disastrous victory. Now, Chiang will face former Republican legislator Tony Strickland; either one will be an okay controller.
On the other hand, thanks to freaky voters, a really smart Republican centrist, Assemblyman Keith Richman, lost very big in his bid to represent the GOP against Bill Lockyer for treasurer. Oddball GOP voters chose unknown Claude Parrish, who has no hope of beating household name Lockyer. The moderate Richman stood a chance.
But in primaries, the more rational candidates like Richman do poorly because voters drawn to the polls tend to be partisans who actually prefer emotional, partisan, gridlock-oriented candidates. That's why we've been gradually strapped with an extremist legislature - so extreme that this week the Associated Press described anti-business liberal Jerome Horton, an outgoing assemblyman, as a "moderate to conservative Democrat."
Not in any normal world.
Now, things will get even more abnormal, thanks to the motley voters who made the decisions on Tuesday.
Yes, a few sorta-kinda reasonable folks won office - purely by accident - like Los Angeles Councilman Alex Padilla, an MIT grad who beat the unreasonable Cindy Montanez for 20th Senate district. And the sometimes reasonable Ron Calderon beat aggressively partisan Rudy Bermudez for 30th Senate District in aging Latino suburbs east of L.A.
But oddball voters showed no consistency. They picked the demonstrably inept Assemblywoman Jenny Oropeza of Long Beach over the far more reasonable educator George Nakano for the 28th District. And in one of the worst decisions on Tuesday, they selected the pointlessly partisan Ellen Corbett for the 10th Senate District in Alameda County, handing a stunning third-place trouncing to the East Bay's pragmatic, effective moderate from Fremont, Assemblyman John Dutra.
Confused? So are cranky Californians who failed to vote. They somehow imagine that by petulantly staying at home, they had their say. Instead, we weirdos spoke for them.
Not voting for ideological reasons, therefore, is nothing but the province of effete, self-styled, pseudo-moralists who live in fantasy worlds that they've created.>
Of course US citizens should vote;always and forever. For some of us people died so we could vote and it would be a travesty to sit it out as a protest.
anon>
"submitting a blank ballot"
What, and let the Diebold machines pick yer next "president"???
GUFFAW!!!>
So, with hotbed issues like a federal court ordering a legislature to make law, Cloning, Abortion; federal court attacks on organizations because they are "Christian" and provide secular services to states and ordering them to repay the state for those services, you would sit out in an unheard protest. Think logically about the environment we live in...Look at the party platforms, make the best choice to protect, if not advance Christian Morals.
After that I challenge you who whine about what your legislators are doing after you elect them by asking, how many times in the last year have you called or written a snail mail letter to them expressing your views. Any law maker operating in a vacuum is succeptable to self indulgence!! And I am talking about ANY legislator, Strong Elder in the church Christian or not...
I don't normally rant like this, but you who would sit out need to look at what is really at stake in this election. If you doubt anything at the national level would affect you in your secure suburban church, take a look at the IOWA judges decision in the IFI-(Inner Freedom Initiative) case. The reprecussions of that decision alone should send you to the polls to stand up for your Christian faith.
Christ himself calls you to vote...Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasars'.
Finally, if there are no good candidates who are "Pastor Perfect" enough for you, maybe you should jump in the fray as a candidate and see how you fare in the glaring lights of the media.....>
As a general rule, you should never cast your vote in a particular way in order to "send a message" to a particular person or party. It's a message they are guaranteed never to receive.>
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.