The Front Porch Republic election symposium touches on a topic I wrote about last week: our exaggerated view of the importance of elections. The editors write:
We often take voting to be the measure of the citizen. Belonging to and participation in public life are the defining features of citizenship, which makes one wonder why voting has come to occupy the prominent role it does in our imaginaries of citizenship. It is, in many ways, the least consequential thing we do as citizens, particularly since our vote will be inconsequential.
Mark T. Mitchell offers several suggestions to voters in his contribution. His third suggestion is apt to be unpopular:
If you can’t in good conscience vote for either of the two major candidates, don’t. Democracy is about expressing your preference. Too long we’ve consigned ourselves to the false choice of voting for the lesser of two evils. If we are satisfied with that dismal alternative, we’ll likely continue to get nothing better.
Catholic blogger Mark Shea has long made the same point about the problematic aspects of voting for the lesser of two evils (which may be permissible but is not obligatory). He writes:
The real action in deciding what happens to the fate of a nation occurs not at the ballot box, but with political involvement (or lack thereof) by the citizenry at much lower grassroots (and non-political) levels of culture and family life. That’s not to say voting is meaningless. Far from it. It is intensely meaningful. But *what* it means is not primarily about how my puny vote will affect the outcome of an election involving millions of other people. It is, rather, how my puny vote will change me. . . .
[My vote will] change me either into somebody who does or does not say yes to grave and intrinsic evil. Make that choice enough—and in enough souls—and the destiny of a nation is determined.
Contra Shea’s apparent implication, voting for a candidate who supports some form of evil does not necessarily mean the voter is actively promoting (“saying yes to”) that evil. Still, while we’re eager to vote against the candidate we perceive as more evil, we usually neglect to condemn the evil of the candidate we support. Even as we fight one evil, we look like we’re condoning another.
And although I’ve already cast a ballot in this election, I’d like to head off a common line of criticism against Mitchell and Shea’s arguments: Refusing to vote is not the same as sticking one’s head in the sand or accepting the status quo. In addition to the seemingly apolitical ways we contribute to the polis, we can write to our political officeholders, lobby for reforms, circulate petitions, participate in demonstrations, advance our political views through writing, support the groups that represent our views on important issues, etc. Someone who does all those things will probably have a greater long-term effect on our political scene than someone who votes and does nothing else.
November 5th, 2012 | 4:05 pm
I suppose the problem with not voting is that no one knows whether you are stating a position (“Neither of these candidates is acceptable to me”) or reflecting an attitude (“It’s raining too hard to go out” or “I really have not even thought about any of the issues.” ). A better action is voting for a down-ballot party so the final percentages will reflect your dissatisfaction.
November 5th, 2012 | 5:24 pm
While on the surface it seems so noble and righteous to refuse between the choices offered. No vote is not a vote no. It cannot be recorded as such and it is meaningless except to the person who refused to vote.
Luther’s two kingdoms idea makes implicit that we vote — not toward some personal ideal but for the one whose positions are the most consistent with the values of the faith. We have no perfect leaders — only flawed ones. Voting is not the pursuit of the most noble but an exercise of choice between the choices that are before us. The same logic could be used to refuse every entry into the public square because none is pure and none is without compromise.
I see no essential nobility for the one who casts no vote against the one who votes for the least distasteful. In fact, among the myriad of choices before the Christian, many are just that — a choice between alternatives none of which are good and pure in and of themselves. I say vote and vote for the one who is nearest to your conscience. The next time you may want to enter the fray early enough to make sure a person that more fully mirrors your values makes it through to the end.
November 5th, 2012 | 5:48 pm
I think not voting is a bad option. I believe that you should vote for or against those candidates and measures you are able to support or oppose. If the only candidates are a Republican and a Democrat who support Abortion, leave that part of the ballot blank or write in a candidate’s name.
Sometimes it is better to make a point by supporting a zoo animal (e.g. the hippo voted mayor of Rio de Janeiro) than to vote for the party’s candidate. Let them know that you are unhappy with the choices.
November 5th, 2012 | 7:14 pm
Several times over the years, I have found both candidates simply beyond the pale of acceptability, and have either left the race blank, or have written in a name. Either way, I slept at night, and did not toss and turn over a compromise too far.
November 5th, 2012 | 7:43 pm
Pope John Paul II aimed this passage (Evangelium Vitae, para. 73) about voting for the lesser of two evils in an effort to limit evil at legislators, but I think it pretty clearly would apply to the citizen-voter as well:
“A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favouring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations-particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation-there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.”
So, in the current election, we know Romney’s stand is for limiting abortions, while Obama’s is for unrestricted abortions. Not voting for Romney but for some other third-party or write-in candidate would aid Obama, and therefore does nothing to limit evil.
November 5th, 2012 | 10:04 pm
I believe that the last four years have shown that lobbying, activism, writing to one’s congressman, and other non-voting methods, admirable as they may be, are NOT a substitute for voting. Yes, by all means, become politically active! However, the politician who wins the election has power which voters have given to him or to her. The HHS mandate is a problem because of who won the last presidential election.
I wrote to my senator and asked him to vote against Obamacare and to remember his prolife stance (on which he had campaigned for his office), but strangely enough, his political party meant more to him than my letter: he voted for Obamacare and showed that his supposed prolife commitment was meaningless to him next to his loyalty to the Democrat party. The only impact that I can have on him is to vote for the other guy in this election!
“I won” was the president’s response to the members of Congress who tried to get him to modify his health care bill. Yes, he won, and he has been doing what he wants regardless of the objections of many Americans. The only way to stop him is to vote against him. We are voting for human beings, so they will inevitably be imperfect. But I do think that we have a responsibility as citizens to try to stop politicians who support or, worse yet, actively promote intrinsic evil from being elected–by voting against them.
I don’t worship politicians, and I don’t put my faith in them. However, I believe that I have a duty to use my vote to try to elect the less evil of them, especially since we now see the amount of injustice that can be done by the more evil of them.
November 6th, 2012 | 12:26 am
For me, my choice is clear, to vote for a lesser of the 2 evils means to vote for Obama. The best hope to reduce the number of abortions is to support policy that:
- Reduce the income inequality and allow everyone to have a chance to participate in the economic progress.
- To make birth control widely accessible.
Looking at Germany, Netherland, Switzerland, etc., these countries have a much more lenient abortion law and yet the abortion rate of these countries is very low compared to America. Also, these countries are much more secular too, and that speaks volume…
November 6th, 2012 | 5:45 am
As the last presidential primary season progressed, it looked as though one would have the awful choice of voting either for the pro-abortion Giuliani or the mega-pro-abortion Hillary or Barack. I determined that if it came to that, I would withhold my vote in the presidential race.
But I also had the option of writing letters to the leadership of the Republicans (no sense in either trying with the Democrats!) to say that I would never vote for a pro-abortion Republican.
Thankfully it didn’t come to that then or now, and I cheerfully cast my vote for the ticket which is pro-life, albeit not perfectly so. That perfection will have to wait for another day when, God willing, a larger number of Americans’ hearts are changed, and minds clarified to recognize that abortion should be forbidden in all circumstances in which murder is (because it is the same thing.)
We have it on good authority that some demons are only cast out through prayer and fasting. Let us “brace ourselves to our duty.”
November 6th, 2012 | 8:20 am
Something I put up at a friends blog:
Francis Bicknell Carpenter, in “Six Months in the White House with Abraham Lincoln”, published in in 1867, relayed the following exchange:
“No nobler reply ever fell from the lips of a ruler, than that uttered by President Lincoln in response to the clergyman who ventured to say, in his presence, that he hoped “the Lord was on our side.”
” “I am not at all concerned about that,” replied Mr. Lincoln, “for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.” “
I suppose Lincoln could have determined neither side was on God’s side in the crisis he faced, but would the world be better off today if had? I don’t think so. Mark Shea, Mark T. Mitchell, et al can keep sitting things out while they pray for perfection. It won’t do them or their communities a lick of good to refuse to swallow their pride, pick a side, and do what they can in this fallen world. Sitting it out is the one option that pretty much ensures nothing will ever improve.
November 6th, 2012 | 1:34 pm
The danger comes, in my opinion, with equating imprudent, miguided, unifommed or simply ‘ones I disagree with’ policies advanced by one candidate or the other with “evil”. There is a world of difference between something that is simply wrong and something that is evil.
November 6th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
TheDuke,
The BBC article here indicates that abortion laws in Europe are actually quite a bit stricter than here in the U.S.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6235557.stm
Notice that in the countries you listed, abortion is generally proscribed after twelve weeks. In most of the U.S., it is 24 weeks. Furthermore, contraception is indeed widely available and relatively inexpensive. It also fully-subsidized for those below the poverty line.
The fact that secular Europe has stricter abortion laws and lower numbers of abortion does in fact speak volumes, although it probably says exactly the opposite of what you were hoping it would say.
November 9th, 2012 | 2:17 am
Good, solid comments! Too often discussions of these topics shed more heat than light — this one managed to inform.
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