The midterm elections are coming up (November 6, 2018), and with them, the deadlines to register to vote in them. If your social media feeds are anything like mine, you’ve probably seen posts imploring people to register to vote. There’s already been some controversy over “fake news” misdirection links that have been spreading on twitter which seem to be about celebrity gossip but take unsuspecting readers to voter registration pages.
The way we try to trick and pressure people into voting or registering to vote is a pet peeve of mine. For starters, I hate hypocrisy of wealthy celebrities imploring people to vote and going on about how important it is when they themselves can’t be bothered to vote.
Secondly, I’m bothered by the insincerity. It’s no secret what the ultimate goal of the vast majority of these campaigns are: To turn out the vote for Democratic candidates. However, rarely do they have the guts to outright say that. Instead the message is shrouded in a generic “just vote” message. In past elections, it was sometimes even said that “it didn’t matter who you vote for” or to vote “even if you disagree with me”. I haven’t seen any of those comments this time around. I wonder what changed?
If it’s not insincerity and the message really is that it’s important to vote no matter who you vote for, then it makes no sense to me at all. How can it simultaneously be the case that voting is so incredibly important while it not being important who or what you vote for? If you think Trump is a fascist or that it make sense to heckle politicians in restaurants, then why would you want to encourage people to vote for those very same politicians?
No, if I think somebody is likely to vote for candidates who will support more war, more deficit spending, more regulation or who opposes criminal justice reform or immigration or ending the drug war, then I see absolutely no reason to encourage that person to vote. To be clear, I’m absolutely not advocating anything like trying to trick people into not voting. I just don’t see any reason to encourage people who might support bad policies.
Do we want uninformed people voting?
Katherine Mangu-Ward has a good article about “Why (almost) everyone should stay home on Election Day”. One particularly compelling argument that she makes is that a side effect of get-out-the-vote campaigns might be to encourage the less informed and less engaged to vote.
Encouraging more ignorant people to vote is not just pointless, argues Jason Brennan; it’s morally wrong. There is no duty to vote, but many people may have a duty not to vote. Boosting turnout among citizens who are young, uneducated, or otherwise less likely to be engaged—the primary targets of get-out-the-vote campaigns—is likely to have the unintended consequence of encouraging people to fail in that duty.
Your Vote Doesn’t Count by Katherine Mangu-Ward
To their credit, some people pair “register to vote” messages with “get informed messages”. That’s a huge request, though. Getting up to date on not only the candidates and their stances on the issues, but also the pros and cons of all of the key issues is a massive undertaking that can’t be done in a few days. Being informed on the issues isn’t just about knowing which candidates support single-payer healthcare or tax cuts or an increased minimum wage. Being informed also means knowing the potential drawbacks. Would single-payer mean increased taxes or rationed care? Would tax cuts be accompanied by spending cuts or are we just adding more debt? Should the federal reserve be increasing interest rates with market turmoil and a trade war going on? Would a minimum wage have an effect on unemployment? How does forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions affect the complicated world of health care and will it lead to death spirals? It’s a completely unfair thing to ask somebody who just might not find politics that fascinating to become an expert of all of the areas that politics are involved in these days.
There’s nothing wrong with not being interested in politics
Yes, in ideal world everybody would have the time and interest to be perfectly informed about every political issue. I think we can all agree that not only is that a completely unreasonable expectation, but it just might be impossible. I count politics as one of my top “hobbies”. I listen to political podcasts. I follow journalists and politicians on twitter. I do everything I can to keep up with the important issues of the day. I look at my ballot and research the positions of candidates before election day. I even do my best to watch relevant debates when they are available. Even still, there are so many issues where I feel like I don’t know enough to make really informed decisions.
I actually envy people who aren’t at all interested in politics and just want to stay out of things. I think in many ways it’s a much healthier way to go through life. To a large extent, following politics means being in a constant state of anger, frustration, and despair over things that you largely have no control over. I sometimes think whoever said “ignorance is bliss” was thinking specifically about politics. Is it better to know about our incredible national debt and watch powerlessly as “fiscal conservatives” vote over and over again for spending increases that blow up the deficit or to just be completely unaware of it? Is your life better off knowing about the horrible humanitarian crisis going on in Yemen and that the United States is indirectly involved in supporting it no matter how many “anti-war” politicians are elected?
As a libertarian, following politics is like rooting for a football team which loses every game 63-0 to teams like Cobra Kai, the Hawks, and the Yankees. Oh, and those teams get to make up the rules for each game as well. It’s just a constant state of frustration and despair that the wrong team keeps winning and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
I don’t think things are much better even if you consider yourself a supporter of the major parties. There’s evidence to indicate that anger is a better motivator for voters than actually being inspired by a candidate. People are more interested in voting against something than voting for something. Anecdotally, I see this all the time. Liberals seemed far more energized and worked up to fight against the Bush and Trump presidencies than they seemed inspired to fight for the Clinton and Obama presidencies. The same seemed to be true with conservatives as well. Being emotionally involved in a process where the agony of defeat outweighs the joys of victory seems like a prescription for being miserable most of the time.
So in many ways, I envy those who are non-political and don’t blame them for wanting to stay out of the fray. Do I wish everybody had the time and inclination to be knowledgeable on all of the issues so that they could be informed voters? Sure, but I also realize that it’s a completely unattainable ideal and that it’s wrong to shame people just because they don’t find politics interesting.
Especially since all of that hard-earned knowledge doesn’t change the fact that your vote almost certainly won’t make a difference.
Your vote doesn’t count
Before I go any further, let me make a few things abundantly clear: I vote. I’ve voted in practically every national and statewide election since I become old enough to vote. I often vote in primaries as well. I try my best to do my research too. I look up what candidates and issues will be appearing on my ballot ahead of time so I can read up on everything. I do all of this despite knowing that my vote is incredibly likely to make any difference at all. In fact, I might be just as likely to die driving to vote than to actually have my vote affect the outcome of an election. In fact, it’s interesting timing that there’s been lottery fever the past week over the record size of some of the jackpots. The odds of any single person’s vote changing an election isn’t too dissimilar from the odds of winning the lottery.
In a 2012 Economic Inquiry article, Columbia University political scientist Andrew Gelman, statistician Nate Silver, and University of California, Berkeley, economist Aaron Edlin use poll results from the 2008 election cycle to calculate that the chance of a randomly selected vote determining the outcome of a presidential election is about one in 60 million. In a couple of key states, the chance that a random vote will be decisive creeps closer to one in 10 million, which drags voters into the dubious company of people gunning for the Mega-Lotto jackpot.
Your Vote Doesn’t Count by Katherine Mangu-Ward
Put another way:
Thus, it’s almost 100 percent assured that you could flip your vote in nearly every state-wide election for your entire life and every outcome would be the same. As Georgetown political philosopher Jason Brennan notes, telling someone they can’t complain about an election if they didn’t vote is akin to telling a homeless person that they can’t complain about being poor unless they play the lottery every day.
You’re Just As Likely To Die En Route To Vote Than To Impact An Election Outcome by Jim Pagels
Yes, there have been some close elections in the past. However, much like how there being previous lottery winners doesn’t mean it makes sense to play the lottery, the existence of past close elections doesn’t mean your vote is likely to make a difference.
So then why do I vote? Purely for self-satisfaction and fun. I also play blackjack when in Vegas despite knowing that odds are I’ll be leaving the table with less money than I arrived with.
If you don’t vote, you can’t complain
I wanted to go back to one thing referenced in one of the quotes above. There is the idea that if you don’t vote, then you can’t complain. This is an argument that I don’t understand at all.
In his 1851 book Social Statics, the English radical Herbert Spencer neatly describes the rhetorical jujitsu surrounding voting, consent, and complaint, then demolishes the argument. Say a man votes and his candidate wins. The voter is then “understood to have assented” to the acts of his representative. But what if he voted for the other guy? Well, then, the argument goes, “by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority.” And what if he abstained? “Why then he cannot justly complain…seeing that he made no protest.” Spencer tidily sums up: “Curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted—whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine this.” Indeed.
Your Vote Doesn’t Count by Katherine Mangu-Ward
I would argue that if anything, non-voters have the most right to complain. Nobody alive really opted into the representative democracy that America currently has, and there is no way to opt out. It could be argued that participating and voting implies that those people accept the political system as it is. Those that don’t participate in the system at all, though, have implied no such thing and can plausibly wash their hands of everything. Remember the bumper stickers that said, “Don’t blame me, I vote for [insert losing candidate here]”? Non-voters can safely say, “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for either bad option”. In some ways, not voting is the ultimate protest vote.
Vote. Or don’t.
So if you get some sort of enjoyment or self-satisfaction over voting, then by all means do it. As somebody who votes for those exact reasons I am not at all going to tell somebody that they shouldn’t. However, if you really don’t care much about voting or find it to be too big of a hassle, then don’t let anybody else guilt trip you. The fate of the country doesn’t rest on your vote and the world is going to go on virtually unchanged whether you vote or not.
Unless, of course, you were thinking of voting libertarian. In that case, you should definitely feel guilty about abdicating your civic duties.
Thank you for finally saying what needed to be said. I can’t tell you how many people have pressured me into voting. I read an article that said voting is what responsible mature people do, and only uneducated lower class people are usually the ones who are uninformed and don’t go to the polls. People told me to vote using fear tactics too, saying if I don’t vote Trump will win blah blah blah. How do they even know I would vote for Hilary? The simple reason I don’t vote, is because they all lie. period! I hate politics. When Obama won I actually cried. I was so happy thinking the world would change. but because of him I am now in student loan debt that I did not even take out. I have tried every avenue even speaking to senators. So far, I’ve only been able to remove about $10,000. On top of all that, he did not change any consumer protection laws against it, so there are a ton of predatory lenders getting away with murder. Just look at sll the claims agains Navient. Second? by making health insurance mandatory for people who never go to the doctor, forcing them to pay tax for not carrying health insurance, which also caused a rash of health insurance premiums to rise to double what they were two years prior, is unconstitutional. Government trying to tell a person they have to use western medicine if they don’t believe in it is corrupt. Ive always considered myself a democrat mostly, but the very pressure to have me vote for candidates who do not keep their promises, is the reason I don’t. Looking back I can at least have the satisfaction of knowing I didn’t create my own problems by voting for Obama. Thank you for seeing both sides of this issue.
I’m so glad you enjoyed what I wrote! Thanks for your thoughts. I’m similarly pretty jaded with politics, but particularly with the whole two party system. It annoys me that so many people are pressure not only into voting, but also voting a specific way. I can’t count the number of times I was told that I needed to vote for the lesser of two evils because doing otherwise would mean wasting my vote. It seems to me that everybody voting the lesser of two evils just guarantees that evil wins in the end.