Should I bother voting if I don’t like any of the options?
Urna by ·júbilo·haku·
Voting seems so pointless
Steve Pavlina recently wrote about the current financial situation in the US. More importantly, for me, he mentioned that he’s never registered to vote and that “Voting as an individual in the USA seems rather pointless to me at this time…I honestly don’t resonate with either Obama or McCain.”
I totally get this stance. In fact this stance was mine when I turned 18. I remember being in Edinburgh with an orchestra from University (they let anyone play – no really) the evening of the May 2001 General Election here in the UK and having long debates (you know the ones that turn into random mumbling at about 3am) about why I couldn’t be bothered to vote, with friends passionately trying to convince me (and failing miserably) that it was an important part of the democratic process (yawn).
I later changed my mind.
What convinced me to vote even when I don’t believe in any of the candidates?
So let’s be clear. I’m still disillusioned with politics. It seems irrelevant, boring, stuffy, nonsensical, unethical, pathetic, tired, depressing, frustrating, spurious and really very lame. But it isn’t inconsequential.
So what caused me to start voting? I had a shock the following year.
I was very lucky to get to spend a year as a Uni student in Strasbourg. A beautiful city in north-east France on the border with Germany. I love Strasbourg, and could wax lyrical about it for hours. I won’t. The point of this story is that I was in France in April 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen got through to the second round of the French Presidential Election.
[In case you're not up on French politics from 2002 here's what you need to know. 1) The French President is elected in two rounds, the first whittles the contenders down to two choices, the second picks who gets to play with the choo-choos for the next 5 years. 2) Jean-Marie Le Pen was running for Le Front National (National Front) a very right-wing party. Think de-legalising abortion, deporting non-european immigrants, citizenship only to those of French origin, no rights for gay marriage or adoption, return of the death penalty. Really nasty people by my standards.]
The response was huge
It was crazy watching the reaction from my friends and people who worked at the university. I had been told previously not to discuss the election with students (I was helping teach English) and then there were flyers and posters everywhere. It wasn’t that they were hypocritical. It was that they felt education itself was under attack and that meant the usual stance of neutrality was no longer viable. Protests were made (well, they are French) and people were talking about it everywhere.
It came down to the lesser of two evils. And I realised that although people didn’t support Chirac (the other guy in the election) they sure as hell were going to vote for him to make sure Le Pen didn’t get in. It sent a very strong message to Le Pen (who disturbingly still got 17% of the vote) but also to me.
What I learnt. Why I vote
In the second round of the elections a lot of people didn’t so much vote for Chirac as vote against Le Pen. To abstain would have meant saying it was ok for Le Pen to get into power, that you didn’t mind either way! So now I vote, even if it’s only to say that I dislike the other people more than the person I’m voting for. At least that way I can be sure to send a message that I don’t want some crazy fascist %#@*!$%* to get into power.
If you don’t vote for the best of a bad lot then someone else may well vote for the worst – and that can be very, very bad indeed.
So what do you think? Would this convince you to vote if you don’t already?
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