29 October 2016

Burning your ballot to keep your hands clean is a bad choice

In some democracies — Australia, for example — voting is a mandatory obligation of citizenship. The Aussie ballot is secret, thus voters cannot be penalized for casting a blank ballot, but just as Australians cannot opt out of paying taxes and performing other obligations of citizenship, they cannot opt out of voting without suffering a sanction.

No mandatory voting obligation exists in the United States. It is therefore legal not to vote, and no excuse need be provided for not doing one’s democratic duty.

Those who are eligible to vote, but choose not to cast ballots, may think they are keeping their hands clean by not using their vote to bless an unworthy candidate. Or they may think they are denying scoundrels political legitimacy. But by not voting, by refusing to make a choice, they are saying that all of the choices are acceptable, and that no one choice is less acceptable than any other choice. Which is nonsense.

There is no legal penalty for opting out — but there is a moral penalty. Because not voting is a backhanded blessing of the election, those who chose not to vote lose the moral right to complain about the outcome of the election. That won’t stop them from complaining, or from asserting that not voting makes them more moral than those who stoop to voting. But it will, and should, stop others from listening to them or taking them seriously.

Elections seldom offer easy choices. All candidates have flaws. All ballot issues have drawbacks. But George Wallace’s assertion that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the major parties” was not true in 1968, and is not true now. There are differences, significant differences. Electing Donald Trump or Greg Gianforte results in one kind of nation or state. Electing Hillary Clinton or Steve Bullock results in another, very different, kind of nation or state. Denying that denies reality. Refusing to vote is a selfish, misguided, abdication of one’s civic obligation to chose how and by whom we are led.

If you’ve burned your ballot, hike on down to the elections office and get another ballot. There’s still time to do the right thing.