Why I Still Believe In Voting

A Libertarian meme on the theme

Every four years, give or take, Americans hear the same argument repeated: “If you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain.” Even discarding what bullshit it is to make free speech contingent upon participating in a quadrennial bureaucratic exercise, I think this argument distorts what rule by small-D democracy really means. Do we really relinquish the liberty to inveigh against injustice because we didn’t check a box on an arbitrary November day? Be serious, please.

But I’m seeing an even more invidious argument starting to arise from America’s hard-line progressive circles. (Yes, I realize America’s “hard-line progressives” are centralists globally. Save that argument for later, please.) An increasing number claim that voting is not just ineffective, it’s counter-revolutionary. To participate in the current order’s leader selection process, they assert, makes you part of that order. In other words, I’m hearing leftists saying not to vote, because it slows the revolution.

We’ve heard that low voter turnout supposedly helps conservatives retain power, an intuitive response that doesn’t necessarily withstand scrutiny. But certain elements in progressivism want this outcome, because consolidated conservative power during a time when America’s youth are shifting leftward, makes the likelihood of revolution more likely. Supposedly. They want uprisings against the power structure, which they see as so innately corrupted that it cannot be redeemed. Voting, they fear, steals their movement’s revolutionary vigor.

First, I’m not persuaded revolutions are necessarily good. We lionize the American Revolution, but it discarded the English aristocracy in favor of a colonialist slaveholding aristocracy; and though we removed slavery, nearly ninety years later, we’ve never completely removed that aristocracy. That’s saying nothing of the disasters which followed other revolutions, like Oliver Cromwell’s Irish purges, Julius Nyerere’s village programs, and the famines caused by collectivized farming in China and the Soviet Union. Revolutions kill.

Admittedly, tinkering around the edges of the existing system hasn’t produced anything better. We’re suffering through massive environmental catastrophe, partly, because bureaucratic infighting has prevented America from passing any new climate legislation since 1991. Barack Obama promised us “Change You Can Believe In,” but left a country less economically equitable than when he was inaugurated. The violence rending American cities now bespeaks the essential powerlessness of even “progressive” governments. Things just keep not getting better.

A Marxist meme on the theme

So, if revolutions hasten disasters, but small-D democracy does nothing better, what options do Americans have? During times of civilian violence unseen since Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, staying the course doesn’t exactly seem desirable. It took a week of nationwide protests, including riots, to indict four cops who killed a man for a non-violent offense. Surely, I imagine you saying, we can’t stick with what we have? Placate ourselves by casting a ballot?

That seems a false dichotomy, though. Participating in America’s democratic norms doesn’t preclude participating in demonstrations demanding other reforms at the same time. We don’t have to choose either voting or protesting. Indeed, if we take protesting seriously, I suggest we need to cultivate a government which listens to protesters, believes their demands come in good faith, and doesn’t treat street protests like insurrection. We need a government that is sympathetic to its people’s anger.

To achieve that, we need to participate in democracy. We need to utilize the rights we have, even if those rights frequently feel truncated and vestigial. Even if we sometimes feel we have to choose the least awful option (and, speaking personally, that certainly sounds like 2020 to me), we nevertheless have the ability to pick the best possible status quo to fight against. Admittedly, that doesn’t make a ringing endorsement. But what’s your alternative?

I understand the impulse to retain moral purity by refusing to participate altogether. It seems, superficially, like if we vote, we’re getting the bureaucratic stain upon us. Certain religious groups, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, refuse to vote or join the military for exactly that reason: once you participate, you become part of this world, and you’re stained with its tarnish forever. Yes, I appreciate that nobody wants to horse-trade their morals. It feels like treason.

Refusing to vote, though, entrenches the existing power system, which has demonstrated itself willing to kill dissidents. While our president isn’t necessarily a tyrant yet, he’s clearly allied himself with a slicked-up, high-tech fascist movement, and stacked the deck with insiders. Certain progressives’ fantasies about revolution would create a power vacuum, into which, history tells us, someone worse would probably step. That’s why I still vote: to pick the power I’m ready to fight against.