THE UPCOMING presidential election looms over conversations across the country as 2007 comes to its final months and as candidates gain an increasing amount of attention from the public. Recollections of the last election come to mind as history prepares to repeat itself. Once again, the media is likely to pressure Americans into doing their "civic duty" and casting their votes, though one can hope it avoids such absurdities as "Vote or Die", the celebrity-endorsed attempt to push more young people to vote in 2004.? Once again, millions of Americans will obey like patriotic automatons? and flock to the polls to cast uninformed, unintelligent, and even unenthusiastic votes.
Every one of those people has a right to express his or her ignorant, uninformed, or ambivalent opinions by voting. That right cannot be challenged, but a rational voter should question what the benefit is in either case. There is a substantial group of people not sufficiently knowledgeable, due to apathy or lack of time, to make an informed decision.? Another substantial group is informed enough to find a strong moral opposition to each available candidate. If a voter is in either of these groups, it is best for both the voter and the nation if he or she opts not to vote.
A voter who is not well informed is the most obvious case of a voter who shouldn't be voting. This group seems less likely to vote to begin with, since they haven't found the time or motivation to actually learn about the candidates, but the number of totally ignorant voters is certainly not negligible. If you were to have an electrical issue in your home, you probably wouldn't try to fix it yourself unless you knew a substantial amount about electrical work, because electrical work is dangerous. Picking somebody to lead this country is probably at least as dangerous, yet people don't seem to have trouble making the choice without actually knowing anything about what a president does or what a candidate is likely to do. This is alarming.
The argument against uninformed voters is a bit futile since its solution lies in the motivation for the voter to self-educate. If the reasons to do so aren't obvious, it is unlikely that such a voter is going to reach the rational conclusion that he or she should decide not to vote at all. However, many people will actively question whether or not they should vote because they are unable to truly support any of the candidates running. An individual who is against abortion and for the war, but in favor of gay marriage and universal health care, for example, would have a rough time finding a candidate against whom he did not have a serious moral objection. Should this voter compromise his morality and choose the "lesser of two evils" or sit this round out?
Voting for a candidate with whom one has a serious moral conflict is an implicit statement of approval and a violation of personal morals. If an action is morally wrong, it follows that endorsing a candidate who will bring that action into law is also morally wrong, no matter how much the candidate and voter are aligned on other issues. In this case, the "lesser of two evils" is still evil and therefore cannot be accepted, let alone voted for.
Aside from personal conflicts, compromising on candidates with distinct moral packages -- including positions that are both acceptable and reprehensible to the voter -- approves of a system in which a voter is left with similar choices. If the candidate can get your vote while maintaining a few positions with which you strongly disagree, neither the candidate nor the party has an incentive to please you any more for your vote in the future. Perpetuating this system is not only negative for the individual voter but also harms other voters in similar situations and tends the nation towards an oversimplified system of political discourse and choice.
Every citizen has an obligation to express his or her political opinions, which leaves room for people too apathetic to vote and individuals too dissatisfied to vote. The latter can take advantage of the web of telephone lines, post routes, and internet connections to contact politicians and express what they believe should be done and what kind of candidate is necessary to earn their votes. If this number of people is significant, parties will change to capture those votes, and if not, the political system has merely found a more efficient way of reaching a majority decision. In this way, a sufficiently displeased public can affect change in the system. An angry minority may not have the same impact, but will therefore only arrive at the same end as if they had voted without imposing upon themselves any moral contradiction.
The political process is not black and white. If you don't care about, if you don't know about, or if you just plain object to your choices for president, don't let a preposterous notion of duty push you into making a disadvantageous decision. A vote only means something if there is some thought and decision behind it. A push of a button or a punch in a card doesn't mean anything by itself, and there is no way to win when you choose between losers.
Jason Shore's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jshore@cavalierdaily.com.
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