“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.” – George Jean Nathan
It’s become all the vogue in Paris these days for folks to stand up and say, “I’m not happy with either candidate so I’m not going to vote.” Or there is also the popular, “No candidate is perfect so vote for Non-running Candidate of Your Choice.”
To be honest, when I read crap like that, it pisses me off. But in the end, it scares me more than anything. What has happened to my generation and those that have come after us that we have become so lackadaisical about our *right* to vote? Have we forgotten so soon how long and hard many men and women have fought and died to have that right to vote? Women have had the right to vote (1920) for less time than the Red Sox have had a win in the World Series (1918). Blacks didn’t have the right to vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Lyndon Johnson.
The very thing that defines us as a Democracy is our right to vote. What a horrible dishonor we do when we look at the sacrifice that millions have made that all should have this right and spit in their face because of refusal to exercise it? We shout daily that we will not allow ourselves to be controlled by anyone, that no one group should oppress another. Why then would you by your refusal to vote allow the minority to impose it’s will on you?
“I’m not voting because my vote doesn’t count”
Boulderdash. Tell that to the folks who are pissed off that GWB won in Florida last year by 500+ votes, or other smaller states that were even closer. When you refuse to vote, you give up your right to have your voice heard. Marian Wright Edelmen once said, “People who don’t vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests.” If you want your vote to count, then you must vote. By not voting you place that power of control into the hands of those people who do. What do I care what you think, you don’t vote anyway.
“I’m not voting because no candidate is perfect.”
Welcome to the real freakin’ world. Since when has anyone including yourself been perfect? Who matches up to your perfect agenda? Simply put no one. To cop out and say, “I won’t vote for the lesser of two evils,” is the very argument you rail against when people apply that to the church. “No religion or church is perfect so why should I attend?” You would be the first in line to argue that the church isn’t perfect, but it’s doing the best it can. Can it be better, indeed, but only when honest people work together to get the job done. The same holds true to the presidency. The power of the government does not lie in the hands of one man or woman, but rather in the power of the many from the state to the national offices that you and I elect people to. If you want the right things done, then it’s your job to elect as many good people as you can to those positions. Decision by in-decision is not an option. You cannot in good conscience allow that responsibility to fall to someone else. It has fallen to you. I read the Christianity Today article about “Choosing between candidates who consciences are too clean,” and I don’t buy it. One of my biggest beefs with the article is where it states:
“Yet our President’s conscience also seems too clear to be true. Asked a simple and predictable question at an April 2004 press conference-to name his greatest mistake since September 11, 2001-he couldn’t answer, saying, ‘I don’t want to sound like I’ve made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t-you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.’ Is it too much to ask that the most devout President in recent history have a more concrete response to a question about his own limitations?
Such is the state of our presidential politics: an evangelical President flummoxed at any suggestion of his own fallibility, and a Catholic candidate who sidesteps his church’s teaching authority. And in both our political parties, concern for justice often serves as cover for self-justification; righteousness curdles all too quickly into self-righteousness.” – By Andy Crouch, Oct. 2004, Christianity Today (Page 108)
Okay, first off, how fair of a question was that? Want a fair translation of that? Next time your minister is in the puplit ask him the following question, “Hey Pastor Pete, when was the last time you masterbated… and what did you thinkk about?”
Can you get any more damned if you do and damned if you don’t than that? If GWB says, “I think that this was my biggest mistake,” then you better bet your sweet bippy that’ll be in all the DNC commercials here to the election.
This same attitude of a lack of the perfect canidate into folks endorsing we throw away our votes on a canidate not even running for president. That’s just as weak-cheesed as saying, “Don’t vote.”
No canidate is perfect, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some good that they can accomplish by them being in office. John Quincy Adams said, “Always vote for principle, though you may bote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
We vote for the rigth thing to do because it is the right thing to do. Not because it is popular, not because it is perfect, but rather because it is right and it is the best that we can do. John F. Kennedy argued, “The margin is narrow, but the responsbility is clear.”
If in the end all you are is lazy, then admit it and shut up. If not, then get off your ass an vote. Vote for someone who will do the most good, even if they cannot do a total good. Instead of being between the lesser of two evils, let it be between the greater of two goods.
“The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower.
I’m voting this year because it is the responbility of good people everywhere to see that the greatest good is accomplished.
This year I am supporting our President George W. Bush (big shocker there).
I disagree with GWB on quite a few issues actually (including gay marriage), but in the end having watched him over the past 4 years, I honestly believe that he wants to do the right thing and that he seeks God for answers. That’s the kind of man that I want as president. Not a man who will tell me what I want to hear, but a guy who’s doing what he believes to be the best thing and that God is leading him towards.
That doesn’t make GWB the pope or infalible, just an normal guy in extrodianary circumstances doing the best he can. That’s the kind of guy I can relate to, that’s the kind of guy I’m voting for.
Not only that, he told me that I shouldn’t see The Day After Tomorrow.