All the folks in a lather about people who don’t vote need to towel off and pipe down.
Voting is a right “granted us by our Creator”, not a requirement, or even a responsibility. Like every other right, it can be exercised or not.
Almost everybody has the right to drive a car, which is great for the economy, but nobody ever browbeats bicyclists for selfishly depriving important industries from oil, to steel, to electronics.
You have a right to own a gun, but you don’t have to. If you shoot somebody with your gun you have a right to counsel, but you don’t have to accept it.
You have all kinds of rights that you never use and nobody bats an eye. Voting is – or at least should be – no different.
Voting is your right, and not voting is also your right.
Nobody has to vote.
If you hate all the candidates, you don’t need to vote for any of them. It’s your right.
If you’re disillusioned with the process, you don’t have to participate in it. Not voting doesn’t make you a Bad American, it just makes you a taxpaying citizen who didn’t vote.
If you simply don’t believe your vote will do any good, it’s okay to shrug it off. There’s a good reason voting isn’t required by law.
It’s not “wrong” to not vote.
And it’s not always “right” to vote.
Contrary to the sweaty emanations of the screaming classes, voting is not, of itself, a noble act. The undemanding feat of pulling a lever or filling in a little circle does not constitute proof of patriotism, virtue or wisdom.
If you have no interest in, understanding of, or opinions about the issues, the candidates or the behavior of government, you should absolutely not vote. In fact, that being the case, the most responsible thing you can do is not vote. Anybody can throw a dart at a ballot and call it voting, but it’s not. Voting presumes an informed choice. It’s a safe bet that many people who don’t vote give a lot more thought to serious national issues than many people who do.
And if you’re voting for a candidate mostly because they’re better at public speaking, or have more successfully avoided offending the perpetually offended, or simply because they look better on TV, then your ballot is not only meaningless, it’s helping to sustain an electoral system that values form over substance.
Better you should stay home on Nov. 8.
And one other thing ~
Sanctimonious Get-Out-the-Vote types like to holler about how those who don’t vote automatically give up their right to complain about the government. They can take that ridiculous statement, carefully place it inside a provided “security sleeve” and stuff it straight up their poll.
You always have a right to complain. Voting is a right, just like every other right enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, including the right to “seek redress”, and by not exercising one right you don’t magically forfeit all the others. Every American is entitled to all the rights and protections that come with citizenship, and if government moves to entail those rights, or abuse those protections, every American is entitled, even obligated, to cry “Foul!”, regardless of what they did, or didn’t do, on election day.
Voter or not, you have a right to your rights, and you have a right to insist on them.
And a right to yield them.
Either way, the ballot box has got nothing to do with it.
