Vote! But Let’s Not Mythologize it
This column was originally published on June 4, on Medium. It appears below with some minor edits. As we approach Election Day I believe it’s useful to look at all the work ahead after Election and Inauguration Days, regardless of who wins the Presidency. I hope you agree.
I recently read a comment on social media from a writer I respect in response my
essay, “On Armed Checkpoints & Voting” that seemed to be made in good-faith, but that nonetheless did not in my view address any arguments I actually made in the piece, and was based on a claim that I did not actually make — that voting needs to be jettisoned because of its futility. The week prior I received a note from a reader of my essay, “On Police Murder, and Minority Firewalls,” that asked several excellent questions that I’m surely not qualified to provide assured answers to, but that nonetheless motivated me to put forth effort in that direction.
One of their questions was “what do we do in a year where the party we need is not there?” My last essay attempted to engage that question, with the backdrop of the bipartisan and acute rise in authoritarian violence from the state on its people providing some added urgency to the topic.
Every one of us has our own perceived interests, diagnoses, and prescriptions, to be sure. My last essay was written for those who, like the reader who wrote me last week, have values and goals that are not only not represented fully in any electoral options this year, but in fact are diametrically opposed by both leading presidential candidates and their respective national parties.
Like it or not, there are millions upon millions of us for whom that is precisely the case, right now. Not for an instant considering disengagement or freezing apathy, we wonder what we can yet do when none of the parties or candidates stand for what we need, and in fact when all of them actively and proudly oppose what we see as necessary.
Interestingly, for me, my basic start of an answer can be summarized in the words of the fellow writer whose critique I valued and want to engage with some clarification and elaboration, here. “…All available tools should be used…including the vote,” it read.
Precisely.
The only difference we may have, in this regard, is privileging voting in terms of tactical value. It is not a privilege that I believe can be defended when historicized properly.
At no point in the last essay do I advocate that people who have the ability to vote give that right up. I do not believe, however, that the “get out and vote!” slogan so easily and readily adopted rhetorically by even the most reactionary corporations and governments, needs any additional support, especially since prioritizing it almost always implicitly or explicitly excludes much more agitating, non-sanctioned though historically effective methods for people to engage in the political sphere in pursuit of rights and improving their conditions.
My contention is simply that indeed “all available tools should be used…including the vote,” but not limited to it.
There are compelling arguments to be made about the futility of electoral politics, made my much smarter and more accomplished thinkers and civic actors than me like Emma Goldman who famously said “if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” but my point now is not to exclude voting, but to encourage people to add onto it in their list of things to do.
Voting is of course limited in all sorts of ways. The most obvious is its temporal limitations.
Regardless of whether or not there are elections on the horizon, politics is always happening all around us.
There is systemic police oppression to draw attention to and protest, and ongoing police terrorism being perpetrated in response to that protesting. Waiting to address these issues until we’re allowed to vote in November — even if it were the case that one presidential candidate had a record and plan that gave us reason to have faith they would address the situation properly, which neither does — is not a privilege those who have something to protest enjoy.
So, people everywhere are finding ways in addition to voting to get involved, right now. Telling people being beaten on the streets right now by the state to focus on voting is cruel and naïve.
All tools should be used and voting — contrary to what we’re taught — is but one. Protests of all kinds, write-in campaigns, formal and informal lobbying, media strategies, civil disobedience, market boycotts…the list of available tools to us in addition to voting is long.
So, at no point have I suggested that those who have the privilege of voting give it up willingly. There are, after all, third parties, and write-in campaigns in addition to the choices of racist empire offered up by the two major parties.
I’ve only thus far suggested that we add into our imaginations as the more courageous among us have always done the many political actions that outnumber voting alone. Make no mistake about it, however, I suggest that expansion of imagination and action in no small part because I believe voting — perhaps the least controversial and most state-accepted political action citizens can take in 2020 — may very well have one of the weakest records of affecting positive change of any political action type in our history.
“People gave their lives to end disenfranchisement and make sure voting is accessible to all,” my esteemed critic wrote in response to either the misapprehension of my position in thinking I advocate for leaving voting behind, or to the correct understanding that I don’t believe voting to be particularly powerful, in and of itself, as political engagement that uses it as merely one tool of the many available. Of course, voting is still nowhere near “accessible to all,” but it is true that people have died attempting to successfully broaden the franchise.
These successes and noble sacrifices only prove my point. The fight for white female suffrage, for example, was not merely a matter of voting it in, of course, because women could not vote.
Black Americans did not vote in their right to vote, because the entire issue was that they were (and still are) prevented from voting through a complex matrix of oppression. White women’s suffrage, Black Voting Rights, and The Civil Rights Act were forced through by a years-long mixture of illegal street protest, behind-the-scenes lobbying, and some voting — but not any voting by the oppressed groups seeking the right to vote.
The New Deal was only enacted after street-fighting radicals met with President Franklin Roosevelt and offered him a clear ultimatum as compromise — a social safety net and jobs program delivered by him and the federal government paid for by taxing the rich, or pitchforks in every American street, heading for his house.
No marginalized or oppressed group in American history has ever voted away their oppression, or voted in their own right to vote. Their successes are testament to the importance of using the entire range of political engagement options available to us — state sanctioned and unsanctioned — and not merely relying on voting.
Sadly, the expansion of voting rights has not led to increased justice or more representative government, either.
The fact is that since voting rights have been extended in recent decades, as involvement in electoral politics has broadened, politicians are growing less responsive to the desires of citizens. As a 2014 study showed that, by comparing issue survey data from citizens and policies enacted by lawmakers, the gap between what voters want to see their elected officials do and the policies those officials enact has widened to historical proportions in recent decades.
We are an oligarchy with the theatrical trappings of democracy, the study concluded, much to the surprise of exactly zero working people. Both sides of the single corporate party are growing more closely together on policy to this day, banding together to give President Trump more power to exercise his authoritarian will abroad and at home, and ripping away an historic level amount of wealth from the poor to give to the rich in the last few weeks alone.
People are welcome to believe that there are substantive differences between President Trump and, for example, those who, like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, enable and pass all of his most significant proposals that we object to. That’s fine.
I harbor no secret ambition to convince people privileged enough to see non-material distinctions between parties and politicians who join together to kill millions abroad and subject us to a strengthening police state here domestically. This year I’ve mostly written in response to people who, like the reader who asked what actions should be taken when the party and leaders we need in the electoral sphere are simply not present.
The point is that, like it or not, not all of us are satisfied with our choices right now. It is for these motivated, infuriated people that I wrote the last essay, to try and begin discussing what to do, next.
When none of the government sanctioned options are acceptable to one’s conscience, I humbly suggest as a first step refusal. Not refusal of any rights or avenues available and morally acceptable to us, but a refusal to have our avenues impeded or options for action limited by the preferences of the system we seek to dismantle and replace.
If you can vote, and millions of Americans still cannot, vote when it’s time to vote. Why not?
I’ve voted all my life. Voting is fun and makes you feel good even though we in no way, shape or form, actually get to legally decide who the major party nominees are or who is ultimately elected President.
I’m writing now to those who look at the suicidal and oppressive policies and records of both parties and feel hopeless and tempted into inaction because they are wise enough to understand that neither option will end our murderous empire, because they realize that systemic change is needed and that no person who is lifted to power by a system will ever seek to dismantle it. For all of you who understand history well enough to realize that rights were earned in the streets, though the world may be telling you to relax and wait to punch a hole in a ballot box for your favorite anti-women’s choice, pro-war candidate on Tuesday, I implore you to keep your hearts pumping and your minds open.
When voting gives you an opportunity to effect even marginal change, take it. When it does not, however, please don’t despair — voting isn’t and never was our only or best option.