more democracy in/action

Excerpt from D.E. Campbell's Why We Vote:

"On September 26, 1989, Traci Hodgson cast her ballot in Boston’s City Council election. It was the only vote cast in her precinct. For a number of reasons, the political science literature predicts that Traci should have been like the other 275 registrants in her precinct and not turned out to vote. She was only twenty-one, she had lived in Boston for less than two months, and she admitted that she was “not very familiar with the candidates running.” So why did she vote? When asked she replied, “I just think it’s important to vote. If you have the right, you ought to exercise it—whether you are going to make a difference or not” (Mooney 1989).

This book is about why Traci voted, and why she voted alone.

MADISON AND TOCQUEVILLE: A TALE OF TWO MOTIVATIONS

Our starting point in answering this question is not what did motivate Traci, but rather what did not. Clearly she did not vote to protect or advance her interests, as she admitted that she did not know enough about the candidates to select them on the basis of who best represented her. To someone with only a cursory familiarity with the study of American politics this may seem difficult to explain, as politics is typically described as a forum for the “clash of interests.” Equating politics with conflict underpins much of the political science literature and is an assumption shared by scholars working within many theoretical frameworks. I recall an introductory political science course in which a professor defined politics as the “scarcity of consensus.” In 1960, E. E. Schattschneider wrote simply, “At the root of all politics is the universal language of conflict” (2). Forty years later, Morris Fiorina and Paul Peterson note matter-offactly in their introductory textbook on American politics that “politics is fundamentally about conflict” (1998, xvi). For all the ink spilled by contemporary political scientists, however, no one has ever expressed this way of understanding politics better than James Madison in Federalist 10. Madison writes compellingly of how “the latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man,” and that “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts” (1961, 79).

It does not seem, however, that Traci had her passions kindled as Madison describes. Instead, by her own account she was motivated by the glowing embers of obligation. She felt that she ought to vote, that it was her duty.

In invoking a sense of duty as a motivation to vote, Traci highlights a second, if more subtle, theme in both contemporary and classic writings on political engagement. If, in Federalist 10, Madison has written the quintessential statement on political participation as “protecting one’s interests,” then perhaps Tocqueville has written an equally quintessential description of political participation as driven by “fulfilling one’s duty.” In Democracy in America, Tocqueville observes that American political institutions lead citizens to see that “it is the duty as well as the interest of men to be useful to their fellows. . . . What had been calculation becomes instinct. By dint of working for the good of his fellow citizens, he in the end acquires a habit and taste for serving them” (1988, 512–13).

These two opposing views of politics are not merely the abstract statements of theoreticians, the political science rendition of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They also inform the writings and doings of political practitioners, with some of America’s founders as notable examples. Of course, Madison was one of the founders and, as noted, in his words we find a cogent description of how politics is inevitably defined by conflict. However, George Washington’s vision was of a republic free from strife among its citizens, in which citizens were involved in public affairs out of duty (Schudson 1998). Ironically, given their disagreements on so many other matters, Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the new republic mirrored Washington’s. Jefferson idealized a nation of small Tocquevillian communities, mentioning his ideal in almost every speech he gave (Morone 1990).

The ongoing debate between civic republican and liberal political philosophers over the nature of political life at the time of America’s founding underscores the two competing visions of democracy’s nature. In summarizing this extensive literature, James Morone writes,

[T]he dominant interpretation of liberal America focuses on the pursuit of self-interest. . . . In the republican view, the colonial and Revolutionary ideal lay, not in the pursuit of private matters, but in the shared public life of civic duty, in the subordination of individual interests to the res publica. Citizens were defined and fulfilled by participation in political community. (1990, 16, emphasis added)

The distinction between engagement driven by interests versus duty need not be seen as either/or. The very fact that evidence can be mustered to support both interpretations of the founders’ ideals suggests that neither one dominated to the exclusion of the other. Nor should we assume that the essential difference between engagement spurred by a threat to one’s interests and engagement motivated by a sense of civic obligation has faded over time. Indeed, the distinction between interest-driven and duty-driven engagement is at the core of this book, which is about contemporary patterns of public engagement in the United States."

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So anyways, what I take from this is that there is a good, albeit never-discussed outside of this book, reason behind those ubiquitous and lame excuses of "I'm not voting because I don't like any of the candidates... "I don't know enough about the issues/candidates to choose..." "My vote doesn't really matter anyways..." "The whole political system is so fucked up I'm not voting just to protest it..."

The way I see it, not voting because you don't approve of the system is basically admitting defeat to the hegemonic two-party system. People in power have created and perpetuated this crazy dichotomy, which exists in such an intense form in very few countries (including the U.S.) So we don't have much choice if we want to vote for someone who is likely to win, but we do have a choice and we can't get scared off by the language of "conflict". Although which choice we make is crucial to each of us and our quests to further our personal interests, exercising the right to make the choice is crucial to our collective interest.

No, the world is not really separable into black and white, good and evil, Democrat and Republican - so it may seem unsatisfactory to have only those two choices before you. But by not voting to "protest" that, you are doing exactly what they want you to do. When less people vote, power remains concentrated in the hands of those who already have it. Although one vote may not matter much statistically, there's NO OTHER WAY to make changes. Unless, of course, the non-voters of the world are willing to put together a coalition, lobby and petition, run for office themselves, and go out into the streets to make their point. I am not saying non-voters are all kept away from the polls by laziness (although some might be) but rather that this frustrating political situation makes apathy a more reasonable choice for some people. However, those people shouldn't blame their apathy on the system, because they are the only ones who can change it.

As far as "not knowing enough" about the candidates or policies or ballot questions, I really can't come up with a polite way of saying that there's no excuse... Listen to NPR while you're in the shower or commuting. Watch the news in between commercials. Shop online for a candidate you agree with instead of shopping for a pink Teflon-coated frying pan. Read the newspaper, cnn.com, or The Nation instead of reading this blog. Fuck it, for all I care you can even watch a little Fox News - just don't listen too hard - while you're at the gym (why do they always have Fox News on in gyms?)

The point is, it does not require superhuman effort to be reasonably informed. In addition to learning about the candidates in your local elections, you will inadvertently learn about other stuff too. The latter will likely get you so fired up that you'll find it impossible to resist voting ever again. Even if it doesn't and you find my entire argument pointless, the frying pan will still be there.