Should You Vote?

There's a lot going on in the Race to the White House for 2008. I love politics and the presidential elections are my favorite. Did you you know as a voter, you are actually more influential in non presidential election. Anyway, one question I always hear people ask is, "should I vote in the next election?"

No, you should NOT vote in the next election. It really isn’t worth it. If you have to ask the question, then the founding fathers were correct in their plans to create a political system simple enough to empower people to manage a country's future while complex enough to deter ignorant citizens from screwing things up. I love this debate. We all have heard the campaigns to "get the vote out" or "rock the vote." We've been told since small children that our founding fathers rebelled against the oppression of “taxation without representation” so that we would hav the right to vote and choose our representation. And my favorite, “many Americans have died to give us the right to vote.” Things are not as they seem. First, I don’t believe it was ever the intent of our founding fathers to let everyone vote. In fact I know they didn’t since they excluded blacks and women. Was that wrong? Yes and no. Yes it is wrong to discriminate a person from voting solely on their sex or race. We as a society have evolved and taken action, thanks to the Constitution to changes this. However, I believe early requirements for voting we truly directed to empower land owning educated white men to vote in the elections. Why? Were our founding father’s racist women hating supremacist? No, I believe they were realist that understood government’s purpose is to provide basic services to the citizens and protect them from other governments. They also recognized that the best examples of government were those that did not empower a king or small group of individuals to manage the affairs of the state, rather a representative sampling of the people who were educated and would act in the best interests of their communities. Imagine, the chaos if every man and women in the newly formed country possessed the equal power to vote. I would argue that if our current system for selecting our leadership existing then as does today. England would only have to spend a lot of money advertising an attractive presidential leader and we would have never rebelled. You do realize at the start of the revolution conservatively 50% of the colonists were loyal to the King and if given a fair election would have elected to NOT rebel. Lucky of us, I guess, a large group of educated men believed it would be better in the long run to first fight for freedom before asking the general, yet limited, population to select a new leader.

I could argue that there will never be and can never be a euphoric world where everyone is equal and therefore all equally educated with the matters of state they cast their vote in support. I know this sounds terrible to the idealist that truly believes this euphoria can exist like the world we see on TV in Star Trek. This is a separate debate. However, my point is simply this. When our country was founded it was founded by mostly white, wealthy Protestants who were rebelling against a government that didn’t understand the challenges they faced in the New World. These men wanted to put a government in place that would allow for the creation of a republic that would be represented by white, wealthy, seemly educated Protestants. And in order to preserve this system of government had to empower people who would continue to elect them to power. When the dust settled they revolutionaries needed to expand this to white men who were at least educated enough to fight an embrace the challenges of the New World.

Now before I go one, I need to address the changes to the Constitution that ultimately gave every citizen the privilege to vote once they were 18. Was this a good thing? This increased the potential voters to include more seemly educated people who now include other races and both genders. (Did you ever wonder how hermaphrodites were treated before 1920? Could they vote?) However, why 18? Why not 13 or 16 or 30? I suspect this is because someone had to draw a line and set an estimated place where we could judge the individuals ability to think and reason as an educated voter. This is why in my opinion the people who should vote and select the leader of our country should have some idea of the issues they are casting their support for. These people, regardless of races, religion or gender, should not be ignorant of the system they are participating in. There for if you have to ask the question, “should I vote in the next election?” I say no. You’ve just proven your ignorance of the system and there fore should remove your self from what must seem like a complicated burden.

Doesn’t it just piss you off when we as a country elect a complete idiot who is so far removed from the problems of our world? Isn’t even worse when we do it twice! Why? I believe this is directly a cause of the question I’m answering. Our election system has become a joke. There are numerous reports that show that approximately 35% of voters vote regularly. Most voters can argue intelligently a single issue they claim to be voting for. In general, voting is too complex for the average American to grasp. And that is because politician aren’t raising money to argue issues or discuss the complexity of energy prices versus over safety aboard, they only need to flash something in your mind that will inspire you to take about an hour out of your ordinary Tuesday to cast your vote in their support. It’s no surprise our elections are popularity contests. I firmly believe this was not the indent our founding fathers had when they wrote the Constitution, at least not the ignorant voter part.

Do you know why the Roman Republic ruled the civilized world for so many years? They didn’t let everyone vote. I believe you’ll see that only Roman citizen, no surprise men only, elected Senators to represent them and their interests in the Senate. At the time, most of the Citizens clearly supported wealthy male aristocrats as Senators. These Senators would decide the important issues of the Republic and later appointed two consuls. Potentially corrupt, but efficient in providing that educated men shared ideas of government without burdening the average Roman with the complexity of grain supplies from the eastern region. This advanced government enabled the Roman Republic with efficient rule across a very vast dominion. What was the first crack in the Roman foundation? I would argue the dilution of educated voters electing Senators. Although it’s hard to prove since the Republic was replaced by an Emperor until it crumbled to outside pressures.

The United States is at that point in history where we too are beginning to show cracks in our system. How can a man be elected to office for a second term and then laugh in the face of the legislative body that empowers him? Why is money the most important resource in determining our future leaders? I say too many ignorant voters. This is why I cringe when I see a campaign to “get out the vote.” Why do we spend money encouraging people to take time out of their lives to just go vote? This is like telling a child to pick up a loaded gun. It’s dangerous. I wish we lived in a world where people were left alone to make their own decisions. Where they decided if voting was important to them or not. Where they researched the issues and candidates and then supported whom they felt would best represent them. But that’s my own euphoric dream. We live in a country where my vote is just as equal as the idiot who’s laid off from work sitting on welfare playing Xbox and decides he needs to get an “I voted” sticker.

Finally, I want to dispel the belief that our soldiers who died in conflict all died for our right to vote. This is a tricky one to explain. So let me first tell you I appreciate every US soldier, their families and their mothers who have made the ultimate sacrifice so I could sit in my office type on this blog ranting my opinion on the internet. These men and women died to protect our rights against foreign nations who might have taken these rights away from us if given the opportunity. Most of them at least, regardless I thank them. Many of our soldiers have been told this lie, when in reality they died for lesser reasons. But that’s a different topic and was not their decision. The point I’d like to make is that killing Muslims in the desert of Iraq isn’t protecting my right to vote. It should influence my vote, but not preserve it. Attacking countries in Asia during the Cold War didn’t protect my right to vote either. Why? First the Muslims in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East that we are waging a war against don’t care about political systems, they are fighting a war of religion. In their minds all Muslins can vote all they want as long as the only choices are those that Allah and more specifically, fundamental Allah, would give them to choose from. To make this a little more clear, if we could stop all the fighting and all the people of the middle east could vote in a fair election, they would overwhelming elect a person very much like Osama Bin Laden. Then in an overwhelming opinion poll they would vote to raise the price of oil. Why? I would again argue this is the problem when everyone has the right and exercises their vote. Ironically our government knows this too. We as a nation tremble in the thought of any nation, including our own, setting up a true democratic society. After all this new true democratic country could elect the next Hitler, Osama Bin Laden or George Bush. A true democratic society could and has elected communist or socialist economic systems. Remember in a true democracy the power of the people is pure and if the people say round up the X people or we’re going to share all the Y resource, then that is the law of the people. It’s basically mentality of the mob.

This brings me to the argument of communism spreading in during the Cold War. I would like to remind you no country was knocking at our door saying, “would you like to try a little communism for dinner?” Communism was spreading because after the Second World War many small Asian nations were without the Imperial European Nations spoon feeding their economies or assisting with their recovery after the fall of Japan and Germany. Western civilization didn’t have the time or resources to rebuild these third world countries. The concept of people working together as a community to share natural resources under a communism made more sense at the time then opening McDonalds and trying a capitalist system with no support from other free markets. I know communism was taught to us as an absolute opposite to the wonderful democracy will live in. However, in my opinion comparing the two is like comparing apples to jars. Democracy is a form of political government as is a republic, or dictatorship or theocracy to name a few examples. Communism to me is an economic condition similar to feudalism, socialism or capitalism. Our political system is the jar that creates our borders and our economy are the resources we contain in those jars. Don’t worry the same people who taught us about communism and democracy also believe we live in a democracy. I could go on about this argument, but the point is that seldom do our soldiers die in conflict abroad to preserve our right to vote here in the United States. More often they die to preserve more jars for us to fill with apples. And even if you want to believe me and say they did, I say they probably didn’t intend on that vote being wasted by ignorant voters who have to ask, “Should I vote in the next election? Is it really worth it?” Do us all a favor and if you have to ask, stay home and do something else. Maybe watch the History Channel.