#nonvoting

Like, for those deriving it from the vague undirected feelings of anger, those people are understandably burnt the fuck out and your trying to double down on the forces that burnt them the hell out comes off as toxic positivity at best.

You aren't going to do dick to convince them compared to; say; actually doing shit that shows you have their back, and you sound like the most smug and obnoxious of the aggressive Voting Bad-types just from the opposite direction.

And, for those deriving it from Theory, they've got a web of intellectual justifications that support it and most likely your attempts at disassembling it are going to be the most cliche; easy to deconstruct ones they've seen before, you're not going to chew the foundations out from this iron web...

...

...And also, if you want to get the goat of the most obnoxious and smug latter people, there are better rhetorical points to do that.

Too Uninformed to Vote? Research Says Non-Voting Shares Have Benefits

Snap’s decision to go public with non-voting shares this year sparked opposition from institutional investors, ultimately leading at least two stock indexes to exclude companies with dual-class shares from their indexes. But the existence of shares without voting rights could actually be beneficial for activist investors, according to a new paper. By limiting the number of shares with voting…

Black people not voting is logical, and vote pushers are usually anti-Black

For most of my schooling, I was treated as somewhat of a golden child. As an advanced placement student in a majority Black district, where most of the other Black kids weren’t surpassing their white peers scholastically like I was, the fact that I seemed destined to follow in the footsteps of my ivy-league older siblings did not go unnoticed by the approving adults in my life. Not only did my…

This Election A chilling reminder of how important it is to vote.

By Gina Mei (cosmopolitan.com) Nov 10, 2016

While many continue to mourn, celebrate, and dissect Tuesday’s election, new data now suggests that part of the reason for its surprising outcome might be due to low voter turnout.

According to the United States Election Project, nearly half of eligible voters (46.9 percent of approximately 231,556,622 people) did not vote in the 2016 election.And while not the lowest voter turnout in history (that honor goes to the 1996 election between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, with 49 percent of eligible Americans abstaining from voting), the numbers are much lower than they were in both 2012 and 2008, particularly among Democrats.

While it might be easy to assume that these numbers reflect a lack of passion from the Democratic party this year, Republicans actually saw a lower voter turnout compared to the 2012 election, as well — albeit much less dramatically. Many sources argue that the reasoning for this is in part due to the fact that it is the first election since the Supreme Court ruled against the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This led to the closing of over 800 polling places across the country, and stricter ID requirements for voters in multiple states.

by Me.  Recently published in the CW newsletter of my house.

If you want to start a passionate debate at a dinner party this fall, forget about religion or sports, just mention that you won’t be voting for either Obama or Romney this fall.  Better yet, say that you don’t vote in any presidential election. 

The duty and power of voting is a deeply entrenched American value.  We have learned all our lives that it is the right way to participate, to “make your voice heard.”  Yet, as defensive as Americans get about our duty to vote, few people seem to actually support the candidate or even to believe that the president actually has much power.  John Howard Yoder describes this culture around voting as perpetuating the “mythology of the nation-state as savior” and calls voting a “confession of faith” in the system.  Indeed, the ritual of voting is deeply ingrained in our psyche.  So when someone actively chooses not to cooperate with this narrative, the reaction is strong.

Catholic Workers, Pentecostals, Quakers, Jehovah’s Witness and others, though, have a long history of resisting the accepted narrative, including the “duty” to vote.  The biblical, moral and personal reasons for this are too complex to adequately describe here, but the action of voting is certainly worth some serious discernment, discernment that includes options beyond red and blue, so I’ll try to mention a few basics to get your thoughts flowing. 

Non-cooperation with the state was theologically important to early Christians and has been continued by the peace churches and Christian anarchists in the US for centuries.  As Christians, we are first and foremost called to obey God and to build God’s kingdom on earth; how then can we simultaneously pledge allegiance to a government that so often directly violates the commandments of that God?  Non-cooperation can mean many things, for some it can start with not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, for others it means tax resistance or conscientious objection in times of war, for some it can also mean the active decision not to vote.  Most basically, the logic is this: if I vote and pay for a government which kills and oppresses millions, am I not cooperating in those actions?  Have I not put obedience to the systems of government above my obedience to the laws of God?

Active noncooperation, however, should not be confused with silence.  I cannot simply not vote, or not file taxes, or not go to war.  I must make this decision an active statement in itself and an invitation to conscience-forming debate with other thoughtful citizens.  Ammon Hennacy, a friend of Dorothy Day and one of my favorite CWers, never paid taxes or voted but every tax day he stood in the town square with a sign, talking to people about his decision not to let his money pay for bombs.  He used his noncooperation as an opening for conversation, participating much more directly and actively in civil issues than had he simply cast a vote for a third party or settled for a candidate who advocated fewer bombs.    

One might say that voting itself can silence us and lull us into complacency with the government, handing over our power and responsibility to the “savior state.”  Christian anarchism and personalism are central to the history of the Catholic Worker. These philosophies believe in the power and responsibility of the individual, not the government.  When my neighbor asks for food and I have extra, it is my duty to share with her.  It should also be my goal, though, to strive for self sufficiency so that I will not have to rely on others to feed me.  Ideally, the government has no place in these relationships.  For this reason, you might see anarchists gardening and sharing open meals but you probably will not see them voting for or against federal food stamp programs.   Advocating government safety nets hands over our power and responsibility to a third party and takes the personal out of it.  It can lull us into reliance on the government and make us feel excused from our biblical duty to “feed the hungry.”

Voting is a right, and it is a right that should be extended to all, but it is also a decision that we should approach thoughtfully and critically.  There are many who have been denied even this small form of political legitimacy throughout our history and plenty continue to face disenfranchisement; new voter ID laws and bans against those with felony record are added in many states this year.  I am not trying to minimize their struggle for the important symbol of legitimacy that voting represents in our culture.  But when we have the right, it is our duty not to let it be used against us.  The idea that voting is voice and the state is savior can easily be used to lull us into silence; it is up to us to make sure that it doesn’t. 

The most effective forms of social change are not those that fit neatly into the acceptable realm of voting.  When we start to believe that voting is voice, we silence ourselves.  When we vote for the “least bad” and hope he remembers us next year, we risk handing over our power.  When we pledge allegiance to Caesar even in opposition to the radical call of the Gospel, we miss the opportunity to live more justly.  Every day, it is up to us to struggle with the balance between the two authorities under which we live and to decide how we will engage with each; that is as true this November as ever. 

Further reading:

Lewis, Ted. Electing Not To Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting

Hennacy, Ammon. The Book of Ammon