The Sin of Not Voting

I’ve just been wandering through various comments and discussions online about the lack of voter turn-out in Canada’s recent federal elections (51%, if I remember that statistic correctly).

Enlighten me. These clues have I gathered in recent weeks (and months) about Canadian university students and staff members’ opinions regarding voting and democracy:

• “Are you voting? Have you voted?”
  The persistent question that was asked all around campus in the weeks leading up to the election, particularly on the day. Or more tellingly, not asking at all, but saying something that simply assumed people would (and should) be voting.

• The look of horror on someone’s face when I suggested no.
  I realized, though I was not entirely sure why, that I was being a Bad Citizen. Regardless of the fact that I still don’t identify myself as Canadian at all. Come to that, I don’t think I identify myself anywhere in particular at the moment. Another identity crisis in store.

• That UBC-wide email sent out on the day of the elections telling us “VOTE TODAY! WITHOUT YOUR VOTE, THERE CAN BE NO DEMOCRACY!”
  OK, I admit it, even if this means I am going to be a Morally Reprehensible Citizen: the first thing that came to mind was how sickeningly alike that wording is to the various propaganda posters we used to study in GCSE and IB history. The implication that democracy is unquestionably the highest form of political systems and that every other one is somehow inferior; that the right to vote is not a choice to vote, but an imperative to vote or else.

• People’s reactions when the words “democracy” or “communism” appear in a sentence, particularly in conjunction with one another. Wow, and we pride ourselves on being tolerant? The unfailing praise of democracy and general condemnation of communism while not seeming to have any genuine recognition of the possible flaws of democracy or the very real attraction of communism; that it may be possible for people to desire another form of political system without being written off as “wrong, just plain wrong”, in terms of their intellectual and/or political maturity. The best I have heard are people quoting ad nauseum what their teachers, the media or authorities have clearly passed on to them, and I am left with no clear sense that they really understood it themselves. Think what you like, but are these your thoughts or someone else’s? If communism is really so apparently idiotic, why did millions of people turn to it? Why did we not invent democracy millenia ago if that were so naturally the right way to go? And is someone more stupid than you because they think differently?

Actually, that last point is really quite another issue and a discussion unto itself. Before I return to the question of not voting within a democratic system, I just want to make the final disclaimer that I spent half my high school life arguing against a “communist” in one of my classes and am now busier criticizing democracy (or, I suppose, the unquestioning acceptance of it and the unempathic intolerance of other ideas). “What am I then?”

Back to the problem of not voting, though: why is it a problem? Instead of asking why not, it seems that outrage, shock and horror are the more common reactions and I get the dread sensation of having commited a great wrong. (While I’m at it, why do people not ask why someone is voting for so-and-so? People ask who you’re voting for, then never ask why, giving me the uncanny feeling they’re assuming they know why or how that person is thinking.)

I can understand why it might be a problem if someone just can’t be bothered enough to care — extended to everyone, that would be a lot of people who simply don’t care.

But not voting doesn’t necessarily translate into an attitude of not caring. At least, when I was reading about 2004 US presidential elections, there seemed to be morally acceptable reasons for not voting too. (Not having heard anyone beside myself ‘fess up to not voting, I can’t quote those reasons.)

What if you make the conscious choice not to vote? What if you don’t like any of the candidates and didn’t want to be responsible for voting someone you hate into power? What if you realize you’ve made a sickening mistake and have voted in a Hitler? And I am not being entirely glib here, because how do you live with yourself after that — how did people live with themselves after voting for Hitler and realizing what he did? Now, arguably, you might vote for the lesser of two evils if you sincerely believe that one of them is truly that much of a bad idea — but what if you think that both of them are so bad it’s going to go to hell and you don’t want to pave the way for them? Are none of these reasons for not voting good enough to at least make one a Decent Citizen?

As for myself, I didn’t have any of those reasons. I simply didn’t vote because I don’t know exactly how Canada’s political system works. “Isn’t voting the same everywhere?” someone scoffed at me. No, I don’t believe so… Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I’m a little doubtful about whether Canada’s voting system is identical to the US? And I am pretty sure it differs from place to place. When I left HK, there was this wrangle over having proportional representation or universal suffrage. Some survey found that most citizens didn’t really know how the political structure and system of the current voting method or government works. So really, people were making a lot of fuss over words that sound good but which they may not necessarily know why it sounds so good, except they’re coupled up there with “democracy” and “freedom”. I don’t want to be one of those people, I’m afraid, even if that makes me a somewhat Bad Citizen for being ignorant. I don’t know how the system works, much less know the details about who was running. I certainly didn’t know what I thought about them — I’ve heard all anti-Harper comments rather than pro-anyone-in-particular, so I wouldn’t really know who to vote for, besides which, I don’t want to be voting someone else’s opinons in. If/when I vote, it will be for someone I think is right, not what anyone else tells me.

So I chose not to vote. Even if that does make me bad. Though I would like to understand why I am so bad, because I thought it wasn’t such a bad idea to do things this way for this reason. Perhaps my political apathy isn’t so inconceivable when I remember I come from an ex-colony next to a supposedly-communist, ex-Maoist country and from a culture which views political activism with a great deal of skepticism, actually. How difficult to encounter the opposite. (Not saying it’s bad. Just hard.)

And yes, I do agree that I should borrow someone’s textbook on Canadian government and work that out if I really intend on staying in the country for any length of time, particularly since I am so busy taking advantage of the cheaper university fees (it’s only fair to be engaged with the other aspects, no?). I don’t know what the heck I am supposed to be doing or what is expected of me as a Canadian citizen.

Lastly, I want to point out that criticism and reasoning doesn’t necessarily force a person to care; people do things when they care, and they begin to care when they are ready for it. I don’t know how to encourage that possibility — perhaps by example? That is not to say we should stop speaking our point of view because it’s not necessarily life-changing, not by any means. Don’t we speak because we need to?