As mentioned in my last blog, I do think that people should vote. This may come as a \u201cno brainer\u201d to most reading this but it\u2019s not as simple as it looks and a more detailed inspection highlights valuable insights.<\/p>\n
Many who argue that we are obligated to vote remind us of the thousands (if not millions) that fought and died for their\/our right to vote. In fact, this is no understatement. Our nation\u2019s history does contain innumerable examples of tremendous struggle tied to obtaining \u201cright to vote.\u201d Women didn\u2019t get this fundamental right until 1920!; so much for the \u201cLand of the Free.\u201d Many, many women were threatened, beaten, arrested and\/or worse in their struggle for suffrage. To think it took our \u201cenlightened\u201d nation almost 150 years of existence to provide half the population this fundamental human right is astounding; and the US took longer than most Western nations–New Zealand was the first country in the world in 1893 (if interested in other nations, visit link<\/a>). While African-American men were granted the right to vote in 1870 (15th Amendment), in practical terms, most were forbidden to do so because of racist \u201cgrandfather clauses,\u201d literacy tests, and poll taxes that existed until 1965 (see link<\/a> for historical timeline); thus, a significant component of our population has only been able to vote for ~50 years. Felons and others \u201cbeing watched\u201d by state are often not able to vote. This represents unfair disenfranchisement as our criminal justice system is extremely discriminatory (see Michelle Alexander\u2019s \u201cThe New Jim Crow\u201d).<\/p>\n This is a strong argument for voting but it fails to consider exactly what voting means. Most elections are \u201cmajority rules\u201d in our nation–to the winner goes all the spoils. This greatly disenfranchises minority groups. Sadly, even today, many voices of people overlooked and undervalued are ignored. The Native Americans struggling in the Dakotas (and elsewhere) are but one such example. Since these groups rarely have the ability to impact the outcome of an election, voting doesn\u2019t help their cause(s). Other countries have governing bodies where representation is proportional. Then at least more voices are being heard (though, perhaps, not listened to). <\/p>\n Most of our elections (even many local ones) see two people vying to be the lone representative of \u201call.\u201d So when one votes, one must decide between these two, and only these two, people. There are many shortcomings of this characteristic\u2014-one true to the vast majority of our elections. First, typically the two people that reached the \u201ctop two\u201d have been propelled there by corporate funded publicity, and, thus, have very pro-corporate mindsets. Let\u2019s face it, it costs hundreds (if not thousands) of thousands of dollars to run even a statewide election. This severely limits candidates to those who are independently wealthy or \u201cpuppets\u201d for those that have immense wealth. Second, the two people each typically represent one of the two major political parties. This is problematic because these two parties have become very pro-corporate and elitist; there are definitely exceptions to this but I am talking here about the vast majority of candidates representing these two parties. Third, having only \u201ctwo\u201d parties represented greatly limits the scope of what will be said\/voiced and disseminated. We see how powerful this is in the current Presidential election. No \u201cthird party\u201d representatives were invited to take part in the three debates (masquerades, might be a better word) that took place this year. If anyone watched the alternative debate organized by Jill Stein (it can be found online and at her Facebook page), you saw how significant having a third voice, particularly one not beholden to deep pockets and multinational corporations, can be. Interesting, there is sound evidence that the \u201ctwo party\u201d state was a natural outgrowth of the USA which was founded & organized by wealthy male landowners. These men understood the conservative nature of a \u201ctwo party state,\u201d one that gave them incredible power to control the policies and programs and any conversations held about them; see more on this in Howard Zinn\u2019s A People\u2019s History of the United States. The terrible lack of coverage of third parties by the mainstream media clarifies how culpable this potentially democratizing entity is in controlling\/limiting the coverage. (As a side note, this is one major reason that the two parties spend so much of their campaigns discussing social issues (such as, abortion, drugs, crime, guns, etc.), as these issues don\u2019t upset the apple cart of extreme economic inequality that continues to expand over the past 40+ years independent of what political party is in the White House or in control of either legislative chamber.) Fourth, having only two choices often means that there is no way to submit a protest vote (such as \u201cNone of the above\u201d) or a \u201cwrite-in\u201d candidate. In my mind, there should always be both of these for every election. For these, and other reasons, some decide, \u201cwhy vote if both candidates represent the \u2018status quo\u2019,\u201d when real economic, environmental and health challenges only get worse.<\/p>\n All of this is to say, \u201cyes, vote, but do a lot more!\u201d; I focus on the \u201cmore\u201d in many of my other blogs and I encourage commenters to speak their minds on this as well. I voted but I am under no illusion that by doing so I have somehow done my part to build a better world. It will take a lot of other contributions, today, tomorrow, and every day in the future; and not just by me, but by you as well. This, the illusion associated with voting, may be the greatest challenge we face. Whoever wins next month, we will have our plates full of things to do and ways to contribute. Why not start making those lists today. We definitely don\u2019t want to be (nor do we have time to be) complacent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As mentioned in my last blog, I do think that people should vote. This may come as a \u201cno brainer\u201d to most reading this but it\u2019s not as simple as it looks and a more detailed inspection highlights valuable insights. Many who argue that we are obligated to vote remind us of the thousands (if … Continue reading “vote, but”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challenges","category-solutions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7BrNb-2i","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}