Election season: a playground for the best and worst of American impulses. Depending on who you are, and who you surround yourself with, you may know every detail about both candidates, or you may not know or care to know.
Particularly for young Americans, I think it’s fair to say that dissatisfaction with the system, or even a general indifference towards it, is common. In 2023, Pew Research Center found that almost half (48%) of Americans aged 18-29 agree that there should be more political party options, and 28% of all Americans had unfavorable views of both parties, an all-time high.
I happen to agree that a simple selection of two parties has no way of capturing the beliefs of all constituents, and that the choice between the two is at best ineffective and at worst reductive and misleading. Despite that, I’m still voting in this election, and I’ll tell you why.
Most of us are familiar with the trolley problem: a hypothetical scenario in which you can control the lever to a trolley track so that the incoming vehicle either hits only one person or five. Either way, someone will die. Thankfully none of us will ever have to suffer through this scenario. But if you did, would you pretend the people weren’t there?
Not voting is much like staring at the people on the tracks and refusing to acknowledge them. Let me be explicit: failing to engage with a moral quandary will not make the issue go away. If you choose to ignore the lever and claim that the decision doesn’t matter, people still die. Your choice can make the difference between one and five.
To tell young voters, who historically are less likely not to vote anyways, that their decisions are “evil” regardless of which option they choose, is at best gravely irresponsible and at worst morally bankrupt. We must recognize that to be in a position where you can refuse to vote and encourage others not to vote is to be in a position of privilege.
The woman in Texas who lost her ability to have children because she was forced to face sepsis before her nonviable pregnancy could be operated on– Should she not vote? The transgender man in Florida who couldn’t receive testosterone for an additional six months because restrictions were passed to make it more difficult for him to receive it– Should he not vote? Non-white citizens and women, who were not allowed the right to vote in centuries past and now have the chance to directly impact a country that has forced discriminatory laws upon them and their communities– Should they not vote?
When you fixate on one issue, however important that issue may be, you lose the forest for the trees. You may have the privilege to ignore changes that happen around us every day because of elections on every scale. Those around you may not.
Finally, if nothing else is enough to convince you that your voice and your vote is meaningful on the presidential scale– if you truly believe both of the presidential candidates are too heinous to deign a vote for, at least turn your attention to statewide and local elections.
On the ballots for Colorado this year, notably, is an initiative that would essentially abolish the requirement to vote within a particular party for primaries, as well as enabling ranked voting choices rather than a single pick.
// Courtesy of Library of Congress Public Domain
Included as well are measures for an addition in the state’s constitution to guarantee abortion rights and a removal of a clause in the constitution that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
With everything happening in the country and in the world right now, I understand everyone who is reluctant to vote, especially those who are at odds with our current political system. Are you helping? Are you hurting? Does your vote really even matter?
To anyone who would dissuade our peers from voting under the guise of moral superiority, I ask how they believe progress is ever made. Whether or not you participate in the system, it still churns. If you refuse to vote on the basis that voting renders you complicit in a harmful system, how do you think the system will ever be changed? No matter how you justify it, your refusal to see the lever doesn’t erase the existence of the tracks. Progress comes in stages, and indifference is poison to change.
Vote, or don’t. Ultimately the choice is up to us all individually. But to those who can be convinced, I encourage you. Voting isn’t a duty that you’re shackled to. It’s a privilege. Pull the lever.