If you’re like me, you’ve read a gazillion newspaper editorials telling you why you should vote and how you’re an ignorant doofus if you don’t.
Indeed opinion pieces with titles such as “Don’t sit on the sidelines this election” are the editorial page equivalent of a baking-soda volcano at a science fair.
But with elections in Manitoba and Saskatchewan around the corner, the questions must be asked: Why must people who choose not to vote be so vilified? If we respect freedom so much in this country, why do we have so much trouble respecting he who exercises his freedom not to vote?
For the record, I have voted in nearly every provincial, federal and civic election for which I have been eligible (about a dozen). The only exception occurred when I was leaving for a lengthy vacation right around election time.
I’ve always been a voter who follows the issues and tries to grasp what’s going on. I get to know where the candidates stand on the issues
I care about most.
But I also know many folks – some around my age, some older – who never or rarely vote and admit they know nothing about politics.
I’ve never felt the need to belittle them. If they see no connection between their daily lives and the particular group of people who sit in a parliament, legislature or council chambers, and are still happy, then who am I to whip out the shame stick?
Besides, political history is littered with broken campaign promises, many of them significant. Recall the Liberals’ 1993 pledge to abolish the GST or the Harper Conservatives’ vow to pay down the national debt by at least $3 billion a year. And the list goes on and on.
If time and again honest people vote for something in good faith only to never actually get that which they voted for, and in fact receive the opposite, what right does anyone have to be outraged when said voters choose to abandon the process? Isn’t that the least-surprising end result ever?
Non-voters have the unfortunate reputation of being apathetic, lazy, stupid and ungrateful citizens.
But the ones I’ve met are honest, everyday people, manoeuvring through this world like the rest of us, not really counting on politicians to improve their lives, but doing so for themselves. Isn’t there something slightly admirable about that sort of independence?
A lot of Canadians are so outraged by low voter turnout that they want our country to adopt mandatory voting, a bizarre idea that attempts to force people to exercise their freedom by taking some of it away.
What if someone is choosing not to vote because he is morally opposed to all of the choices on the ballot? To this, proponents of mandatory voting say, “Well, then he can spoil his ballot!”
Wait. We’re going to use the arm of the law to corral disenchanted people to polling stations so they can scribble on a ballot that won’t be counted for anything? In a country with something like 200,000 homeless people, is this really the best use of resources?
Look, it’s not that I want to see low voter turnout. Obviously the higher the turnout, the more representative of the people a government will be – but even that is based on the leap-of-faith assumption that what people vote for is what they get.
It’s just that as someone who knows just as many non-voters as voters, I can understand why so many folks have opted out of the process. And because I understand, I have a hard time shaming them.
