Want
To See Change In The Country? Don’t Vote!
By James Rothenberg
21 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Well,
it looks like the 2008 election campaign is in full swing, or is it?
Does anyone know who the Greens are running? Or the Socialists? Or the
Progressives or Populists or Workers World? Nah, I guess we don’t
need them to get started. They can fill in the chorus parts at the end
of the play. All we need is Big Politics. Come and get it. One party
for the price of two!
Democrats and Republicans
alike beseech us to get out there and vote, and why not? Besides making
these self-anointed guardians of democracy seem open and civic-minded,
there is the reassuring prospect that each will get their standard split
(results will not vary greatly from 50/50). The virtual monopoly control
of election apparat enjoyed by these two parties make them confident
they will not have to face serious challenges from minor party candidates.
We are counseled that every
vote matters, even a single one. While this may be true on the Supreme
Court, a school board, or even a village election, as the vote count
grows larger the odds alone make it progressively more unlikely that
a single vote could be decisive.
The pivotal Florida count
in the 2000 presidential election may seem to support one-vote-matters
theory. Out of 5,861,785 votes cast in the State a mere 537 vote margin
decided the whole shebang (via the Supreme Court). Okay, so 537 is not
1 but it’s tantalizingly close considering the total number of
votes. Didn’t this prove that a single vote could, in principle,
make the difference?
Forget it! It’s not
a matter of odds. It’s a matter of appearance. In an election
of sufficient size and importance, a single vote will never be decisive.
That is the Florida lesson. Remembering Florida, think what would happen
if the difference was a single vote, which, taking the Florida figures,
works out to a margin of .000017 percent. Since this is hideously less
than the margin of error in the count it would never be allowed to stand.
It would be challenged and re-challenged until the margin raised high
enough to quell some of the surrounding noise. All of which means one
thing. Your vote will never matter!
Both parties see it as a
bad sign when voters stay away from the polls. It signifies that people
may have stopped paying attention. Democrats and Republicans each struggle
to maintain the illusion that they are uniquely suited to guide the
country – that they alone deserve to lead by dint of tradition.
The absurdity is compounded
each election cycle by these stalwart defenders of the status quo each
promising to bring about the next great change, exploiting the public’s
thirst for it.
While we are encouraged to
vote for change, in our system it works the opposite way. At the present
stage, the entrenched power of Big Politics is such as to render any
rival upstart stillborn. It won’t happen at the ballot box, not
in the expected sense. Voting is their game and you can’t beat
someone at their own game.
When 100 million people vote
each major party will get between 40 and 60 million each, leaving mavericks
the crumbs and millions of votes to overcome. Since mavericks are the
only people who represent true change (supply your own proof), what
we get is reluctance to change.
If only 1 million people
vote each major party will have ulcers at the prospect of their vulnerability
to the maverick. The fewer people who vote, the fewer needed to upset
the power balance. Is this a partial explanation of why the establishment
frets about low voter turnout?
So the message is if you
really want to see things shaken up, stay away from the polls. This
will take some discipline considering how it counters the prevailing
advice. Your vote may be personal to you, but to those in control it
is a commodity. It is bought and paid for in accordance with a formula
(dollar/vote correspondence) well known to those in the field (applied
electioneering), only you’re not supposed to know this, even though
you really know this.
You may feel that you vote
freely, but ask yourself why you don’t feel free to vote for a
minor party candidate. Ask yourself why you don’t want to “waste”
your vote, yet instead reward with it the very parties responsible for
this state of futility.
The army teaches a valuable
survival lesson. When you are captured, the best time to escape is as
soon as you can, because it gets harder as you go on. This presupposes
something so obvious that it can be overlooked. That you know you are
captive! Applying this to discussed circumstances, our primary obstacle
may be that we do not fully recognize that all is futile.
j [email protected]
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