Hey, neighbor: you owe me a vote!
Sent Sept. 22, 2004; revised Feb. 24, 2006

 
With another interim election imminent — and the last two elections apparently having been stolen, then the stealing of the first legitimized by the U.S. Supreme Court — op-ed discussion turns inevitably to the subjects of voting fraud and of the nation’s lousy record of voter participation and what can be done to increase it. I won’t repeat here the humiliating statistics about what a puny, inadequate percentage of those who can register to vote do so, or what even more embarrassing percentage of those registered actually show up to vote. Others will be regurgitating those stats eventually, in yet another attempt to goad the general public into voting this time.

Here’s my problem with most of the discussion about increasing voter participation: it seems to dwell more on exhortation based on either 1) shaming people into voting and/or appealing to their self-interest or 2) focusing on successful strategies to deliver people to the polls on election day — without talking about something more basic, like what citizenship requires. And it never occurs to nonvoters that they owe me, their fellow citizen, much beyond not disturbing the peace, let alone their participation in our democratic government. Time to change that.

All this talk about what government can do for you is great — young voters in particular need to know the many ways in which they benefit from self-governance in general and specific laws and programs. The ultraconservatives are very adept at haranguing their supporters about what they’ll lose if, say, anyone who can think beyond ideology and theology gets elected to public office. The independents, liberals, and progressives are not so adept at getting a turnout. So it makes sense to appeal to those who don’t vote by telling them how government affects them and their specific interests, chapter and verse, in order to get them motivated on election day. In fact, I encourage it — but we can’t stop there. That’s merely one part of a combination strategy, if the strategy is to work at all. Besides, such pandering smacks too much of what lobbyists and special interests do. Getting voters to the polls is not a special interest issue: it’s a self-governance issue basic to all citizens.

Here’s the rub: there’s nothing wrong with self-interest except defining it too narrowly. And we usually don’t define it broadly enough, especially when it comes to discussing voting and self-governance. More to the point, self-interest shouldn’t be the defining reason why people need to vote and keep themselves well informed enough to vote intelligently. Maybe, just maybe, what they owe to their neighbors and community should count a bit more — precisely because self-governance and democracy have survival value for us all. Besides, I’m tired of my nonvoting fellow citizens behaving as if they live like hermits on an island, enjoying the benefits of a free society in which I participate but without giving anything back to me.

It’s this idea of giving back precisely because you enjoy so great a benefit that is such a great motivator — as John F. Kennedy well knew when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country” and then proceeded to invent the Peace Corps. People want to be inspired, not goaded or guilted or plea-bargained or even bribed into doing the right thing. But even when you start by inspiring people to be responsible, there’s still an unwritten structure to what’s going on in the society — and that underlying structure is best openly addressed as you form your strategies to get the vote out.

In every discussion about the roles of a society and its individual members, there is a common thread. In debates over social order, ethics, personal values, the rights of man, the conduct of government, public policy, the common good, or what it means to live a just life, there is an organizing force, a tension among four basic factors that underlie each such discussion. They are:

1) what individuals owe to themselves, that they may survive and thrive;
2) what individuals owe to the community or society in which they live;
3) what the community or society owes to its individual members; and
4) what the community or society owes to itself for its own survival and security.

These four factors are inescapable. Whether or not we choose to frame our discussion of public matters in deference to them, these are the fulcrum upon which the discussion turns. They direct and influence the outcome. They underlie the rules and the principles by which we live. And in discussing such issues, what we really debate is the interplay of these four imperatives — their relative importance, the extent to which they overlap, and where the lines are to be drawn among them.

The overlap, the tension among those four factors is highly important. It doesn't matter whether the immediate issue is voter participation, private morality, public welfare, national defense, education, land use, natural resources, health care reform, or disturbing the peace. It always comes down to where the lines are drawn, to who decides and how we decide. Those lines aren’t fixed, either: they bend, flex and move depending on circumstances and events. The horror of September 11 and its aftermath, for example, made them move a lot — and if you don’t vote, you don’t get any say about how that gets determined.

Letting others decide where the lines are drawn for you by default because you won’t vote affects not only you but everyone else who lives here. Even when you refuse to decide, to choose, you bear responsibility for your refusal and its effects — and whether you like it or not, you’re answerable to people like me, the ones who have to live here, too. That’s what it means to be part of a self-governing community. It isn’t just that the government owes you or you owe the government anything (like taxes). You owe your fellow citizens your interest, your voice, your participation, because none of us can do much alone. I’d love to fire the guy in the White House, for example, but I can’t do it by myself: others have to back me up by showing up at the polls.

Paradoxically, although I can’t do it alone, every individual vote matters, as the actual votes in Florida as recounted after the fact last time demonstrate. Had Al Gore insisted on a total state recount, he would have won, plain and simple — and the Supremes wouldn’t have handed Dubya the presidency on a silver platter, because the matter never would have reached that court. And we probably wouldn’t be in Iraq right now, and the national debt wouldn’t be more than double what it was when Reagan left office (which was way too high as it was), and so on. A whole slew of dominoes wouldn’t have fallen.

The great thinker Hillel alluded to the inseparability of the four factors and the enduring tension between them when he argued that individual welfare must not be defined too narrowly and that self-interest overcomes selfishness when it expands to include the welfare of others.

"If I am not for myself," Hillel reasoned, "who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? … And if not now, when?" Hillel's point was that in acting for others, we preserve our own rights and welfare. He was not alone in arguing it, and it is upon this idea that our own Constitution and Bill of Rights are based: we allow to all others what we would allow ourselves, lest we, too, lose our liberties.

In the best of worlds, public discussion of issues is based on principled argument rationally presented and conducted by well-informed, conscientious citizens. In the best of worlds, we start with general principles and dispute their application to specific cases. That is often precisely what makes decisions reached in this manner so enduring.

In the real world, however, discussion often is not logically structured or rationally argued, with little or no thought given to any principles on which arguments might be based. Individual citizens may not only be uninformed but may not feel any compelling need to be well informed — let alone feel embarrassed or guilty that they lack such responsibility, to themselves or to others.

In the real world, people often argue out of ignorance or fear. They ‘vent’ before they think and are increasingly encouraged to do so by others — from talk show hosts and so-called ‘reality’ shows to special interests, to self-styled populists and demagogues — as if informing oneself were unnecessary and speaking only from one's own limited experience were not only sufficient but valid and laudable. And they expect one to sympathize, if not applaud such ignorance.

And here’s a highly relevant but overlooked point: when we talk about what an individual owes to his community or society, that doesn’t just mean to the overarching entity or the government, though people often stop right there with that notion and don’t think further. What we really mean is not just the community as a whole or government, but the individuals that make it up — meaning, your neighbors. Fellow citizens in another state. Me, for example. And when you owe me and don’t discharge your responsibility to me, you can fully expect me to tell you about it. And I should.

Which is what I’m doing here. I expect you to do better, guys. I expect you to inform yourselves and go vote. Because you live here and are eligible to vote, those of you who are eligible owe me that, even if it isn’t (and shouldn’t be) enforceable by law. Particularly as it isn’t enforceable by law, only by conscience.

Worried that your vote won’t count, especially given the last election? It's a legitimate concern, but you can do something about that, too. Here’s your laundry list:

1 — Get yourself informed enough to vote sensibly and think before you vote. Don’t be ignorant, or you’ve wasted your vote, or worse, handed a vote to your own political opponents (and, possibly, the enemies of your own civil rights) and screwed us all. There are more than enough resources out there, like those on Yahoo News, for example, that will tell you about your elected officials, what legislation they've proposed or sponsored, how they've voted, and when they’ve shown up to vote on legislation, etc. Read, read, read, and use multiple sources, preferably independent ones (and yes, make it your business to find out who’s behind each source you read; you should know, for example, if the Rev. Moon or Rupert Murdoch or some other person or entity that can or does slant the news owns that source).

2 — Register to vote, then show up on election day.

3 — Join an organization like the League of Women Voters or MoveOn.org or Rock the Vote and register others, then organize to get other voters to the polls on election day, even if you have to volunteer to be a van driver.

4 — Worried about someone stealing the vote? Join a group of poll-watchers and be an observer on election day — but months before that, find out what mechanisms, paper or electronic ballots, are used for voting in your area and what back-ups, protections, legal remedies, etc., are provided, if any. If those means are particularly subject to foul play, errors, difficulty of use, and/or confusion, organize and lobby local government to change the mechanism used in time for the next election and publicize your efforts. Change is more likely to happen when the demand for it gets a public spotlight in the media and dogged follow-up from both you and the press.

5 — Let others know what you’re doing and get them involved, too. When you hear someone say he or she has never voted and doesn’t see the point, challenge that immediately — and do it every time, with every apathetic potential voter you meet. You never know when one of your arguments just might persuade friend, colleague, or stranger to do the right thing.

And while you’re at it, remind those persons that they owe me, too, not just you — and that I’ll be looking for an explanation from them when they fail to do the right thing (that’s one of the perks of writing op-ed: you get that bully pulpit to ask so many of your neighbors why they haven’t done what they should). Being challenged by our fellow citizens to do better is what any of us in a democracy can and should expect when there’s so much riding on our common welfare and on our future.