By Darren Mcvey
Of all the foolish axioms of American political discourse, perhaps the most foolish is “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain.” The ignorance of this statement is painful on several levels.
Legally, it is clear in the constitution that one’s first amendment rights of free speech, petition and assembly are not dependent on one’s voting habits.
Practically, a prohibition on speaking out based on negligence in suffrage excludes important voices.
By the fools’ reasoning, the following groups and individuals are historically excluded from public discourse: all women until 1920, practically most African Americans until the Civil Rights Act and anyone else who chose not to vote. This list includes Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass and Zachary Taylor. Not to belabor the point, but America would be much different if not for the voices of voluntary and involuntary non-voters.
More damaging than the notion of free speech being dependent on voting is the idea that every American adult is under some obligation to vote.
I, for one, am not voting in this election. My home sits in the middle of a most conservative district in a most conservative state and I am far away from my home this semester. Voting by absentee ballot is not worth the effort since the results of all races I care about are not in question.
Some who have read my columns may agree that I should not be given a voice in The Louisville Cardinal, but I doubt their reasoning is because I am not voting.
Much more than being fired from this newspaper, many who hear I am not voting suggest measures of punishment that range from the silent treatment to water boarding to execution by disembowelment. This intolerance of inaction is not only annoying parties like myself, but damaging to the country’s political process.
Through efforts like Rock the Vote, Declare Yourself and other campaigns involving celebrities quilting Americans into voting, many people who should stay nine miles away from all voting booths feel obligated to vote and are self-satisfied by their doing so.
To the contrary, some individuals should be discouraged from voting.
People who should never ever vote include anyone who believes that the Holocaust, the moon landing, or Elvis’ death were staged.
No one should be legally disenfranchised, but some people only hurt the country by pulling the lever on Election Day.
The Founding Fathers realized this and, therefore, implemented tight restriction on suffrage. In our young nation, only white, male, property owners were allowed to vote. While restrictions on voting based on race, sex and religion are morally wrong, the notion that voting is a very serious right only to be exercised by those responsible enough to exercise it wisely is one we should readopt today.
The conventional wisdom is that property requirements, poll taxes and literacy tests were tools of the white man to oppress the underclass, these methods were actually rooted in an attempt, albeit sometimes heavy-handed, to weed out those that were not fit to vote.
I am not proposing laws, taxes, or tests aimed at disenfranchising any Americans. I am simply asking my fellow Americans to stop insisting that everyone vote. And leave alone our God-given right to complaining.
