Why I Vote

Like, that's just my opinion man

Last week my coworker casually told me that they should register to vote, but that there was no rush because there was no one worthy of that vote, especially at the national level. I said nothing, because you know, workplace, but it got me thinking. I could write a longwinded piece about how hard won the vote was and also how dare you. I could with equal gusto write that for much of America your vote is essentially worthless, either gerrymandered away or awash in a sea of opposing partisans. Back and forth we could go, weighing duty vs mathematical futility. How dare you not vote, vs why should I vote in a bent system?

I don’t feel like doing that. What I will do is explain why I vote. I vote because I am bound to the system.

I think most of us have a relation that knows way too much about WW2, our victories, our noble defeats. Or maybe they are more of a moon landing girlie, or just love hot dogs on the 4^th of July. People like celebrating the triumphs of the civilization they feel a part of. Did they personally land on Omaha beach, or the Sea of Tranquility? Probably not. I have such family and I have rolled my eyes at their fandom, but they are instinctively grasping a universal truth, albeit only partially.

A civilization is a tapestry, weaved together by trillions of invisible choices and historical events both noble and vile. You can’t escape it. It’s the plane on which you exist and the threads that came before shape the patterns to come. You can’t opt out because no matter where you turn, you have benefited from, or were tormented by, the tapestry in some way. The uncle that celebrates Iwo Jima, owns the Japanese internment in equal measure and so do I.

I vote because to not vote is to pretend that I can be a spectator. My choices may be tiny and constrained, but if I abstain, a choice is still made, and I will own that choice as much as if I had voted for it because I can’t be severed from the system. Even if I left tomorrow in noble protest, I still will have been educated and raised in the bloody PAX my civilization bought me. As long as I live, that will be in my bones and all I would have done by leaving is forfeit my tiny chance to change the tapestry.

Which brings me back to my coworker. What still echoes in my head is the phrase “deserves my vote”. It’s hard to argue with that. I wish that I could summon a politician worthy of the people I’m lucky enough to share space with. Such creatures are rare and, in the meantime, the tapestry continues and I won’t stop making my small incremental attempts at improvement. I can’t afford to wait for a master weaver to make it all better. So I vote.