Don't Vote. Stay Home.

If you can be convinced of this advice, you probably should follow it.

If you cannot name the three branches of government and explain how power is divided between state and federal governments, as outlined in the supreme governing document of the land, please stay home.

If you think voting is too inconvenient and needs to be made easier, please stay home.

Some barriers exist to ensure the commitment of those who stand in front of them.

Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, so justice demands people have a right to vote for the representatives who comprise the government. But in order for the consent to be meaningful, it must be an informed consent.

If you go to a doctor, he may recommend a specific treatment or medicine. He usually tells you how the medicine will help and what the side effects are. That way you can weigh the risks and rewards on your own and decide if the treatment is worth the price you will pay (both financially and in terms of the effects).

If the doctor misleads you about those effects, the doctor is liable for damages that arise out of those effects.

However, if you've been warned of the side-effects or can be reasonably expected to know them, you and you alone are morally responsible for any damages that occur on the basis of those side-effects.

Don't go crying to mommy.

Don't curse the doctor.

Don't protest outside of the pharmaceutical company.

Don't go whining to the courts.

Sure, you may sue and you may win if you get a jury naive or corrupt enough. But winning doesn't make you right.

Eternal vigilance, not ignorance, is the price of liberty. So if you haven't taken the time to ensure your consent is informed, don't vote. Stay home.

Just as you would neither trust nor offer the uninformed to decide on a treatment for your cancer, you should neither trust nor provide an uninformed vote that affects the health and prosperity of everyone else. - Cam Beck

Comments

[Sean Scogin]

"Eternal vigilance, not ignorance, is the price of liberty."

That quote made my day. Hat tip to you, good sir.

[Polar Bear]

Well said, Cam!

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)

[Michael E. Rubin, Blog Council]

Hear hear, Cam. I do agree with everything you said.

One idea whose time has come, though, is the thought that Election Day ought to be moved to the weekend or declared a federal holiday. There are some people whose work and day care schedule does preclude them from being able to get from one place to the next easily. People will make it a priority to vote in general elections, but having it a holiday would boost participation in mid-terms and other elections as well.

There are other countries that do this and participation is always above 90%.

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312-932-9000 / michael@blogcouncil.org / twitter: merubin
I am a Blog Council employee and this is my personal opinion.

[Cam Beck]

Hi Michael -
Thanks for your input. I would not make election day a national holiday, though. Voting isn't the ultimate responsibility, it's the culmination of the ultimate responsibility, which is to acquire the level of knowledge and expertise that make the act of voting meaningful.

Were voting made too easy (or even compulsory, as some have suggested), then a greater number of people would not view the day with sufficient gravity, and would tend to treat the responsibility as trivial.