{"id":8056,"date":"2015-05-12T06:38:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T11:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8056"},"modified":"2015-05-12T06:38:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T11:38:00","slug":"to-those-who-believe-in-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8056","title":{"rendered":"To Those Who Believe in Voting"},"content":{"rendered":"

To Those Who Believe in Voting<\/a><\/h3>\n
Thoughts on the Least Important Decision People Make Every Four Years<\/strong><\/div>\n

One morning years ago, as I entered the classroom for\u00a0a course I taught on U.S. history, I found the students engaged in a discussion of elections. One of them, whom I knew to be a supporter of \u201cprogressive\u201d causes and who had previously complained about student apathy, asked me in a despairing tone, \u201cWhy don\u2019t people vote?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I replied. \u00a0\u201cTo me, the more interesting question is, Why do they?\u201d<\/p>\n

Why do people vote? The individual voter does not choose the winner of the election; she chooses which lever to pull or which box to check on a piece of paper. Yet some people get angry at me and call me a shirker when I tell them I don\u2019t vote. If you don\u2019t vote, they tell me, you have no\u00a0right to complain.<\/p>\n

Why not, I ask. Where is that written?<\/p>\n

Some point out that in the past people died for the right to vote.<\/p>\n

That is true, I respond, but beside the point: people also died for the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies, but no one calls abortion a public duty.<\/p>\n

Clearly, something is operating here besides logic.<\/p>\n

The only explanation I can come up with is that people vote for the same reason they cheer or do the wave at an athletic competition\u2014it makes them feel part of a community. Now, I respect the desire for community. In the good old Hew Hess of Hay, \u201ccitizens\u201d choose people to\u00a0represent them. To vote is to participate in a community ritual. It begins in grade school, when children elect who among them will get to clean the blackboards.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Those Who Believe in Voting Thoughts on the Least Important Decision People Make Every Four Years One morning years ago, as I entered the classroom for\u00a0a course I taught on U.S. history, I found the students engaged in a discussion of elections. One of them, whom I knew to be a supporter of \u201cprogressive\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[204,5378,5376,5377,858],"class_list":["post-8056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-democracy","tag-elected-representatives","tag-election","tag-representation","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8057,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8056\/revisions\/8057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}