This year is set to be one of elections. As Time reports, "more voters than ever in history" will head to the polls as at least 64 countries (plus the European Union)—representing a combined population of about 49% of the people in the world—are meant to hold national elections.
Come election time, a single vote makes very little difference to the final outcome. To be sure, this is far more apparent in some electoral systems than others. In the United Kingdom’s first-past-the-post system, for example, once the winner of a given constituency is declared, the remaining votes have no more work to do. As a result, for anyone who lives in a so-called "safe seat" constituency then voting for any of the other parties is, largely, a waste of time.
But even in constituencies where there are genuine contests between different candidates belonging to different parties, and where one’s vote might still contribute to the presence of preferred candidates in electoral bodies, a single person voting or not voting is unlikely to make any substantive difference.
Nevertheless, we do participate. We might do this out of a sense of reciprocal obligation. We understand that if everyone decided to withdraw their participation, the results would be, potentially, calamitous, so we assume the relatively small burdens that accompany the act of voting.
Voting, then, is a largely expressive act. We express a commitment to the democratic process, even as this might mean we often times must "hold our nose" and vote for parties about which we are ambivalent. We might wish to cast plagues on all the available houses and their inhabitants, but more plague on this house than that.
As western politicians and governments line up to both double down on their support for what others argue — with substantial evidence — is Israel’s genocide in Gaza and withdraw their funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) for Palestinian refugees in the Near East, it is important to reflect on what this means for the legitimacy of our own democratic systems.
Just what do these politicians want those members of western electorates who are deeply concerned with the annihilation of Palestinians to do with their votes?
Across the western world, the differences between governing and opposition parties — where there are any — are too slim to be called substantive. Such differences are to be found in the tonnage of the bombs being dropped, the amount of hand-wringing that is done or doubt that is expressed about the number of civilian deaths. They are differences in the volume of the whispers being spoken into the ears of Israeli officials that maybe they rein in the genocidal rhetoric if not the activity.
How hard are we being asked to pinch our noses when we come, at some point, to put a cross in the ballot box for one party of genocide as opposed to another? How can anyone who is convinced that their governments have been aiding and abetting the systematic destruction of an entire people possibly will themselves to assume even the small burdens of a vote?
This might seem, to some, an altogether narcissistic approach to politics, which is always a choice between lesser evils. A refusal to vote is, from this perspective, akin to the view that though evil might come into the world, it will not be through me. Genocide notwithstanding (!) there are substantive differences between, for example, the Democratic platform and the Republican platform on basic constitutional and domestic issues.
But either the US government is aiding and abetting genocide, or it is not. If it is, it is not at all clear that its (marginally) more progressive domestic policies are reason enough for anyone to express any amount of support for them.
There are some things that just do not put enough on the scales. Just as we would not think the vegetarianism of a mass murderer excuses his crimes, nor should a few additional percentage points of taxation on the super-rich, or a slightly more robust commitment to liberal democratic norms make much difference.
When a single person’s voting makes so little difference to the outcome of an election, when it is largely the expression of a willingness to engage in a flawed democratic process, it makes perfect moral sense for people to refuse to do the expressive work that such voting entails and instead decide to withdraw from an electoral process.
If Trump does get into power this year, I will not blame those members of the electorate who decided to stay home. I will blame those who supported a genocide.
- Dr David Jenkins is a lecturer in political theory at the University of Otago.
