How All This Works


Wherein Our Heroine Holds Her Nose And Reviews Voting.

Occasionally, I hear some disaffected type say something like, "I'm going to use my vote to send a message." It sounds terribly jaded, doesn't it? Can't you just feel the world-weary sigh gusting past your ear? The problem is, it's also abysmally stupid. It's sort of like saying, "I'm going to use that hammer to apply my mascara." It's your prerogative, but it isn't the right use for the tool and it isn't going to do you an iota of good.

Last time I checked, nobody was wringing their hands over the write-in votes for Mickey Mouse. Similarly, that "message" Ralph Nader sent to Washington a few years ago? That would be: there are more than a few people who are willing to treat a Constitutional right like it's a bit of funky performance art.

A vote is an expression of preference, generally a binary one. Another bit of lunacy applied to voting is, "I don't like either party so I'm going to vote for [fill in something useless here]." This reminds me greatly of a child offered chocolate or vanilla ice cream who demands strawberry.

"We don't have strawberry," Reasonable Adult responds.

"WANT strawberry!" Many tears and tantrums later, still no strawberry. Wanting it isn't going to make it appear. You can vote for Donald Duck in every local, state and federal election. He's still not going to be your representative.

The main problem with using a vote to send a message is this: you are liable to be misinterpreted. Voters for Nader may have been saying, "I think the political system stinks." They may have been saying, "Both major party options are nauseous." They may even have wanted Ralph Nader to be president. Stranger things have happened. Only the last option is what the system is for, though. And when you have more than a few options as to how to interpret something, people are likely to do one of two things: assume it's the most likely one, or pick the one that suits their purposes best. If you don't like the current choices for President and you don't agree with their policies or ways of thinking, it's highly likely that they will take your ambiguous "message" and infer something you find abhorrent.

At the end of the day, there are really only two major messages politicians get out of votes: either "I won" or "I lost." Anything else is just noise.

Posted: Wednesday - May 26, 2004 at 07:39 AM         | |


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