Since Monday was the last day you could register to vote in the November election I thought I’d better take time out from the important work of lulling students to sleep to exhort them to get their names on the rolls.
I quizzed them: What’s on the ballot? No one spoke. I mentioned the race for the U.S. Senate seat long occupied by Snarlin’ Arlen Specter. Who’s running? Silence.
So then I explained how control of the Senate is hanging in the balance. If you want to help President Obama turn this mighty nation into the United States of Kenya in the next two years, I said, you should consider voting for Democrat Joe Sestak. If you want to bring back those fabulous Bush-Rove years, you should consider voting for Republican Pat Toomey.
(Conservative critics of the liberal stranglehold on American universities will note that I did not tell my captive audience how to vote, only that they should. Political junkies will note that I did not invoke the pundits who argue that Obama will get more cooperation from Republican majorities in Congress than he got from Republican minorities because the GOP won’t be able to get away with blaming the Democrats for ruining the country anymore.)
This is not another one of my diatribes about know-nothing college students, by the way. If anything, these kids’ non-engagement in politics is somewhat more understandable than the non-engagement of older voters because the kids don’t yet feel like stakeholders in the system. They should, of course, but that’s why it’s up to us, their elders, to explain what’s at stake. Care about jobs, taxes, the deficit, the environment, education, energy policy? Better vote.
And yet, as is well known, millions of Americans do not vote, especially in so-called off-year elections. Typically, turnout drops about 20 percentage points when the presidency isn’t on the line. And even during presidential years the numbers are pretty pathetic.
In 2008, for example, the 62 percent turnout of eligible voters was considered to be on the high side. That’s 62 percent of 213 million, which works out to about 90 million eligible Americans who couldn’t be bothered or didn’t think it mattered.
In 2006, about 40 percent of eligible voters cast ballots: 208 million people could have voted; 122 million didn’t. Nothing much on the ballot that year – Pennsylvanians re-elected Gov. Ed Rendell and retired Sen. Rick Santorum (It was not a good year to belong to the same political party as George W. Bush.) Off-year, indeed.
There are two ways to look at low voter turnouts. The obvious one is to see it as a sign of voter disaffection. This is the Tweedledum-Tweedledee view: the idea that the system is so corrupt that it doesn’t matter whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge; either way, the fat cats get fatter and the little guy gets screwed.
The rosier view is that in a big-picture sense America works so well that we’re probably still going to have our flat-screen TVs and our iPods, not to mention our meat and potatoes (or tofu and broccoli) no matter how hard the lobbyists and politicians try to screw things up. In other words, the triumph of corporate capitalism affords us the luxury of tuning out.
Both views are somewhat true and somewhat false. Yes, the system is corrupted by money. But there continue to be significant ideological differences between the two parties. And yes, America works pretty well — as long as we ignore the plight of the underclass and the possibility that we ourselves are only a layoff away from tumbling into the underclass. And then there’s the future to worry about it – or is that not our problem?
The challenge, when it comes to political engagement, is convincing people that in a nation of 213 million eligible voters and a system awash in corporate influence-buying, their one little vote and their one little voice matter.
This is where the categorical imperative comes in handy. You remember the categorical imperative from Phil 101? OK, maybe you don’t. “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law,” Immanuel Kant said.
Translation: When you think about not voting or not making common cause with those who would voice their displeasure with the actions of this or that powerful institution, imagine everyone making the same decision to stay on the sidelines. How well do things work then?
Way worse, is the answer. So vote, squawk, march. But first, know what you’re voting, squawking or marching about. Part of the reason we need a turnout of informed voters this November is that it looks like there is going to be a larger-than-usual turnout of uninformed voters.
