The Necessity of Voting: A Personal Addendum

On Tuesday, October 13th, at 7 a.m., early voting for the 2020 General Election started in Texas. Going by the trend of previous elections, I assumed showing up at 7:30 a.m. would be enough to ensure a quick, no fuss, in-and-out through the process. I was very wrong about this, a fact I found out as I drove through the parking lot of the local Hotel hosting the polls. About the only thing I managed to do that morning was navigate around crowds of people hurrying to join the already sizeable line that had formed from the sidewalk, all the way leading up to the doors of the designated voting polls. Not to be dismayed, I thought there was a chance that it was a case of numerous people having the same bright idea of trying to fulfill their civic duty as soon as the doors opened to allow them to do so.

I reasoned that perhaps as the day went one, the crowd would become less daunting to face. With that in mind, I returned to the same place later that afternoon, thinking an hour long lunch break ought to be enough for me to run through the process. The scene I returned to at 2 p.m. was a somewhat shorter line of people, yes, but not by very much. But I had 60 minutes, and even if I stood there for 45 of them, it would still be worthwhile to have the act behind me. The problem was that whatever the afternoon line lacked in headcount of responsible citizens compared to its dawn-hour counterpart, it certainly made up in its overall lack of forward mobility (as if mockingly striving to serve as a metaphor for the socioeconomic reality of America’s working class).

Suffice to say, I did not vote on the 13th, because I underestimated the rise in political awareness experienced by my fellow Americans over the course of the last four years. Hence, I ventured out again the next day, determined to match this dedication in turn. Waking up at 5 o’clock in the morning., and heading out the door no later than 5:30 a.m., I made it in line just before 6, and before the first rays of sunlight peaked through the horizon. I armed myself with all the essentials: knapsack, a bottle of water, a Neil Gaiman book for company, and a pair of headphones in case someone around me decided to hold a private conversation just enough decibel units too loud to render my reading efforts moot during the hour long wait to the polls.

When the doors opened I was seventh in line, and got to cast my ballot within 12 minutes of entering. On my way back to my car I felt a bit groggy from sleep deprivation, but was reassured about my decision to arrive early when I saw the wait line to the doors had again stretched out to meet the 100 persons mark, same as it had the day prior. All in all, it was a worthwhile effort, and one I hope many of us managed to endure safely to its completion, and will continue to do so for the remainder of the election cycle, for the sake of enforcing the integrity of our electoral process.

The reason why I felt the need to go into so much detail about my voting efforts here, is that almost five years ago, two articles were published on KR titled The Value of Voting? and Is Voting a Civil Duty? in which challenges were made to the de facto assertion that voting is an essential duty, and that it is intellectually lazy to fall back on the trope that those who abstain from participating in the process are exhibiting a personal flaw. The articles also clearly state that they are not attempts to discourage voter participation, but are meant to encourage the politically active among the populace to employ more empathetic strategies when trying to persuade the politically disgruntled and apathetic in our midst to become involved in the electoral process.

Within the context that they were written, the arguments in the articles are valid for their intended purposes, however, in light of the repeated attempts at voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement via online commentary meant to do nothing else but create obfuscation and confusion among the voting public, it is paramount to not allow one’s words to aid or be hijacked by bad faith actors looking to use them to stealthily signal boost their own toxic agendas.

Sad as it may be to accept, the current political climate is not one that allows for nuanced thought experiments that can just exist unhindered in a vacuum, because political realities and their consequences do not exist in such vacuums. Now, more than ever, effort needs to be exercised at distilling whether self-professed comments looking at “just wanting to have the difficult conversations” are genuine calls for intellectual rigor, or sly trolling attempt looking to smuggle through customs debunked and historically bankrupt ideologies, under the guise of harmless memes. And just as partaking in the electoral process is a worthwhile effort, so is clarifying one’s position to eliminate their potential to serve the needs of those one finds abhorrent.