This week I got to have a great conversation about politics with a young man who just graduated from college this past May. He was concerned about casting his vote, not feeling enthusiastic about either major party candidate, but also knowing that the stakes for this election were high. I got to talk through a few things with him, and he felt greatly encouraged and ready to vote. Here are a few pieces of wisdom that I shared yesterday, and I hope they may be of some use to others.
- While this election is important, it will not solve America’s problems (however you define those). If Joe Biden is elected president, there will still be COVID-19, racism, police brutality, corporate greed, etc. And if Donald Trump is re-elected, there will still be abortion, “cancel culture”, “fake news”, affordable housing projects in the suburbs, etc. This is not to say a president has no power, of course they do (particularly in terms of things like executive orders, foreign policy, and in deciding how many refugees to accept each year). But a lot of these other issues are incredibly wide-spread, systemic, and deeply engrained at the local level, many of them going back hundreds of years. To think that a single vote in a single national election would somehow solve all these issues betrays a severe lack of knowledge about how America works. Which brings me to #2.
- If the only political action you take is to vote every 4 years, you’re doing it wrong. Some people hate “politics” and treat it as a dirty word, but in reality its definition is simply this: “Politics (Greek: politiká, ‘affairs of the cities’) is the activities associated with making decisions in groups, such as the distribution of resources or status.” Politics is thus the outworking on a bigger scale the same type of decisions that we make every day on an individual level: questions about right and wrong, spending money, deciding what behaviors to tolerate or not, etc. If you are a Christian, you are required to “love your neighbor as ourself” and to “seek the shalom/peace/welfare of the city” in which we find ourselves (Jeremiah 29). That means political engagement is not supposed to be optional or occasional–it goes far beyond just casting a ballot! Each of us who claims to follow Jesus is commanded to care about issues that affect our communities and neighbors (rather than solely focusing on our own self-interest). As an example, for a person who is passionate about poverty, or abortion, or immigration, that person should not only be addressing those issues in a national election–there are tons of steps that person can take in their daily, local life to be a part of alleviating them. Demonstrations, protests, advocacy, showing up for school board meetings–the list goes on and on. All of these are political actions where you can arguably have a bigger impact than in a national election.
- If you choose to be a single-issue voter, you’ve chosen to cede your ability to effectively pressure/encourage candidates on other issues. Once you indicate that you’re a single-issue voter on a certain issue, it means that the politician you’re voting for no longer has to do anything to win your support on any other issue! For example, if your only issue is “abortion“, it means that you don’t care if your politician lies, cheats, steals, kills, or passes awful laws on any other issue, so long as that person claims to share your views on abortion. This eliminates your ability to have bargaining power to move a politician on other issues–the politician knows at the end of the day you’re in his control because you’re a single-issue voter. To avoid that, you’ll want to practice tip #4.
- Even if your candidate wins, you need to still hold them accountable. Many progressives fear that if Joe Biden is elected and Donald Trump leaves the White House, a lot of momentum for antiracist and antipoverty initiatives will disappear. I could imagine the same would be true for conservatives if Trump wins–after all, as a second-term lame duck President who can’t be re-elected, what incentive would Trump have to work hard on conservative issues in a second term? Thus it is important that no matter who wins this November, you keep the pressure high to move forward on the issues you care about.
- I really hope that this election is a massive landslide. It is scary to think that in a close election, one of the candidates (especially Trump, though I could imagine other scenarios too) could declare a pre-mature victory, and then mobilize his supporters to intimidate vote counters, mail workers, or others who are still working to count the remaining votes. [Just earlier this week, Donald Trump said that he hopes the Supreme Court will ban any votes from being counted after November 3rd–which is insane, because where I live in Pennsylvania, Cumberland County, announced they won’t even start counting mail-in ballots until November 4th! Does that mean that all those votes–from soldiers overseas and elderly people stuck at home–will be thrown out? Maybe! It is entirely possible that with a conservative Supreme Court and all the forces of the presidency at his command, Donald Trump can seriously mess with the margins of the votes. Voter suppression is an American tradition, and it’s only increased in recent years.] Perhaps even worse yet, is the threat of violence after the election. Far-right militia groups have been agitating for a civil war for decades now, and many of them operate throughout Pennsylvania and many others states. What happens if they think that the election was stolen from them? (One might argue that far-left groups might react similarly to a Trump win, but in my experience leftists don’t own AR-15s). My only hope is that despite the voter suppression, there’s a clear and massive winner on November 3rd that forces the other side to concede defeat and decide not to initiate violence.
- If Trump does lose in a landslide, his presidency will have proven to be a misguided Faustian bargain for Republicans. Donald Trump has had a number of moderate policy wins for Republicans over the past four years, but I think any Republican could have achieved them–without inciting the left’s fury as much as Trump has. I think that the few major policy victories that Trump has won are not worth the cost that Republicans will pay going forward. If the polls are correct, even states like Texas and Georgia are threatening to turn blue–indicating that Trump has tarnished the Republican brand, perhaps for a generation. [Moreover 2020 is the worst possible year for Republicans to lose in a landslide, because there will be redistricting happening in the wake of the Census. If Dems sweep nationally, they will be able to remake congressional districts to undo Republican gerrymandering and perhaps even incorporate some gerrymandering of their own – which is what Republicans did in 2010 after they swept the midterms during the last Census.] In contrast, imagine a different world for Republicans right now if Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, or even Jeb Bush had become the Republican nominee in 2016. Best case scenario–they beat Hillary, pass the same corporate tax cuts and get the same Supreme Court justices, but without triggering the left so much as to create a massive pro-Democrat backlash. Worst case scenario, Hillary would have won in 2016, but now would be in the same rough position that Trump is in now–facing a potentially historic loss as an incumbent in a redistricting year. All that said, I think that embracing Trump was a strategic mistake for Republicans, as he has been a relatively ineffective politician compared to what could have been achieved, especially when you consider he controlled all 3 branches of government for the first half of his term.
- Do you want your vote to matter? Move to a swing state–it’s so fun being the center of attention! Right now according to election website fivethirtyeight.com, Pennsylvania is the state most likely to decide the election due to the vagaries of the Electoral College. As such there are so many texts, calls, campaign rallies, and promises being made to Pennsylvanians right now. It’s overwhelming but I like it! In contrast, imagine if you are a conservative living on the East Coast or West Coast, or a liberal living in the Deep South–not only does your vote not matter, but no one cares about your issues because you don’t live in a swing state! Of course, if we somehow were to eliminate the Electoral College and elect people based on the popular vote, then presidential candidates would start to care about conservatives in upstate New York, or about liberals in southern Alabama. But until then, if you want your vote to matter, you should consider relocating to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Arizona or one of the other swing states. And that brings me to my final point.
- Vote for who you want. There’s a lot of pressure from both sides of the political spectrum to vote for either Trump or Biden, so as not to “waste one’s vote.” And there is a certain level of truth to that, especially in a swing state. The reality is is that until America moves away from a first-past the post, winner-takes-all electoral system to something like other countries have (such as a parliamentary system), we will always be stuck with two parties. It’s like a game of chess –in chess the rules are designed for only two players, there’s no way for a third player to play/win unless you change the rules. This article has some great suggestions for how to alter American elections to enable more parties to bloom, but it’s hard to imagine either major party agreeing to any of these changes…. Now, all that said though, if you refuse to vote for Biden or Trump I believe you have a few options. You can leave the choice of President blank and just vote for the local/state races. You can vote third-party, or write someone in. Recall from my Point #2 that there are so many other ways to make change in this world besides just one vote. If your conscience does not allow you to choose one of the two major candidates, then don’t feel like you absolutely have to. Although that reminds me of a line in the TV show 30 Rock:
Anyway, happy Election Day–see you on the other side!