Uncommon (Vote) Casting

The party line in American politics these days does not come down between Democrats, Republicans and Greens, but between voters and non-voters.

Eligible voter participation in presidential elections fell below half for the first time, to 49 percent in the 1996 race, according to the non-partisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate (CSAE). And these same statistics reveal the emerging participation of a voting class: distinguishable ethnically, regionally and socioeconomically from the non-voters to a degree that makes difference between voting Democrats and Republicans nearly indistinguishable.

Things show little sign of changing this fall. Eligible voter turnout has been in steady decline since a peak of 63 percent in 1960, with the largest losses coming from minority and low-income groups and young people. At the time, this statistic produced a flurry of articles from activists, economists and naysayers, jockeying to correctly diagnose the apathy of the American public.

Who cares if the numbers of the Voting Party shrink? There is little reason to think it would significantly affect the actual result of either party's campaign. When the candidacy of a major party is decided by 5 to 8 percent of the population--as it was in this year's primaries--it's that much easier for career politicians to assemble the critical mass necessary for victory (for example, the secret message in the source code at www.gore200.com).

The tremendous danger of this position is that the importance of voting becomes equated entirely with its effect on the election's results. My rebuttal rests on two points:

(1) Voting in a presidential election is a critically important act of civic participation for all eligible voters, but hardly because of its effect on the race results. After all, the outcome of an election with 100 percent turnout is statistically the same as an election decided by randomly choosing one vote from the population.

(2) Ritual participation of the people in government is the single distinguishing factor of democracy. The social, fiscal and environmental policies of the U.S. could be radically improved on a standard scale by benign dictatorship; if we continue to tolerate the system as is, it must be out of faith in process as much as in achievement.

To this end, some remarks on two major myths circulating among the eligible-but-not-voting people I know:

a. "I would vote, but there's no difference between the candidates." Up to 40 percent of young people feel there is no major difference between the candidates, according to a CSAE survey released Sept. 27. When a highly heterogenous population produces nearly indistinguishable candidates, the hegemony of the Voting Party is clear. Not voting makes little sense as an act of protest.

b. "I would vote, but I don't know enough to vote responsibly." Gallup reports that slightly more than one-third of Americans claimed they had given "a great deal of thought" to the presidential campaign, compared with 42 and 52 percent at comparable times in 1996 and 1992, respectively.

How much do you need to know to vote responsibly? Just enough to surpass the irresponsibility of not voting. And perhaps, if you expect to live in America after graduation, a bit more.

A democracy is not characterized by its forward-thinking policy, its welfare rights or its ability to speak for the people. Popular government is marked by struggle, bureaucracy, checks-and-balances and endless debate, all of which threaten to engulf the isolated fictions of real community progress.

There are many benign dictators who could make America an abstractly "happier" place--and do so on a time scale our legislature couldn't begin to imagine. One cannot look around the world and guess which countries are "free" simply from their recent policy choices.

Instead, the single factor which distinguishes democracy is the meaningful participation of citizens.

Most of us have little problem with aristocracy, benevolent or otherwise. Many of you will spend next year in the corporate and academic worlds, both aristocracies of varying degrees. Do not, in your spirals up or down towards money or fame or angst, forget the importance of the ritual gesture.

If democracy means anything to you--vicariously, intellectually, irrationally--you will know that the purpose of voting is never, and has never been, simply to elect.

Voting is participation, and as such is the soul of democracy. It exposes, in its almost pure symbolism, the difference between ends and means. Ends--the candidate chosen--are at best locally determined benchmarks. Means--the way the choice is made--inform not simply the cost of change but the entire range of what we as a society consider possible.

Maryanthe E. Malliaris '01 is a mathematics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.