No voting means No representation: What is Political Will?

I recently had several claim that voting for the lesser of two evils is still evil, and that they can’t vote for anyone who would send drone strikes over to another country.   This argument on its face sounds logical and moral, but in case you aren’t aware everything you do is a lesser of two evils, nothing you ever do is perfect.    Giving canned vegetables to a poor person may involve buying that can from a company that uses poor labor practices that help keep people poor, that uses machines and your cell phone running on rare earth metals that fund child-soldier militia groups, and who burn tons of carbon and fight against carbon and green energy practices.  Nothing you do is perfect it is all a lesser evil.

Also if you can’t vote for people who make international policy then you are at least voting for state political leaders right?  People who can’t send soldiers to their deaths, but will be in the federal political system later on?  No?  Oh cause they are all dirty and in the pockets of big business.

Lately I have been working with a local non-partisan activism group attempting to change our election system to open up the elections to third parties, and I have been learning a lot from some veteran political organizers as to strategies for policy changes and spreading campaigns.   The fact that you voted is actually open to the public and the state keeps address, and phone numbers and some other open access data as if you registered to vote and if you actually voted.

When a candidate wants to run, if they want any chance of winning the very first thing they have to do in this data driven age is to take all of that information and crunch the numbers and find out what is important in that area via other polling data such as gallup.  Then they craft their promises and campaign issues based on what is important to the people in that area based on demographic data.  However what decides that is based on a weighted system of which demographics of people voted.  A political candidate cares first about a voter, second about a person who registered to vote but didn’t and lastly non-voters.  Its not that they don’t care about those people that sounds just wrong, but if a politician commits too many resources to the non-voting group, or to an issue that majority of voters don’t care that much about, they will lose, that is the hard truth.  Everything in politics comes down to math and votes.

Now just imagine if you have one group that is for say going to war with say New Zealand, and one that is completely opposed to war.   You could have an amazing candidate who thinks that it’s truly a stupid idea to go to war with New Zealand, and a terrible candidate that has all sorts of corrupt ties and skeletons in their closet.  If the anti-war people don’t go to the polls because they dislike some of that anti-war candidates ideas, we will go to war with New Zealand.   Now if a moderate can find ideas that appeal to both sides of the divide but has things they really care about like being anti-war, they can win even without the anti-war.   This drives the fickle anti-war candidates to view this person as a sellout and will be even less likely to vote.   If the all the voters at some point are for the war, the candidate will have no choice but to change their position and go or lose their job.

Political will is all a numbers game, if a person votes their opinion adds a tiny bit to the political scale because there is such a large number of people with competing ideas.  If you don’t vote you could have the noblest of ideas but on the political stage your opinion means jack squat.  To drive this home, Bill Maher recently did a closing Monologue discussing the difference between the benefits elderly people get, and the benefits young people get.  Elderly people get an average of $26K from the government yearly while young people and children get an average of $3K per year.  Why? Because elderly people vote.

Social security and medicare for the elderly are third rail issues that will lose votes at a ridiculously fast rate.   Food stamps, health care, social security, education and jobs for young people are however easy pickings for a candidate because young people on average vote much less than the elderly.   While the elderly are living in the so called socialist lap of luxury from the government, polls show the majority fear socialism so they ensure young people can’t have the same safety net they so enjoy.

On average polls show that the majority of elderly population who votes is more likely to be against a minority or female candidate, be opposed to same-sex marriage, be ok with a war, be against legalizing marijuana, and care very little all about net neutrality and only a little more about climate change.   These are all issues that the majority of the younger generation has completely opposite priorities on.  However when asked about legalizing marijuana Obama was really smirkingly dismissive about it, not because he was against it, but because the numbers weren’t there for him to spend the time and energy to do anything about it.    Political will only exists when voters, not citizens care about an issue.   Even if you feel like the person you are voting for is a lesser of two evils, the next election they will be much more likely to listen to and eager to please your demographic, and they couldn’t care less about your issue if you didn’t vote. Why? Because the people running who do care got eliminated from politics through natural selection.

So in reality, voting for the lesser of two evils may feel dirty at first, but after the election it will change the setup for the next election.  If you want to change a party, vote in that primary.  If you think both parties are hopeless, vote third party, but the fact that you voted will be noted when the next election roles around.  That is exercising your political will