'Nothing' is Everything for Unlikely Voters
"If I had engaged in politics I should have perished long ago." - Socrates
When Socrates went on trial for impiety, Plato argued that this public spectacle resembled a doctor being prosecuted by a pastry chef before a children’s jury.
After his dear friend and mentor was executed via hemlock, Plato was quick to identify Greek democracy as the cause of death. He predicted that this radical concept of government would widen the gap between rich and poor, plaguing innocent nations with demagoguery and dictatorship.
Plato had no faith in the democracy blueprinted by the Greeks in the 5th century. He pointed out the hypocrisy of excluding women and slaves from the electorate. The better alternative would be putting states in the hands of unelected philosopher-kings, known as Guardians. After 50 years of philosophical education, they would qualify to rule the uneducated masses.
Countries the world over have long struggled — while paying lip service to democratic idealism — to adapt the Greek model to contemporary government. Many centuries later, during Queen Victoria’s 63-year reign, British women were not allowed to vote, own property or have bank accounts. Married women were legally the property of their husbands. Divorce led to their financial devastation. After the American Revolution it took almost two centuries to effectively guarantee the voting rights of racial minorities.
Free and fair elections are the heart of democracies — and yet roughly 80 million Americans of voting age did not cast a Presidential ballot in 2020. Asked by a Medill/National Public Radio survey team what would motivate them to go to the polls in 2024 and beyond, the top response was nothing.
Today American democracy is threatened perhaps more than anything else by nonvoters. In their absence, our two major parties seldom find common ground, even on “kitchen table” issues. This impasse benefits special interests who generously donate to opposing sides. No matter who wins at the polls, high-tech monopolies, the pharmaceutical, transportation, utilities, communications and weapons industries come out on top at the expense of the rest of us.
From poorly regulated social media giants to semiautomatic weapons manufacturers, these companies set the political agenda in Washington and state capitals. When things don’t go their way with legislators or executives, they can fall back on seemingly endless legal battles that often bury their opponents.
Contributing to the “nothing” for those 80 million would-be voters is the untenable obsolescence of the Electoral College. The fall presidential election will be effectively decided by voters in just seven swing states, Michigan among them. Voters in the remaining 43 red and blue states are unlikely to have any impact on the presidential race.
Low turnout has a devastating impact down ballot. When a third of the electorate skips a Presidential election, state and local candidates struggle to reach constituents critical to victory. Those candidates understandably downplay or outright ignore the interests of those who polling data show are unlikely to show up on election day.
This explains why campaigns are built around a fairly narrow slice of the electorate, the so-called independent voters who represent the “margin of error” in public opinion polls. As long as they know that tens of millions of nonvoters will sit out the next election, candidates will write them off.
An estimated 24 million American voters made it clear in the Medill/NPR survey that they are beyond the reach of any Presidential candidate.
Many of the remaining 56 million unlikely voters who skipped the 2020 election appear similarly untouchable — whether by campaign advertising, retail politics or their own families. Although many of these nonvoters are well educated, some are burned out by endless campaigning that began on the Republican side the day after Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration. Their indifference explains why campaigning politicians often resort to a kind of shock therapy built around racial hatred, misogyny and voodoo economics.
Although abortion and immigration are hot button issues, it's hard to see how either issue will suddenly persuade millions of nonvoters to head to the polls. This skepticism is anchored in gerrymandering of Congressional and state districts that effectively undermine democracy.
Proving Plato wrong — and preserving representative democracy as government of the people, by the people, for the people — will require, among other things, finding a way to get unlikely voters to the polls. This can happen in November given the right set of circumstances.
I believe the winning argument, one you should consider with the unlikely voters you know, goes something like this: All the way back to our revolution, more than a million Americans have given their lives to protect the Democracy all of us enjoy. Everyone in this country has a recent ancestor who fought for their rights or came here from elsewhere in the world so their children could have a say in how they’re governed.
Attempts around the world to create “republics” that do not respond to the will of the electorate have had tragic results from Berlin and Moscow to Pyongyang and Beijing. Non-voters need to know that their lack of participation in the upcoming election could create a similar autocracy here.
Realizing the rich promise of our democracy means all Americans need to head for the polls in honor of the millions that have sacrificed to defend our political way of life. Despite many attempts to defeat our democracy, no one before or since — not even Plato — has found a better way to govern. It may very well take our country another 250 years to realize its potential — and a vote this November could be critical to giving us a chance.
Roger Rapoport (rogerrapoport.com) is the author of Searching for Patty Hearst (Lexographic Press). He has covered Michigan politics for many years and lives in hotly contested Muskegon County.
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