Choice: Why Many Feel Voting Doesn’t Matter

What comes to mind when we think about choice? Around this time, every other year, we think of voting as a choice. But is it really? For a lot of people the apathy about voting, I think, is fueled by disgust and the sense that a voter’s vote doesn’t count.

I am not advocating that you should not vote. I just understand why there is a lack of motivation on the part of the voter. It seems to the voters that the political class only pays attention to them when elections roll around. Once a politician is elected they often ignore the people who elected him/her.

However, the other way to look at this problem of apathy when voting is that the average person may think it really doesn’t matter who is an office, because there is not much difference between parties and between all the candidates in a race. Related to this observation is the realization that in our republic the people elect representatives who are supposed to represent their interests, but the reality is that the bureaucracy and the establishment have more influence than “We the People.”

And by the way, Proposition 1 in the state of Idaho is on the ballot and the out-or-state intent and funding is to open the primaries to rank choice voting. The experience of other states that have done this has been to (1) confuse the voter with long ballots of unknown candidates; (2) makes it easier for activists to elect weaker candidates that honestly they do not support by distorting a true runoff with the hope they lose in the general election; (3) split the votes within a population’s most representative party of candidates and their platform; (4) and increase lines at the polls. Another discouragement for voters.

In contrast to the subject of choice we can see working every day in a free market. Just walk into any retail store and you will see the market at work. There is no coercion, no expectation or mandate of patronage, no bureaucratic red tape, and a wide variety of products and services with constant innovation and improvement.

The vendor, on the other hand, who is most efficient, polite, and successful is there to serve you, not to force you into limiting your choice and monopolizing economic power over you. And if you have buyer’s remorse there are return policies and market pressures, by way of competition, to motivate purveyors to compensate customers.

Therefore, when we have leaders and patrons, of whom we can be both, who understand the virtue of service at the core of voluntary cooperation versus coercion, we have a functioning and dynamic civilization.

Mark 10:42-45:
Jesus summoned the twelve and said to them,
“You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”