When I stepped into a voting booth for the first time, I knew I was voting for someone I believed would be a good leader.
Folks can debate the impact of voting all they want, claiming money and/or manipulative methods keep votes from being important. There’s even much talk about whether the American system of elections and voting ever really represented the people at all.
I can see some merit to some of these arguments. However, one concept I’ve never been able to comprehend is simply voting for a candidate based on likelihood of winning.
Voting our consciences, for who we think would make the best candidate, is the only way we’re going to get anything fixed or changed. Voting for the most likely candidate to win — or the most likely to beat so-and-so — is exactly the type of thinking that got our nation into some of its longstanding predicaments.
If you cannot picture your candidate fulfilling the everyday role of the office that is sought, don’t vote for that person just to block someone else. As much as all of us shudder at some of the things that might happen “if so-and-so gets elected,” we need to be choosing who we want as leaders — not simply avoiding the non-desired.
Juries in civil suits are asked to choose between finding in favor of a plaintiff or a defendant (money being a semi-separate issue). However, criminal trial juries don’t acquit or convict based on who will “get it” if someone else doesn’t. Neither should we. We should be evaluating each candidate on the ability to do the job.
Some colleagues have suggested the entire nation — if not the world — is filled with rigged elections won by the rich and/or powerful. Voting is only psychological.
They say this as if voting for psychological reasons is a bad thing; as if believing that voters and citizens have power is somehow misleading in a destructive way. Participating in the process doesn’t replace interest in change and progress; it heightens interest in government and how our tax dollars our spent.
There might be as little chance of convincing someone of the value of voting “pro-candidate” as there would be of winning over a political opponent or getting someone to the polls at all. Some folks seem determined to try to play politics as if were a game that must be won, rather than a process that must be improved.
Some presidential candidates have talked about campaign finance reform on their visits to Newton within the past year. Martin O’Malley wants to try to thwart cooperate influence by forcing candidates to use public funds; Chris Christie wants to go the other way and settle instead for Internet disclosure of all campaign contributions within 24 hours.
There would be no voters or caucus-goers to sway if we all voted against someone. If all of us pick candidates strictly on negative advertising, on the “I’m voting for A because B is dishonest and did bad things,” none of us would have anyone to support. We might still go to rallies and smile and cheer — thinking so-and-so is about to go down in defeat — but that doesn’t sound like a way to start off the next term.
Do we go into a new term evaluating a new office-holder saying performance doesn’t matter now, because the opponent would have been worse? I hope not. We don’t leave a buffet thinking about all the unlikable food we didn’t eat.
Let’s look at what we like in the candidates and measures we support and celebrate those. The rest are the buffet items we should simply ignore.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at
641-792-3121 ext. 6532
or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com