Just because you CAN vote, should you?

Old school ballot box

Elections are a multi layered event. What I mean is, they have different meanings depending on which way you view them.

For example, I live in California. Me voting for Romney means nothing as far as him getting elected. My state has been a "blue state" for a long time now, which means that the electoral college votes will go for the Democrat, in this case Obama. I believe that last time California went Republican was in 1988 for Bush Sr. These days it would be easy for me to think, "Why should I vote? It does no good."

There are two reasons this is not a good way to think about it:

1. There are other candidates and other initiatives on the ballot. All of them need my attention and consideration.

2. I really do believe that someday I will need to give an account of the votes I cast, or failed to cast. If I did not vote, I want to be very clear why I didn't, at least in my own mind.

This raises an interesting question:

Are there legitimate times to refrain from voting?

I believe the answer is yes. Why? For me, if I know I lack information, I will refrain from voting one way or another. I will do a lot of reading about all of the candidates and issues before voting, but if I am still unsatisfied with what I find on a particular issue, I will not vote on it.

I did this with Proposition 8, the ballot initiative in California that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. Here is a snippet of something I wrote at RuthBlog.org:

"I knew that I didn’t have enough information to vote in either direction. The “equality” arguments were starting to be persuasive, yet in many ways I am and always have been rather traditional. I knew what the Bible had to say about marriage, but I was starting to wonder what the harm would really be if gays could marry. I was sincerely worried about voting wrongly then regretting it later. And by “wrongly” I mean voting for something harmful regardless of whether it won or not. I take voting that seriously and I worry that someday I will have to give an accounting of the votes I have cast. Intuiting that this was a critical issue and that I lacked information, I refrained."

I am proud of myself for that decision, because I later got the answer I needed, in a REALLY huge way, a way that changed the course of my life for the better.

So what about you? When you vote, what kind of thought or study do you put into it? Do you agree with this statement: "Just because you CAN vote, should you?"

And yes, I am voting for Romney, because it matters TO ME.

Image credit: Just Us 3