Voter’s Guide for the Indecisive

I voted in the US election via absentee ballot this year, because I am registered in North Carolina, which is a swing state, and I figured I should do my part to swing it my way. Filling out an absentee ballot feels very futile. The year 2000 was educational for American citizens—we learned that absentee votes are not counted unless the on-the-ground electoral race is close enough that these extra votes could make a difference. In fact, we learned that even then they might not be counted. An article in the New York Times from early 2001 reported on schoolchildren in Zaire studying the 2000 US elections to learn about the mechanics of voter fraud; that was demoralizing.

It’s hard to imagine that there are still undecided voters out there, and terrifying to think that the fate of our nation is in the hands of such wishy-washy people, but on the off chance that there are any indecisive voters reading this, here are my endorsements for the 2012 election. 

PRESIDENT: BARACK OBAMA

In 2008, I was living in Illinois, and I didn’t bother to vote. Illinois is not a swing state, and Obama had it in the bag. I was feeling cynical about electoral politics: it seemed to me as though the Democrats were just as warmongering and loyal to Wall Street as the Republicans. I’ve always hated the concept of voting for the “lesser of two evils.” This is exactly antithetical to my life philosophy, which is “the most possible awesomeness.” 

My mind was changed by the events of November 7, 2008. At that time, I had been living in Chicago for eight years, having moved there from North Carolina, which is not exactly a paradise of racial equality itself. But Chicago was on a different level: it is a city of such profound and literal segregation that many lifelong Northside Chicagoans have never been to the southern half of their city (hipsters who think of Pilsen or Bridgeport as the far south side should look at a map—those areas are actually the geographical center of the city, which extends south another 200 blocks). Race relations in Chicago, when not openly hostile, are a surreal exercise in denial. Black and white people pass in the street without acknowledging each other’s existence. This was the unpleasant social reality I internalized and acclimated myself to while living in Chicago, so it was a shock when on November 7, the day after the election, as I walked down Cermak Avenue with a scowl on my face, an older black man stopped me to exclaim, “What are you so down about? Today is a BEAUTIFUL DAY!” I was taken aback, and replied, “Uh… OK. You’re right, it is.” We exchanged a little friendly banter, and then went our separate ways. A few minutes later, a black man in his early 20s stopped me, rejoicing. “We did it, man, we did it!” he said. The thought of returning this gesture with a spiel about the lesser of two evils and loyalty to Wall Street seemed unspeakably lame in that moment. Even lamer was the thought that “we” hadn’t done anything, since I had been too cynical to vote. In Wicker Park, a street poet who sells his work to pedestrians for a dollar a piece approached me, crying, and insisted I take the day’s poem (about Obama) for free. In eight years, I had never experienced anything comparable: the palpable joy on the streets, the momentary amnesty on racial tension—it was like an episode of the Twilight Zone. For one day, Chicago experienced an alternate reality where change and social progress seemed not only possible, but as though it was actually happening.

This year, I got my shit together and voted for Obama. Though I don’t agree with him on all sorts of issues (the drone warfare especially), I like him iconically. I think the possibility of hope and change he embodies should be what the USA puts forth to the world. To claim that Obama’s victory in 2008 was merely symbolic is in itself an expression of cynicism: To the African American population of Chicago, there was nothing symbolic about it. It was the most real and concrete political event of the last 40 years.

OTHER OFFICES: WOMEN

If you examine the above North Carolina ballot closely, you’ll notice a pattern: In the right-hand column, for instance, you’ve got Elaine, June, Janet, and Ellie running for the Democrats against Ed, John, Steve, and Dave on the Republican side. Notice a trend? Once you get below Governor, the Democratic and Republican boy’s club breaks down along gender lines. The Republicans are the Man Party, the Democrats are the Woman Party. Voting a straight Republican ticket in North Carolina is the de facto equivalent to voting a straight white male ticket.

Why not cut to the chase here? A solid vote for women seems as reasonable as a straight Democratic vote. The Democratic Party as a whole continues to be warmongering and loyal to Wall Street; meanwhile, how many single moms are in the one percent? How many wars in history have been commandeered by women? (People like to point out Margaret Thatcher and the Falkland Island war. That example is popular because it is the only one anyone can think of.) In North Carolina, voting according to an all-woman philosophy gets you Barbara Howe, Libertarian candidate for governor. Libertarians are a dicey lot, with an ideological gamut spanning from Noam Chomsky to Ted Nugent, so it’s a gamble. But looking at the issues, I’m more than happy to vote for Howe, for the simple fact that she is the only NC gubernatorial choice who opposes the death penalty. Lesser evil Walter Dalton, the Democratic candidate, supports capital punishment but cautions that “we must not employ the death penalty lightly.” While the testosterone-addled Democrats and Clint Eastwood Republicans talk in terms of degrees of lightness you should use when executing people, Hilary Clinton, in the now-famous photo of Obama’s “war room,” watching the death of Osama bin Laden via live-stream video, is the only person whose expression shows a normal human emotional reaction (i.e., horror) to killing. Call me a biological reductionist, a sexist, a feminist zealot, but I intuitively believe that women, if put in power, would not display the same “we can always make more” attitude towards sending soldiers to war that the world’s male leaders always do. It’s an unproven sociological model, but why not give it a try? Let’s put women in control. Men have had 4,000 years in power, and during this time they have consistently done nothing but wage genocidal wars and raise taxes on the poor. Let’s kick these guys out and try something different.