A series of thoughts

Just read on some online discussion board the argument that you should vote FOR someone, not against someone - and that if you don't like anyone, it's perfectly respectable to decide to sit out the election and not vote at all.

It occurs to me that there's so many ways to argue against this that it's almost inconceivable to think of an argument FOR it. I can think of a few, none of which are at all convincing:

1. If you truly dislike every candidate, you shouldn't feel obligated to help get someone you don't like into office.

The only way this makes sense is if you not only have no opinion on anything going on in your city, state, country or the world in general -- but also that you truly have NO opinion on anything, because there is always someone running who agrees with you on any basic, major issue. If you only slightly care about gun control (or lack thereof), you should vote for someone who agrees with you on that issue - otherwise, you caring about it but doing nothing about it is crap. The only way I can see not caring about ANYTHING going on is to truly be so depressed about your own life to care nothing about anything else or some type of utter and complete apathy.

2. You want the incumbent/favorite to win, but don't want to take any accountability for it.

If you think the favorite is most in line with you, but know that many people you know are against that candidate, simply stay home and absolve yourself of any responsibility. I've heard some conservative folks saying they might not vote for Bush, but if they can't vote for Kerry, they'll just stay home. This strikes me as a particularly convenient way that - if Bush somehow gets re-elected/cheats/declares martial law to stay annointed -- the conservative can feel okay, because to some degree Bush represents them. But if Kerry wins, they can tell their friends that 'I didn't vote for him.' Spineless is the word that comes to mind.

3. OK, that's actually all I can think of.

So, if you think it's okay not to vote, you are either suffering from: insane depression, complete apathy or a lack of any spine.

I mean, I couldn't be any more against Ralph Nader this year -- if you are actually going to participate in the process, voting for Ralph Nader is as close to you get at throwing away your vote. It obviously helps Bush, and Nader has no chance of winning. But at least the idiot who votes for Nader is doing it for a reason - he shares their passion on something (though how much Nader truly believes in what he's preaching is suspect to me), and they want to vote for that sentiment. In a normal election cycle, where there often hasn't been much material difference between the two main candidates, that's a fair thing to do. (Though how much third-party candidates votes are doing anything about getting a breakup of the two-party system is another question I'd have...if Perot's 19% didn't do anything about it...and it didn't...why will Nader's 6% do anything? It won't. All it will do is tilt things towards Bush in states where it might matter. And regardless of how many votes Nader gets, that's the ONLY context in which people will view it.)

But not this year. Voting for anyone but Kerry is saying that in large part, you're okay with the way things are going in this country.