Thoughts on voting

I have not yet voted in my life. This is not due to a desire not to vote, it’s been mostly due to a combination of things in the two elections that have occurred since I turned 18...On the first occasion, the enumerator came around about 5 months before the election date to see if anyone wanted to get enumerated. I told her that I was 17, but would be 18 when the election date came around; could I be enumerated? She said no. I didn’t get the chance to register to vote before that election. In 2002, I was living abroad, and Jamaica has not given its foreign citizens the ability to vote in absentia. I think both parties are scared shitless about what would happen to them if they did that.

At any rate, elections are on the way again…no one knows exactly when except Portia, but they are due soon and both the JLP and PNP are beginning to rev their campaign machinery. And no matter what both parties do, there are a significant number of people who say that they are not going to vote.

I find this hard to comprehend.

I will be the first to admit that politics is a crock of bull manure, and in this day and age (especially in Jamaica), politics is a time-honored method of transferring money from the poor to the rich and setting up those who want power and authority so that they can feel like kings and queens over the unintelligent and feeble-minded masses, and piss away the resources of the country. 90% of the politicians do not deserve to be in any position of authority, and 100% of them are tarred with the same brush of responsibility for Jamaica being in the state it is in. However, does this disgust with the political process automatically mean that one should boycott the vote? To my mind, it does not.

Many people say that they can’t find someone to vote for, “one jus’ as bad as the other, no difference between them.” That is lazy thinking, in my opinion. If there really is no difference between them, then there wouldn’t be a multiplicity, would there? These people do not seem to realize that their vote is the one thing, the ONLY thing that any politician desires from them. The politician will promise heaven on earth, chickens in every pot, increased wages and rollbacks of tolls, ANYTHING to get that little X by their party. Other than that, he/she more than likely won’t care about you. When you realize this, you realize the power of the vote, because while he/she may not care about you after you cast the vote for him/her, you can remember whether or not he/she lived up to their promises the next time elections come around. Parties want to stay in power, and if we don’t use our vote to punish/reward them for fulfilling the promises they made, then they won’t care about fulfilling those promises. Both parties are not deserving of your vote, you say? Hold your nose and vote for the one who disgusts you the least. Either you take some control of your destiny, or you leave your nation in the hands of the party who can best agitate its rabid base to turn out and vote. Do you really want to leave your future in the hands of party loyalists? That is what you do when you leave it up to them to decide who will be victorious.

We all complain about the way things are run; it is human nature. The vote is the only time, short of a coup de etat, that you can show your approval/disapproval of how things are being run, and you give up your power over the politicians when you decide to not use it. I believe there are two reasons for people to not vote: either they don’t for religious reasons (and I respect that), or they just don’t give a damn. If you honestly don’t give a damn, and you don’t care about what happens to you or your country, well, I suppose less power to you by your own choice…

Get up, stand up for your right. Vote. It’s the least you can do.