Tony Cotzias | Voting will not change the world

Many people with truly benevolent intentions fought from the beginning of this semester to make sure that most people would go out and vote on Election Day. And if a great percentage of Penn students vote, many will feel proud being a member of such a school. Unfortunately, I won’t.

I am one of those few people who do not believe that voting really means anything. Yes, one of those who people like to attack for being “anti-democratic.” The truth is, though, I do not believe that ticking one of two boxes on a sheet of paper every four years makes you either a citizen or someone who chooses what rules will govern him.

No, I don’t buy any of that.

I see voting as a way of equating the principle of majority rule with the illusion that you, personally, have some control over the political process. You don’t. And if you offer me the expected response, “What would happen if everyone else thought that way?” I’d say that people do not think that way and my behavior does not somehow magically affect them. If that were indeed the case, I would vote. With few other votes, my vote would actually have some impact.

Let me systematize the critique on three levels.

First, your vote will never affect any result. This is simply a given. After Election Day is over, please go and add or subtract your vote (depending on whether you voted or not). You’ll realize that you literally had no influence on the election.

Second, voting should hold no importance in your duties as a citizen. It’s an easy way out. Rather than ticking a box once every four years, you could actually engage in activism, help improve the institutions and create new ones. You could feed the homeless (providing that’s not banned in your area). You could help yourself and those around you to live freer lives.

I never bought any “social contract” or “citizen duties” theory that told me that I should participate in shaping the rules of society by voting. My vote has no influence, and even if it has influence it falls short of being a meaningful duty (I wish being a conscious citizen were that easy).

Finally, even if voting did influence the rules of society and even if it seemed as forming a meaningful duty for citizens, it’s not essential to a free and just society. People can vote that the sky is red or that 20 percent of the population should be sacrificed in the name of society.

Obviously you would agree, then, that there are limits to voting. I believe that these limits could be so strong that voting would actually have very diminished powers.

How can we allow voting on the issue gay marriage? Even if 99 percent voted against gay marriage it would still be unjust. How can we allow voting on criminalizing marijuana? Even if 99 percent voted for marijuana criminalization, ruining the lives of so many people by putting them in jail is unjustified. How can we allow voting on the issue of invading a foreign country? The funny thing is that even if 100 percent agreed on this, how is it just to not even ask the innocent civilians of the foreign country in question?

This line of thinking goes on and on, challenging even the right voters have on regulating who can be, say, a lawyer, since there seems to be no claim in prohibiting two people from coming in a voluntary agreement that says that one can defend the other in court.

Most of you are will not be persuaded or will angrily disagree with me. It’s really unfortunate that we view things in such radically different terms. You continue supporting the two-party system even after every conceivable wrong has been committed by these two parties these previous decades.

Every four years I hear that this time “this administration” will be different. I am fed up. Fed up of a system which does not and will not respect minorities, a system which has pervasive disciplinary mechanisms², a system with one of the largest prison populations in the history of mankind, a system which has created a population so intolerant, so normalized, so inhumane.

If you take anything from this column, let it be not that you should not vote — I couldn’t care less. Let it be that voting will not change the world, that voting does not make you a responsible citizen, that voting does not justify the horrors that we see daily, and that “this administration” will not be different.

Tony Cotzias, the President of Penn For Liberty, is a College sophomore from Athens, Greece. His email address is acotz@sas.upenn.edu.

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