To Vote or Not to Vote

 

According to recent news articles, the black vote is wavering.  This does not concern me as much as the reason WHY it is wavering.

 

Some Christian Blacks are concerned that Romney’s Mormonism may affect his policies.  Others are concerned that Romney seems to be a president for rich white men and feel he doesn’t care at all about the African American population of the country.  This impression is, in part, due to the fact that until fairly recently, African Americans were not allowed into the priesthood.

 

These same people are concerned about Obama supporting gay marriage.  They don’t see how a true Christian can support that and therefore are reluctant to vote for him again.

 

As congregations are discussing this, pastors are offering their people a third option.  On that I think is no option at all: the option of simply not voting.

 

I’m sure this is going on among white people and people of every race or ethnicity.  But the current articles are focusing one blacks because they are viewed as one of base demographics in support of Obama in general.

 

By choosing not to vote, your ‘vote’ in essence, becomes a factor in favor of the person you least want to win.  The political process, buy it’s very nature, is not a vote for the best but for whomever you think is the least worse.

 

 

By choosing not to vote, you give up your voice and your right to complain if you don’t like how things turn out. 

 

For example, I voted for Obama.  I don’t like how the Obamacare package turned out.  Despite some of the good things in it, it is otherwise so flawed and so bad that I think scrapping the whole thing and doing it over would be better.  But Romney is my ‘Antichrist’ and I would rather vote Obama again than risk him getting into office.  Had I NOT voted, I would have given up my voice in this political discourse because I chose not have no opinion and to let the opinions of others determine the outcome. 

 

In other words, if you want to complain, you have to participate first.  Otherwise you don’t have any solid ground to stand on. You become the house build on the shifting stand rather than the one build on solid rock. 

 

Now the issues that concern them are NOT the reasons why I myself am concerned about a wavering black vote.  It is the fact that pastors are using the pulpit to give advice on not voting.  I think that it is wrong for any pastor to be using the pulpit to discuss political activism.  I think that they can discuss social activism because they are concerned with social issues. But when it crosses a boundary into political advice on how to vote then they are crossing the line of separation of church and state.

Once churches cross this line, I think they should be giving up their status as a tax-exempt entity.  I don’t care if a church protests social issues, as much as I dislike churches trying to tell everyone that they should live their lives by the churches rules.  I do care when they start telling people how to vote or when to not vote.

 

It is even harder to imaging people who have fought so long and hard to get the right to vote decided on to do it at all because they don’t like either candidate.  Once again, with politics, you are trying to pick the lesser of two evils.   

 

 

Is allowing people to get married really more harmful to you than a candidate that is pushing through reforms that will make it harder for you to vote, and who things corporations should be treated as people and people are just cogs that can be easily replaced with cheaper cogs overseas?

 

Really?

 

Don’t choose not to vote.  You should choose to vote for someone who will actually do things to improve your personal situation.  Another person’s marriage or reproduction decision doesn’t affect your life personally, so don’t base your vote on that.