Anonymous Asks (286)

“Should Christians in democracies feel obligated to vote?”

Voting is not mandatory. Depending on how you think about it, voting can be anything from a privilege to a perceived civic duty, or even an exercise in futility.

Let me give you an example of the latter. In Canada, a “riding” is an electoral district with fixed boundaries rarely adjusted by the reigning Powers That Be unless it favors their party’s re-election chances.

Exercises in Futility

The riding in which I have lived for the past twenty-odd years is populated with older white liberals and a variety of semi-affluent minorities, all of whom tend to vote as far left as possible. Thus, over the last two decades, both federally and provincially, we have sent representatives to parliament from only one political party, and that by an overwhelming majority. Several thousand votes for a conservative or independent candidate in my riding would not make the slightest difference in any election outcome, and a single vote has all the impact of a drop of purple paint in an ocean of orange. Thus, whether we normally consider voting a duty or a privilege, in my situation it is always an exercise in futility. That’s not fatalism, that’s just pattern recognition. It is what it is. I vote anyway, but I can sympathize with a person in my shoes who might elect not to.

There are other reasons one may consider voting an exercise in futility. Numerous irregularities and accusations of various sorts of cheating on the part of election officials marred the US elections of 2020. Despite endless mainstream media assurances that there is “no evidence of wrongdoing”, more Americans today believe the Democrats stole the election than did at the time it happened, including 69% of registered Republicans and at least 1/3 of the voting public across all demographics. That large numbers of people believe something doesn’t prove it happened, of course, but it is a strong indication that trust in the US electoral system has broken down in a big way. If you believe political shenanigans nullified your vote and hundreds of thousands of others, you may also feel voting is a pointless exercise.

The Moral Fiber Question

Other Christians decline to vote because of the moral fiber of the candidates on offer. For every two Christians who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 or 2020, there was probably at least one who was offended by his private life, his bluster, his track record in business, his penchant for exaggeration — you name it, and there were Christians complaining about it. Some of those who voted for him felt the same way, but did it anyway. The difference between the two groups was this: one group believed that refusing to vote accomplished something positive while the other believed it did not. I’m in the latter group. Nobody cares if you don’t vote. Nobody even notices, let alone reflects on reforming the system to offer candidates to your personal tastes. But your abstinence from the process, or your unwillingness to commit to a less-than-perfect candidate, may cost your neighbors in the long run if a worse one is elected.

Here’s how I think about it. In any system where there are a limited number of candidates on the ballot, all will have positions in their platforms Christians find undesirable. In one recent election, there wasn’t a single anti-abortion candidate running. In Canada until recently, all the parties were different shades of leftist. Even the so-called conservatives are weak tea by my standards. For the Christian who believes their vote still counts in such a situation, my advice is to hold your nose and vote for the least worst option. If there are two pro-abortion candidates and one opposes unnecessary foreign wars, that’s an election worth showing up for. Your vote won’t do anything about the abortion issue positively or negatively, but it might save your next-door-neighbor’s son from dying in a useless propaganda exercise. By voting for a candidate, you are not endorsing his entire platform or putting your personal stamp of approval on his character. You are simply doing your duty trying to avoid a worse outcome. A vote for a suboptimal candidate may really be a vote against an insufferable one.

A Good Conscience Before God

So should Christians in democracies feel obligated to vote? No, not at all. Like many decisions we have to make in life, voting or not voting falls into that gray area that may or may not be moral depending on the motives behind our choices. Often our decisions do not turn on questions of right or wrong, but on pragmatic issues in dispute, questions of fact we may not be qualified to answer with confidence.

Consider, for instance, “Will Mr. Trump keep his election promise about appointing conservative judges?” That one turned out to be a big thumbs up, but prior to the 2016 election, nobody on earth knew the answer with any certainty, probably including Mr. Trump. He knew what he intended to do. He had no idea whether circumstances would allow him to do it. Those who questioned his sincerity did so with reasonable cause and were pleasantly surprised to find he actually meant what he said. On the other hand, if you voted Republican in 2016 because you hoped Mr. Trump would keep his promise to build the wall or drain the swamp, you were probably disappointed at the outcome of his presidency. America still awaits its promised return to greatness.

So then, our Christianity obligates us to pay attention, think hard, pray for wisdom and then vote — or not vote — in accordance with a good conscience before the Lord. Whatever is not of faith is sin.