by Micah Tillman

If "your vote is your voice" then voters are dumb. What you do in the voting booth — if you're behaving — influences nothing. But influence is the point. So voting is irrational.

Why vote, then? The outcome of the election will not be changed by your ballot, cast or uncast. It can't affect the result, so it makes no difference; it doesn't matter.

In arguing all of this to me, an acquaintance said voters vote out of duty. But how it can be a duty to do something which doesn't matter is far from obvious. And if a duty isn't intuitive, it's either divine or no duty at all.

But I was talking to an atheist.

Many choices are irrational, I responded, but that just means you can't blame them on logic. You actually have to take personal responsibility for them. And I can see four motivations for doing this in the case of voting:

1. You might think it disrespectful to not use something heroes killed and died to give you.
2. You might wish to participate in some group or movement as "it" seeks to exert influence.
3. "Let the truth be spoken, even if it be not heard":
   1. You might wish to serve an idea by giving it worldly form in your act of voting.
   2. You might wish to simply register your opinion under the name, "Someone."
4. You might like to remain a citizen for the next two years.

In other words, it can be hard to tell the difference between nonvoters and disrespectful, lonely, gutless noncitizens. And nobody likes a bad rep.

Your vote may not influence the election, therefore, but that's not its purpose. Its purpose is fourfold: to honor your forebears, unite with others, speak the truth, and save your citizenship.

The first three are widely recognized. And it is up to individuals (not "government"), if it is in fact "up to" anyone at all, to see that ignoring them be stigmatized.

Setting consequences for ignoring the fourth, purpose, however, is up to government. The fact that those who govern us (our "governors") continue to treat nonvoters as citizens is evidence that politicians don't spend enough time thinking about what government is.

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Every constitution, every societal structure, is founded on a mythology; and ours is no exception. Myths are stories which attempt to reveal a fundamental structure of, or truth about, our world, our lives, ourselves.

Whether fact or fiction, they are meant to help us understand; and no one can understand her culture (or herself) without knowing the myths through which it (and she) functions.

The myth on which our society is built is titled, Democracy. Democracy is the rule of the demos, the people. To call a country a "democracy" is to tell a story about it:

"In this group, the rulers and the ruled are the same. Here, the citizens tell themselves what to do, give themselves the law, structure themselves."

In a democratic republic such as our own, the demos gives birth to a band of governors who are meant to act as its eyes and ears, hands and feet, mind and will for a preordained period. But though apparently governed by this smaller group, the demos is actually its source, that from which it derives being every two years.

And since that which proximally rules the demos — the governors — springs forth from the polls, the vote is that whereby the demos becomes the ultimate ruler of itself.

Those who do not vote do not join in the act whereby the demos rules. They do not join in the ruling of those by whom they are ruled. Unlike the demos, they are merely ruled.

Those who do not vote, then, cannot be described as living under a democracy. They are not part of the group which rules them, and are, therefore, not part of a self-ruling ("democratic") group.

Or if nonvoters are described as living under a democracy, they must be seen as nonmembers of the demos which rules the democracy under which they live.

Either way, since the democratic myth tells us that citizens and governors are one and the same, by being a nonruler the nonvoter becomes a noncitizen.

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The Myth of Democracy is the story which "stands between" (in both senses of the phrase) us and tyranny. It both protects us on the whole from tyranny, while sometimes being used as a mask for those tyrannical acts which do occur.

But, like it or not, it is the myth we cannot escape. It is the foundation on which our governmental system is built. It is the engine(er) of our history, our self-image, our vision of The World As It Should Be.

The Myth of Democracy is what makes us what we are. And this is as true of nonvoters as it is voters. They are not citizens, but they are believers.

Or rather, they are only potential citizens, waiting to rejoin the demos when the Time of Voting returns. The fact that our governors do not see the difference between the citizen in actus and the citizen in potentia shows how little they understand their own story.

So, next time someone asks you why you vote, tell them that — besides not wanting to seem a rude, spineless loner — you value your citizenship, you know what you are.

Unlike some people.

Micah Tillman (micahtillman.com) is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.