Off The Grid
Don’t Vote!
Dr. Phil Maffetone
The other day, I received an email that had nothing to do with music, health, sports, or fitness. It had to do with politics, a topic I usually avoid. The beauty of not owning a television set is that silence can be cherished and one is spared listening to the politicians and their loudmouth enablers on around-the-clock cable “news” shows, Coralee and I prefer the stress-free pleasure and quiet of the desert, or listening to the Beatles or Mozart during the evening, or playing our own music. Anyway back to that email. It stated that “I” should fight for healthcare by voting for a certain candidate.
I pledged to fight for health long ago, and have done it by personally helping many people take responsibility for their own health. Sadly, the political healthcare issue is a no-win scheme – it’s one reason I’m not voting this year.
I didn’t vote last year either, or in most presidential or midterm elections. Why? There’s usually no one to vote for. Voting against someone just to vote is worse than not voting because my “no vote” will at least count. And in the presidential race, we don’t actually vote for our candidate; we vote for someone else in the Electoral College who is not obligated but is supposed to vote for the majority winner of that state.
In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote with 543,895 votes more than Bush, but he lost the Electoral College when he “lost” Florida with the help of a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling. Our political system was designed so that elections would be run by the states and not by the federal government. But by not voting, I’m not giving my “no vote” to anyone. It directly affects the candidates and election.
W.C. Fields said it best: “Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.”
There are several “Don’t Vote!” books and at least one good YouTube Hollywood celebrity video of the same name, but they’re all trying to get you to vote, not to not vote. It’s a bait-and-switch approach to grab your attention. So let me reiterate: This column is not some gimmick to get you to vote.
Let’s use healthcare to show what’s wrong with our political system and why I no longer vote.
Healthcare Politics
Healthcare remains an important issue, but the politicians always ignore the only factor that could genuinely fix it, and for a small fraction of current estimated costs. To solve the national healthcare crisis, each American must first take more responsibility for his or her own health. This includes simple things like diet and exercise. In turn, this emphasis would force healthcare to have a primary proactive component, whereby the focus is on avoiding ill health—and not waiting and treating symptoms associated with say, increased obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
This preventative approach has been shown to dramatically reduce healthcare costs. Instead, the current system is a reactive one, where we wait for disease to occur then treat it with very expensive (and relatively ineffective) drugs and remedies—an approach promoted by the pharmaceutical companies that benefit from sick people. And who benefits from this approach? The answer is simple. It’s the healthcare industry complex—the hospitals, medical manufacturers, drug companies, insurance firms, and the politicians and lobbyists supported by these special interests.
As a result of Washington’s stonewalling—don’t get me started on the recently passed healthcare reform bill that just seems like a huge payout to the healthcare industry—America is ranked thirty-seventh worldwide by the World Health Organization in 2000, just beating out Slovenia and Cuba. And yet, 2007 per capita expenditure in the U.S. is highest in the world ($6,096) versus countries such as France ($3,040) and Italy (2,414), the number one and two ranked countries, respectively, in healthcare.
My Healthcare Experience in Washington
For many years, I had been on the frontlines of healthcare reform. In 1994, when Bill Clinton was in the White House and Hillary was put in charge of a new healthcare initiative I found myself in Washington (representing a group of healthcare professionals). I spent a considerable amount of time discussing healthcare issues with a variety of individuals and groups—lobbyists, Senator Harkin (D-Iowa) and his staff, Senator Kennedy’s healthcare advisor and many others. I spoke to a congressional subcommittee about the topic. I even submitted a paper to Ms. Clinton’s healthcare committee during a meeting with her and Vice President Gore.
While I learned a lot about the political process regarding “healthcare reform,” I felt that my contribution, like many of my colleagues, fell on deaf ears. The politicians already knew what they were going to do before the process even started. The game was fixed. The notion that Ms. Clinton and her staff was going to gather important information from all aspects of the healthcare debate was merely a front—a political show to make it appear that the process was objective, open and non-partisan. None of which was true. It was no surprise that the proposed legislation failed.
In one closed-door meeting I attended, lobbyists and various healthcare organizations hammered out an agreement that would result in how a particular organization’s healthcare professionals would think, act and treat patients—their scope of practice literally would change—and in exchange they would receive a favorable status from the new administration’s healthcare plan. Leaders of healthcare organizations were willing to sell out to politicians who already sold out to lobbyists.
I left Washington with a heavy heart. I have not been back to the nation’s capital. Seeing the political process up close turned me off to politics even more than ever.
A Bankrupt Political System
The New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas L. Freidman recently wrote about our deeply flawed two-part political system. He quoted Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond: “We basically have two bankrupt parties bankrupting the country. They cannot think about the overall public good and the longer term anymore because both parties are trapped in short-term, zero-sum calculations,” where each one’s gains are seen as the other’s losses.”
Friedman wrote that we need a third-party candidate in the next presidential election to look Americans in the eye and say: “These two parties are lying to you. They can’t tell you the truth because they are each trapped in decades of special interests. I am not going to tell you what you want to hear. I am going to tell you what you need to hear.”
Ralph Nader did that several times as in independent candidate running for President. He took on Big Business and Big Politics. In 2000, he got just enough votes to give the election to Bush and the Republican party. The left was steamed that Nader didn’t drop out. Gore would have been the president.
“You Got to Serve Somebody”
Like Bob Dylan sings, “You got to serve somebody.” With politicians today, it surely isn’t the public being served, as they promised to do, but corporate power bases and special interest groups. I don’t want to participate in this action.
This is not the only reason I don’t vote.
The fact is, both the unregistered citizens, and the “no votes” of those who are registered are counted, unofficially, of course. These numbers are tallied every year, displayed in charts and graphs, in the press, and in political science journals. Surely the candidates and their advisers pay close attention to these numbers, trying to figure out ways to use the information to trick you into voting for them next time. Usually 40 percent or more of the number of eligible voters avoid the polls in a presidential election year (42 percent in 2008). The number rises considerably during off year and the primaries, and hence, the more passionately committed and partisan are able to exert greater influence on who gets elected—and who does their bidding.
A few years ago I moved to another state, and I’m still not registered to vote. That means my “no vote” counts twice – I’m unregistered (check) and I don’t vote (check). And it’s legal.
I have voted in the past. Once I voted against someone—for Senator George McGovern running against Richard Nixon when he ran for re-election in 1972. Another time I voted for a sure loser—billionaire Ross Perot who ran as an Independent in 1992. Without my vote he would have only received 19,741,064 votes. At the time it seemed like my vote was an important personal statement to make in the hopes of changing some of the less savory aspects of politics.
As every voter knows (or should be aware of), politics is a back-room affair that breeds cynicism and corruption. Both the political process itself and the politicians are the problem. It seems that every time there’s a new law passed to reform the system, like with campaign financing, new loopholes spring up that guarantee the old ways of doing business can continue as before.
UnAmerican? Hardly!
Citizens who don’t vote are sometimes looked down upon by those who do. We’re seen as unAmerican or apathetic. But are we the silent majority? One reason I don’t vote is because I do care. And there are 100 million of us don’t-vote folks, enough to win any election at any time.
Nor do I see any sense in hopping aboard the Tea Party bandwagon, despite its against-the-establishment views. During our never-ending economic downturn, it's easy to see why its anger has a growing emotional appeal. Yet I am deeply suspicious of the Tea Party’s motives, supporters, well-heeled financial backers, and yes, its unqualified candidates who all seem to claim to know what is best for the rest of us. Its anger reminds me of that line from the fifties biker flick "The Wild One," with Marlon Brando. A girl asks Johnny, "What're you rebelling against?" He answers, "Whaddya got?"
Some will ask, what about the incumbents, those already in office and in the pocket of special interests? How do you get rid of them if we don’t vote? There are large numbers of people trying to vote out the bad politicians, special interests and others that have tarnished the system. It hasn’t happened yet because there are always other candidates equally tarnished and ready to step in—a long line of potential congressmen and women, aids, staff, lobbyists and others trying to climb higher rungs in the political process.
“Follow the Money”
Another reason I don’t vote: Money is what feeds greed for power. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org), $2.4 billion was spent on the presidential campaign in 2008, and more than $5 billion on the rest of that year’s elections. In a non-presidential election year, spending can still be over $2 billion. But that’s not all. Big companies, labor unions, and other organizations also spend billions of dollars each year—$3.3 billion in 2008—to lobby politicians and federal agencies. This is our political process.
Here’s an interesting example. The tough-on-immigration woman candidate for California governor made her fortune running eBay; she’s spent over $119 million of her own money so far in the campaign. Follow the money, like Deep Throat said to Woodward and Bernstein. Yet her campaign just took a severe body blow when her former Mexico-born maid, who was paid $23 per hour, came forward to tearfully announce to the press that she was fired after nine years of cleaning toilets because she didn’t have a Green Card.
Who Can You Trust?
Like a majority of Americans, I don’t trust most politicians. According to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national survey, 75 percent of Americans don’t trust the government to do what is right always or most of the time.
"That lack of trust in government is not a recent phenomenon—except for a brief spike fueled by patriotism immediately after 9/11, a majority have not trusted the government since the early 1970s," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. And the problem of trust is worsening. Ten years ago, about 60 percent said they trusted the government always or most of the time. The number continues to fall.
No one should be surprised with these statistics. But many of these same Americans vote, knowing that they are helping elect dishonest candidates. This is more than a political mixed message—it’s a social injustice because the politicians are taking advantage of gullible voters. The politicians know (and have known for a long time), they have you right where they want you—easy to emotionally manipulate, so they can remain a part of the business-as-usual political process.
By voting, you’re not going to influence any of the changes that you really want to see happen. So I’ll choose the truly individual road, and not be part of the phony process by not voting. People often say that voting is our right, given to us by the Constitution (excluding blacks and women for too many years). That’s exactly right. And that same document gives me the right to not vote.
I feel good about not voting. In fact, the two times I did vote it gave me an uneasy feeling.
My first experience voting was with my grandmother. I was 12 years old when she brought me with her to the voting machine. I asked her who she was voting for, and she said she didn’t know, telling me that “everyone in the party gets my vote.”
Many people still blindly vote down party lines; they vote for candidates who they don’t know much about. Or, many people vote for a candidate just because of one issue while they may not like or even know anything else the candidate stands for.
Political scientists think that a high voter turnout is desirable and evidence of the legitimacy of the system. That may or may not be true, but how many people really think politicians are legitimate? It’s a reason I don’t vote.
An Associated Press article, based on recent polling, summed up the election this way: “Glum and distrusting, a majority of Americans today are very confident in — nobody.”
It’s clear how real change takes place. With the individual. That’s the best way to make your voice truly heard.
Opting out doesn’t mean you are copping out. Don’t vote!
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