The Austin American-Statesman, Voting, Free Speech, and Information

[Updates below.]

I can't recall when this first started appearing on the front page of the Statesman's website, but it is absolutely noteworthy:

Want your voice heard? First you have to register.

This kind of thinking needs to be exposed for the dangerous sham it is.

If I want my "voice" heard, I have an uncountable number of options available to me:

• I can make a sign and place it in my window at home.
  
• I can put a bumper sticker on my car.
  
• I can literally speak my mind into a voice recorder and put it online for others to download and listen to.
  
• I can operate a blog (hell, any kind of website) and write as many thousands of words as I want.
  
• I can go to any local pub or bar and start up conversations with strangers.
  
• I can write articles to the thousands of newspapers, news magazines, periodicals, and journals around the world.
  
• I can write letters to the editor of just about any publication.
  
• I can start a band that focuses on what I want to say and tour the music scene.
  
• I can buy or make a T-shirt that says something with which I agree.

Etcetera...

What I don't need to do is register with the state. That term alone should send chills up your spine. It should make you rethink the entire enterprise. The idea of having to register for anything should scare you, be it a car, a handgun, a marriage, or your very birth.

We are repetitively exhorted to believe that our votes are our way of "talking" to politicians in the one manner they cannot ignore. I call bullshit on that. What kind of message do you think you send with a vote? What information are you trying to convey? What data does a vote contain? And how are politicians and their staffs supposed to decipher this?

Let's say I'm a good-hearted Austinite lefty who wants Bush out of office. Let's say I think we need immediate Kyoto ratification, higher taxes on the rich and corporations, and much stronger restrictions on international trade in order to protect domestic industries and workers. So I vote for John Kerry because he's more likely to replace Bush and enact the policies I want pushed. What happens?

Living in Travis County, that means I get to record my Presidential vote on Hart InterCivic's eSlate electronic voting system. My precious few bytes of data are then recorded and tabulated with the rest of the county. The result is passed on to the Secretary of State and confirmed. Of course, since Texans will give the majority of their votes to Bush, Texas's electoral college members will very likely vote for Bush when their time comes. But my vote is still recorded in the final count.

Does John F. Kerry get my message? Does George W. Bush witness my displeasure with his actions and reconsider them? What about their respective advisors? Will they say, "Looks like Charles Hueter doesn't like Bush and wants Kerry instead. Better recalibrate a little" and tweak their campaigns in the future?

Furthermore, how would they tweak their campaigns? My vote isn't a list of things I want done. It's a statement of support for two people to become President and Vice President over other choices. It doesn't explain my positions and recommendations on welfare, taxes, the environment, workers' compensation, terrorism, Social Security, campaign finance reform, property rights, the war in Iraq, civil rights, medical marijuana, obesity, economic growth, morality, or abortion. Sure, there are general trends one can discern by picking one team over another, but you cannot tell what my actual positions are on those and hundreds of other issues. You can't tell how I rank them in importance. You can't tell the degree I want them implemented. You can't tell the specific details of what I want to happen. You can't tell if I loathe John Kerry but loathe Bush even more. You can't tell if I just barely pass Texas's standards for mental competence. You can't tell if I'm lying and doing this as a joke. You can't tell if I'm drunk and accidentally picked the wrong guy and wasn't sober enough to realize it.

*scoff*

You can't even tell if I'm alive or dead:

• Officials: Man Dead For 20 Years Registers To Vote
  
• 1,000 cases of suspicious voter registrations
  
• Voter rolls may lose 190,000 names
  
• Why is Florida's voting system so corrupt?
  
• Voters Invalid: registration records questioned

In essence, all the crucial information that your opinion contains on a host of political issues - the technical elements that make your voice unique among others and truly differentiate you from your opponents - is stripped bare by the voting process, leaving the candidates and public with a vague and generalized sense of what they think you want. This applies with no less magnitude towards local elections. In their case, you've got a range of problems that usually have immediate and close impact on you and your neighbors. By voting, you become another cog that simply says "yes" or "no." And then you leave all the details up to your representative...assuming you were lucky enough for that person to get elected. In the opposite case, your beliefs are simply ignored.

By voting, your voice loses it's ability to argue, to persuade, to change minds. It loses it's power. And the vote advocators end up twisting in knots trying to get an outcome that doesn't suck; an example would be a libertarian voting for Bush.

Contrariwise, all that vital information is left intact though the methods I listed above. Communicating that way allows more to be transmitted...even if it's restricted to asinine sloganeering and recklessly ignorant action. At the least, you can approach me and find out more. That is fantastically difficult for most politicians to do.

So I react with deep horror when I read something that says:

Want your voice heard? First you have to register.

To me, it doesn't matter for whom you vote. I don't need to register to be heard. I don't want to register to be heard. You can go stuff your voting fetish. I won't participate.

UPDATE 10/4/2004 8:29am
The herd handlers are getting excited.

News8Austin: Marathon voter registration rushes to beat deadline

Time is running out for non-registered voters wanting to vote in the Nov. 2 elections. Midnight Oct. 4 is the deadline to register.

Posted by Drizzten at September 24, 2004 05:14 PM