I posted the following response to a Coffee Party article on civil disobedience and voting. A commentator claimed that corruption was preventing people from voting.
Corruption is not excluding people from voting, individual voters are excluding themselves. When we have turnouts of less than 50% in 2010 the no shows have only themselves to blame. I often wonder how many who protested in Madison had voted. How many of those who signed the repeal petition in Wisconsin will actually show up for the recall election? Turnout in 2012 was low because too many stayed away because President Obama wasn't "perfect". If you're going to wait for the "perfect" candidate, you are going to let other people vote in some very imperfect people.
Rules of democracy - 1) show up to vote; 2) vote for who you believe in, even if you have to write some body in; 3) show up to vote; 4) the only vote thrown away is the vote not cast; 5) show up to vote!
Also make your voice known to the media; not just in the letters section. If a reporter claims, for instance, that Gingrich "won" in Georgia, email the reporter that only 6% of the eligible voters cast their vote for Gingrich in the Republican primary. If a reporter claims that someone won in a "landslide", email him or her that that someone received the vote of only 1/3 of the eligible voters. If we get more accurate reporting that show how thin the support of the "winners" is, maybe we'll get more people saying, "OMG, if I had only voted!"
Be your own little get-out-the-vote campaigner. On election day or the day before, drop off a home-made flyer at every house on your block. Be non-partisan. Make up a few catchy slogans like "Democracy counts on your vote to work".
Finally, be sure to show up to vote!
After I wrote the above I thought about how representative civil disobedience and voting are compared to each other. If 1,000 people show up for a demonstration in a town of 200,000, how representative are they of the other 199,000? If 60,000 people vote on election day, aren't they more representative of the 200,000 than the 1,000? Talk about the 1%, the 1,000 are only a half percent!
