Most people do not vote. Many, the vast majority certainly, live in countries where the governments regard elections as either an occasion for farce or a luxury best reserved for an undetermined future period. Still, the trappings of democracy have a certain totemic appeal; men who would once have styled themselves emperors or kings prefer now to be called president, despite their regimes having all the characteristics of monarchies, with ‘the party’ serving the place of feudal retainers for the modern warlord. This is due in large part to one of the most baleful legacies of the twentieth century’s socialist movements, their purposefully obfuscating language to fit the ideological needs of the moment. The fiction of the ‘peoples’ democracy’ served an end for a while, though they neither functioned in the interest of the people or were in any way democratic.

Those who live in liberal democracies, where the franchise has been expanded to its broadest possible limits, tend not to vote for reasons other than fear. In the U.S, turnout for federal elections has never topped 63% in the last forty years, and despite the fact that the number of registered voters has increased greatly, the percentage of those actually voting has, on average, gone down. One can ascribe this phenomenon to laziness, but the I would suspect that most non-voters are simply indifferent to the role government plays in their lives, despite it having increased signally since the sixties. Those who depend on state largesse, and those who are squeezed to pay for the same, can naturally be expected to be interested in the more obtuse issues that form the backdrop for much of the rhetoric of elections. Occasionally, an issue emerges that engages the attention of a large number of the populace, but for the most part, a significant proportion of the citizenry is prepared to let the world of politics pass them by.

This is probably a good thing. If the population as a whole were passionately engaged in debating and politicking, no nation would really be able to function; think the city of Paris writ large. The success of the modern liberal democracy is built on a paradox, that all citizens should be allowed to vote, and some show should be made of encouraging them to vote, but with the implicit understanding that a near majority of the enfranchised will not thereby exercise that right. Suffrage is a sop to assuage the pride of the masses; once granted, politics can proceed as usual.

Occasionally, non-voting is meant as an expression of defiance. There are those who cast protest votes for candidates who cannot possibly win, forfeiting participation in the electoral process in any meaningful sense. There are also individuals who refuse to vote altogether because they despise the system of government under which they live. But perhaps the most common reason for non-voting in this sense is frustration over the perceived lack of a decent candidate.

I had given thought to adopting this approach in this recent presidential election. Having surveyed the field of candidates, narrowed over the course of the past year or so to the four serious contenders now put forth by the two main parties, I found I had no enthusiasm for any of them. In the midst of a planet-wide conflict against an enemy whose hope lies in exhausting our will rather than our resources, and with unprecedented assaults on fundamental aspects of the culture than sustains America’s pre-eminence in the world, the statesmen who would lead us seem to me woefully inadequate. What does it mean if I vote for one of them?

This is not to say that they are bad or incompetent people, on the whole, they have educational and professional attainments far beyond what I am likely to achieve. In the case of John McCain, a genuine war hero, I can only offer my unqualified admiration for his service to his country. But we are not electing a national professor, CEO, or soldier, but rather, the man or woman who will serve as the face of the nation to the world, whose ideas will likely dominate public discourse over important issues for the next four years. They should be judged not only based on what they have done in the past, but what they promise for the future.

And it is what they have in mind for the country over which they would preside that concerns me. Apart from vacuous platitudes about ‘hope’ and ‘meaning’ none have seen fit to address, in a serious way, what I feel are the most important issues of the day; the long-term strategy for the War on Terror (though I hate the term, everyone knows what is meant by it), the cultural, economic, and social consequences of de-facto open borders, and the abysmal state of education. One can hardly fault them for preferring to focus on non-issues that offer the chance for distributing money to the electorate, such as national health care and increased social security benefits. Solving serious problems takes work and makes people angry, increasing the dole buys one votes and makes everyone happy, save those who have to pay for it. But thanks to nearly four decades of effort, they are a dwindling group with little courage for resisting extortion.

None of the candidates has a real plan for addressing the root cause of terrorism, namely, the fact that for decades acts of unprovoked, vicious banditry have gone unchallenged by responsible powers, leading those who would attack us to conclude, largely correctly, that their depredations would meet with only the most perfunctory reprisals. Only now, in the wake of the most awful atrocity yet visited upon us, has the American government seen fit to act in such a way befitting the scale of the problem. Will the would-be presidents stay the course? I’m not so certain.

The situation on the southern border is similarly a crisis of long standing, which the candidates for president seem determined not to even think about, much less address. In some form or another, all the candidates are hostile to the immigration laws as they now stand, laws passed by the legislature, which one would hope, as chief executive, they would be morally, as well as constitutionally bound to enforce. But this is not likely to happen. The Republicans need illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do for slave wages, as an exploitable resource for business, to be turned loose on the public dole when they have been squeezed for all the labor they are worth. Their opponents need a racial bloc vote, kept impoverished and linguistically and culturally isolated from the larger population, ready to vote for entitlements that the Democrats will be all to eager to provide.

Education, by any measure, is in an dreadful state. The Democrats, in thrall to the gargantuan teachers’ unions, have no power to change anything even if they wanted to, beyond calling for more money. The Republicans have simply given up, reduced to miming the positions of their opponents, with “No Child Left Behind” the crowning glory of the sclerotic, ineffectual, and appallingly expensive adventure in modern public education. Serious change is needed, but rather than an overhaul, the candidates for president promise only further gloss, and of course, more money.

But despite all of those reservations, and after much thought, I feel I would be irresponsible in not voting. As satisfying as it would be to bathe in the warm waters of self-righteousness, standing apart from the dirty business of give and take that forms the basis of politics in a republic, I realize that, in the end, politicians are only responding to the wishes of those who would elect them. By not voting, by taking myself out of the electorate, I forfeit my right to offer my own opinions about how the nation should be governed. To be a citizen in a republic is to be willing to compromise, to seek the best rather than the perfect.

And so although I sat out the primaries, I will cast my vote in November for the candidate I feel will best advance my own beliefs, rather than hold out for one who is better, but has the distinct disadvantage of not existing. Despite my doubts, there are only really two options, participate in the system, or drop out. As much as I worry about the candidates’ lack of interest in solving the most serious problems facing our nation, I would rather be a part of the workings of the republic than a critic standing outside, loud but impotent, like a screeching eunuch. Such is my civic duty, however distasteful it may be at times.