Vote for Nobody in 2024

If you are ultimately fortunate enough to be a multi-millionaire or a billionaire, I strongly urge you to vote.?After all, you are the only derivative beneficiary regardless of which party wins.?For the rest of us, it is truly pointless, and a total waste of our time, to vote at the federal level.?If all the super-rich who are registered to vote exercise their right on Election Day, we are, in effect, looking at a voter turnout of less than 2%.?I would love to see the look on the face of the winner with that voter turnout rate.?And, I would tell him or her not to worry – everyone who matters to him/her voted; of sorts, a 100% voter turnout.

It is not a question of political parties; it is of politicians per se. It is not the case that a political party (your political party) has all the answers and the other one is going to destroy everything (does this even make sense?). It is about politicians. And they are all the same, regardless of party. And they do not have any other greater goal than their own pockets and their own power. Political parties exist to provide you with an illusion of choice, and an illusion that democracy is still in place. The varying personalities of the one who occupies the Oval Room simply provides entertainment, and a smokescreen while they all do exactly the same thing (not do much to help out the conditions of the average and the downtrodden).

I quickly need to add right now that it is critical that the average citizen vote at the local level, and perhaps important that they vote at state levels.?But they should not just stick a ballot paper inside a box; they need to be very active in understanding the issues within the community and the candidates’ positions on those.?This is because voting party lines can be a mistake, and may not serve your purpose.?There is the confounding nature of more conservative Democrats and more liberal Republicans and all in between.?It is far more judicious to judge where the candidates stand on particular community level issues, and how do they plan to solve them??Where would the resources be coming from??The candidates should be made to hold several town hall meetings where they respond to the local residents’ carefully thought-out questions.?I will share more on this idea in a different article if you like.?

Coming back to the topic at hand, I have been pondering two questions: (a) Does the average citizen really matter? And (b) How much power does the average citizen wield, even in a democracy (let us not forget the translation of the word – rule by the people)??Lip service overflows in assuring us how much we, the people, are in control of everything.?But, let us bring it down to a measurable dimension.?Minus being swayed by propaganda and hype, we voice our “own” opinions only once every four years in relation to who should be running the country.?For the remaining 1,459 days, we don’t matter and we don’t count. ?I should not have to explain this. ?I said “voice our opinions” and not otherwise because, for one thing, the Electoral College system does not have to care about the popular vote; the candidate who the people may have chosen may not be the one who, paradoxically, actually wins the office.?There are other issues with voter disenfranchisement. And more.?

The average citizen, for months on end before Election Day, passionately supports his/her candidate, carries out vociferous debates with those who don’t, sometimes gets angry and breaks relationships, forms a different opinion about a person they may have known for years (and perhaps had a beautiful connection), walks the streets and knocks on doors, attends meetings, makes calls, watches the debates and finds all kinds of evidence to come to the conclusion that their candidate won the debates, is glued to all media on election matters, helps people go to the polling stations, and makes sure that they vote.?They live and breathe supporting their candidate.?And then, many a times, they may find out that their candidate, who won the popular vote – that is, more people voted for him/her – did not win.?And then, the frustration targets the electoral system.?People talk about how the entire campaigning and all that energy was not truly necessary; that all we needed was for the members of the Electoral College to sit down at a meeting on an appointed day and decide who will be the next President, and how we could have saved a lot of energy, money, time, and the (now) useless display of extreme emotions.?For a few days, the Electoral College is under verbal (almost superficial) attack, and then it fizzles down very quickly like a faulty firecracker, only to surface again four years later.?Not much is done in relation to the electoral system reform.?Even when it comes to the very legitimate issues of ensuring voter participation by all, there are debates.?Can it get any sillier than this?

I am reminded of the fan supporting their favorite team, wearing their colors and apparel, going to the games, tailgate parties, or watching the game on TV, screaming and yelling support, very overtly displaying extreme elation at good moves, and total frustration at bad ones, and, at the end, coming home (or, going to bed) very happy and satisfied that their team won or very sad and depressed that they did not.?Here’s the thing.?Let us imagine that the fan did not do any of the above, and the game still took place.?There will still be a winner and a loser (even the loser makes money, just a little less than the winner), and the only people who benefit financially are the ones directly connected to the operation of the teams.?The rest are optional but very useful (financial) bonuses. The fans can only give, but they cannot derive any of the profits that the people connected to the teams do.?Bottom line, the outcome of the game does not depend on whether fans sit at home and watch TV, come to the stadium to watch it in place, do tailgate parties, or choose to completely ignore that a game is happening.?It depends on the players and how they play.?And, at the end, the ones to derive any benefits are the ones directly connected to the teams.?I am obviously not advocating a system where fans get a cut or something, but I am saying that, after all is said and done, the fans do not count when it comes to derivative beneficiaries.?It is as if they do not exist.?But, they are a very important piece in the scheme and in the sports culture.?If you bring it down to brass tacks, the fans manage the hype and the distraction, and are the major financial benefits source.?But they do not win or lose; their team does.?

And, in an odd parallel, so it is with the average citizen from the perspective of the candidate. They don’t exist. They are useful bonuses, to provide meaningless campaign donations, and everything mentioned before, and to crunch the numbers during elections in order to justify the winner; but, if they did not do anything to have their presence known, it would not really matter in the aftermath. ?The campaign promises vanish with the inauguration, and the average citizen goes about dealing with life regardless who won the election.?Their daily circumstances are not different based on the winner.?The only group who always wins, regardless of who is elected, are the super-rich. There have been recent examples at a global level where the voter turnout was horrifyingly low, in so-called democracies, and yet the winner had no issues declaring that the “people had chosen”.??Please understand that I am not discounting the emotional rush and the ego boost that chanting crowds provide; nice bonus, but even these are not integral to the real purpose.?

A major part of what divides supporters of one party against another is campaign promises. For example: How many candidates have you heard say that, if elected, they will be taxing the wealthy? Basically all of them have made this campaign promise.?How many who got the Presidency has actually carried it out? You know the answer to that question.?Interestingly, if the super-rich paid their proper share of the taxes, a lot of the issues we face at the national level would not exist.?It should not take a tax reform to make them pay their proper share of the taxes; it did not take a tax reform for the rest of us to be paying our taxes.?Given the obscene amount of money that the super-rich make, should it not be a no-brainer that they are more than able to pay what they are supposed to? They don’t because of a very simple reason – endless and bottomless greed. ?If they spend a lot of energy trying to find loopholes, and evade paying taxes (in 2021, this select group avoided paying approximately $163 billion in personal income – not their corporate income - taxes), what does that tell you? If their share would solve national issues, and they don’t want to pay (talking about both company and personal income taxes), I am of the opinion, and you would agree, that they love their own pockets more than they love their country.

On a related adjunct topic, I believe it should be mandatory for the President to dedicate the entire State of the Union address in the fourth year to campaign promises made by him/her, and to take each individual promise separately, and then provide tangible evidence on how each promise was kept, and if not, why it could not be (with clear evidence to back up the failing).?If they are reelected, they should repeat the same in the eighth year State of the Union address, with campaign promises made during the second round.?We will see that campaign promises are made, but rarely kept. And, after a period, we will see a change in what and how promises are made; that is, if the candidate can momentarily drop the political hat in favor of a human one.

I also believe that, once nominated by their party as the candidate to challenge the incumbent, the candidate needs to spend a minimum of three to six months living in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the country, using only the resources available to actual residents of that area.?Candidates need to see the country from the perspective of the truly underprivileged and downtrodden before they can potentially occupy a place in the ivory tower, sheltered from all of the realities faced by the people.

But, I digress.?Let us go back to our regular show.?

Campaign ads reveal the hypocritical nature of the other candidates, people who will become very friendly with one another once the race is over.?All that we can gather is that every candidate has dirt hidden under the rug; every one of them has some hypocrisy that they shamelessly contradict when they deliver campaign speeches.?Yet, the real paradox is that we have elected people who grab pussies, are openly racist, and are totally unsuitable for the office.?We remain quiet while they break every rule of the office, and still maintain invincibility that is unthinkable if an average citizen did anything remotely similar.?

The global pandemic brought with it hopes of global cooperation, for a very brief moment (and fizzled out just like that faulty firecracker).?When the politicians and businessmen recovered and regrouped from the initial shock (and it did not take them long – remember how, during the second month of the crisis, how some manufacturers sold PPEs and protective masks overseas to the tune of a $280 million dollar profit on a given day while the country shamelessly declared a shortage of those same items, and this for a country having the highest score – 84 – on a global pandemic preparedness scale), their greed and salivating mouths took over.?Corporate predation took over, and despite all sorts of believable excuses on why the prices of most items need to go up, major companies made record profits even when compared to pre-pandemic years, and the country added a record number of billionaires during the crisis.?The top multi-billionaires added $1.3 trillion to their coffers.?All of this while the average citizen wondered how to feed their infant babies because they did not have the money, and was in favor of $300 a month payment from the government as an assistance, and joined countless others in long lines for the soup kitchen, many in the line as a first for them.??At another level, there were 181 countries with absolutely no access to any vaccines whatsoever.?To laugh in the face of the average citizens and poor countries, during this time, some billionaires spent over $2 billion for an 11 minute ride into (so-called) space to experience weightlessness for 3 minutes.?It would have taken a mere $6 billion to solve the food shortages across the entire planet, a profit amount made by one of the greediest companies in a single day!?Donating one day’s profit would have solved a global problem.?Unfortunately, greed does not allow that.?But, it justifies tax evasion.?And, the candidate for the Presidency makes you a promise s/he will do something about it, but, once in office, forget that they ever said that.?Instead, they will severely cut the budget of the IRS, crippling it enough to avoid auditing the wealthiest, and making it easy to audit the poor because it is so easy to do so.?At the same time, the Defense budget increased from $754 billion to $777.7 billion last year.?That money is needed for our military presence and intervention across many parts of the world, a purpose that serves very little when it comes to the daily needs of the average citizen, or the broken infrastructure of our educational system, or roads and highways, or bridges, or … (the list is long; I need to stop here).?IRS needed $3.5 billion more to run its operations optimally.?They will not be getting it.?Whether you are a fan of the IRS or not, you will have to agree that a proper audit of the wealthiest is critical to our economic health, particularly when gas prices have gone up sky high and the cost of basic items needed for survival have gone up anywhere from 5 to 20%.?This leads people to buy less, even when it comes to necessary items.?If the average citizen curtails its spending and consumption, the economy will be crippled.?But, do they matter??No, because lives of the super-rich is unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy.

One of the most urgent needs of this time is to do something about the global climate changes; the window for effective solutions is very, very small, and getting uncomfortably close to being unsolvable.?Not much will be done about it because it goes against giant industries and their profit margins.?The average citizen may suffer from acute and chronic health issues as a direct result of the toxins spewed out in the air by many of these industries, but they don’t count.?It is evident they don’t when our leaders open their speech at a climate conference with statements on nuclear arms capabilities of a not-so-friendly country.?To this day, I am lost as to how that even got into the speech at a climate conference.?

Let us address the basic question: How does the life of an average citizen change under different regimes??The short answer would be: not much that is attributable to the actions of the Presidency.??The issues or the probabilities remain the same, and do not vanish with a change of the Presidency, regardless of party affiliation.?Of course, both issues we face and the probabilities of better circumstances are not static, and do have its upward and downward curves; however, these movements are mostly attributable to market conditions motivated primarily by endless greed.?The President will promise to solve the issues of the average citizen, and enhance the probabilities for a better life, but ends up focusing on foreign affairs more than the internal.?It is a bit more complicated than this simple statement, but it does boil down to how our lives do not shift because campaign promises are translated into reality; they shift based on other factors.??Perhaps the irony is how governments insist that they are there to serve the people; they don’t. They govern.?Else the name of that body would be Servement and not Government.?The closest to Servement are local governments, but they are not fully free of the dynamics and conditions of the federal government.?In between are the state governments.?

Asking all average citizens to not vote for anyone at the federal level for at least one year has a basic intent: to send a powerful message to candidates that there is more to that position than meeting the desires of the super-rich, and ignoring the dire conditions of the poor, to pay attention to the environment, the educational enterprise, and to the legacy being left for the next generation.?The entire mechanism has currently become a joke and a cheap entertainment for the people (but was always a boon for the wealthiest); something we can do without.?

Allow me a recommendation before I close: talk to a fair sample of Millennials and Gen Zs, and see what they say about voting and their futures.?If you understand the sentiment of our future, and agree with those, please, at least for one year, vote for nobody in 2024.

Remember my suggestion in the beginning of this article for the multi-millionaire and billionaires to vote? ?Some voter turnout is necessary for the count; else it would not be an election. Well, you may have figured it out that they don’t have to vote either.?And that is because they will win regardless of who wins.?For the rest of us, we will lose regardless of who loses.?

(Update March 2024: Under today's senseless genocide being committed against Palestinians, I do have an alternative suggestion to abstention: write-ins. This is a great option especially if your civic sense consciousness is gnawing at you, and your activist self is on high alert.? You have the freedom to see it and say it like it is.? Do go to the voting booth, and do a write-in.? I will share with you my write-in vote:? for President, it will be Ceasefire Now, and for Vice-President, it will be Free Palestine. If some of you feel like legally changing your name to Ceasefire Now, this may be the moment.)