All too often in recent years, election results have instilled in this observer a deep sorrow.
The problem isn’t necessarily with individual outcomes. The sorrow stems from the sense that far too many voters don’t take civic duties seriously. That duty is to become informed, to consider the actual job or issue at hand and to vote thoughtfully rather than in a mindless rage or as an expression of tribalism.
Evidence indicates that too many hns last week failed those tests.
Start with the overwhelming defeat of all five amendments on the statewide ballot. It would be one thing if most of the “no” voters had solid reasons to oppose the amendments. Some groups, indeed, gave succinct and at least somewhat substantive for their stances. Agree with them or not, they at least were using thought, not exploiting anger unrelated to the ballot propositions themselves. They merit respect.
Alas, however, I guarantee that very large numbers of people — more than the margins of difference in several cases— had no idea what they were voting against. They couldn’t tell you what would happen for or against teachers, schools, trust funds or anything as a result of Amendment 3. They had no clue how Amendment 4 would affect small businesses or parish government budgets. Egged on by rabble rousers and by groups they were told to vote no on everything in order to “send a to Jeff Landry.”
As if the aforementioned governor, not the teachers or the business owners or the civil servants, or the general public and general welfare, would bear the primary benefits or brunt of the amendments’ failures. The people and groups pushing a universal vote-no-to-send-a-message line were demagogues, and the voters mindlessly parroting that message and following it were irresponsible. Good citizens know the ballot box in a constitutional republic isn’t supposed to be an id-expression machine; it’s a place to try to effectuate real-world consequences for a better society.
The same criticism of purblind voting holds true with the successful Republican move to punish incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy for a single vote — namely, Cassidy’s decision to find then-former President Donald Trump guilty for his behavior before and during the infamous U.S. Capitol riot.
Legislating well actually takes skill. The work of senators and representatives also has real-world consequences. The ability to get provisions into law that help or hurt the state or nation isn’t a mere matter of showing up and saying “yessir” to a president or party leader.
If you don’t like Cassidy’s vote on former President Joe Biden’s “infrastructure bill” or think Cassidy’s proposals to reform entitlements are bad ideas, or if you thought his nastily negative campaign is a mark of bad character, then fine: Vote against him. If you are impressed by Rep. Julia Letlow’s winsome personality and think it will pay dividends for h, fine: Vote for her. If you believe state Treasurer John Fleming’s long medical and political career has shown he’s the man for the job, great.
But if, as so, so many voters said so often to interviewers, they just hate Cassidy because he “voted against Trump,” give me a break.
Those same voters will say again and again they want elected officials to vote their consciences, yet they punish anyone who takes political risks to do exactly that.
Moreover, the very nature of that “vote against Trump” should be among the most forgivable. It’s virtually certain that Trump would have been found guilty by the requisite two-thirds of senators if about a dozen senators hadn’t used the anti-historical, that an impeachment conviction shouldn’t apply to a man already out of office.
A mob, trying to stop a sacred civic ceremony, injured 140 officers, some of them quite seriously; massively defaced this nation’s citadel of representative democracy; and agitated for the vice president’s execution (and came within less than a minute of overtaking his family). Yet Trump while refusing for 187 minutes to urge them to stop or to ensure the safety of his own vice president’s family.
Surely a senator can be forgiven for determining that such actions merited punishment, even by those who, contrarily, believe the balance of arguments is in Trump’s favor. Either way, it is mindless (to re-use the precisely proper word) to insist by rote that one vote of conscience — or one refusal to follow political “orders” from any single man — negates all other considerations.
Democracy isn’t supposed to be like a fake-reality game of Survivor, where we keep voting folks off the island until one person remains. Self-governance is a privilege, and it is serious business. It’s time for more voters to start acting that way.