A few days ago, on the day of the US midterm elections, someone said “If you don’t vote, you have no license to complain.”
That’s something that I took a bit of exception to, and here’s why.
I lived in the US from July 1997 to October 2003 under an H1-B work visa. Then up in Canada, it was from October 2003 until almost November 2012 before I actually got a chance to vote.
During this 15+ year time span, I was a productive, law-abiding, and most importantly, tax paying person in that country. Everything that I did contributed in some way to the country that I was living in. And there policies and decisions made by elected representatives of the citizens of those countries that could and did affect my life in that country.
Now I do understand that being able to vote is a privilege that comes with citizenship, that your voice as part of a whole can help shape the direction that the country moves forward. But to flat-out tell people that “if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain” riles me.
I know that non-citizens cannot vote, but that does not mean that they should be without voice. We may not have a direct say, but we know people who do have the right to vote, and those people can listen to what is said, understand where they’re coming from because they’re friends they work with every day.
Now, of course, I do have the privilege to vote, and I got to do so once already since gaining my citizenship. I get to do so again with the civic elections that are coming up on November 15 (though I will be casting my ballot in advance this weekend, as I’ll be in Toledo, Ohio).
This is somewhat of a weird election, due to it being for just the city. It’s actually far harder (well, for me anyway) to pay attention to what goes on at the civic level than what goes on at the provincial and federal levels. Those are talked about in the newspapers and on radio every day, and easy to find out information. Everything that happens on the civic level I have to either attend council meetings or read the local paper (which I don’t get, because the delivery people kept leaving it out in the rain and it turned to mush, so I figured ‘why bother?’)
But, as this will be only the third time I’ll have ever voted for political elections in my life, I’ve done my due diligence, looked over candidate websites (those that had them – those that did not pretty much lost my vote straight away), and will be voting for a mayor and councillors. There’s also school board votes as well, but since I have no kids, no relationship and thus no kids even potentially on the horizon, I am going to not cast any ballots there. Yes, perhaps I’m shirking this civic duty for the first time, but the issues for that position are completely irrelevant to me and not something I can even understand right now.
And yes, my third political election ever. I’m almost 41, and I’ve voted in that few. Or maybe fourth, I’m not sure. Why so few? Well, the first two I was able to do so in the UK, I really had no idea about political stuff at all and probably took cues from parents – something I so wouldn’t be doing now, because my views are pretty much a complete 180 from theirs. I could have sent votes back to the UK when I was in the US, but I didn’t care about the UK anymore (or was keeping an eye on what was going on). Instead, I was getting more familiar with the US system and paying attention to those issues. So then it was a long, dry period between then and the provincial elections last year, which was the first time I was eligible to cast a ballot here in Canada.
It’s still on my wish list to try and get back down to the US again, and try to get permanent residency there…. whenever that might happen. If it did happen, I might be in my 50’s before I vote again.