This is not going to be a sermon on why we should all vote. I want this to be clear from the get-go. As I state in the title, I haven’t voted in the past, despite being eligible to do so. I don’t regret that decision in any way—nor do I regret the choice I eventually made to register and vote. I’m not here to offer judgement or advice—just my story.
As a Child…
Civic duty and patriotism weren’t exactly subjects of discussion in my home, growing up. Civic duty was a thing I learned in school, but in the context of Japan—and being the only non-Japanese there, there was a silent understanding that I was an outside observer in these duties.
I would be an adult before I would be able to see how my parents’ views guided and confused mine, because my parents’ views were never explained to me. My father is a naturalized US citizen, but never expressed any particular attachment, neither to the US nor to India where he was born and raised. His naturalization, he once explained to me, was simply a practical decision when I was born—better that everyone in the family share a nationality. My mother was born and raised in the US, and so civic duty was important to her—but in a way that seemed so obviously common sense to her that she never vocalized it until I completely derailed from her expectations of common sense.
We learned in school that it was important to stay abreast of the news, but my family did not have Japanese newspapers delivered to us—we had an English newspaper. We didn’t watch TV. Our newspaper was our source of news, and it appeared to be geared toward the more internationally-minded. So the news I would read about would not be the same news my classmates would read about. Reading Japanese newspapers would have been extremely difficult for me as a third- fourth- and fifth-grader, with too many characters I didn’t know how to read yet, and no one at home to help me. It seemed that reading our English newspaper only highlighted my otherness more than it already was on a daily basis—so I quickly decided not to bother with it at all.
When my mother occasionally freaked out about news, distressed and hand-wringing, I watched with a detached bewilderment. When Bush was elected in 2000, I was baffled at my mother’s frustration over some leadership dispute an ocean away in another world. When 9/11 happened, my mother was beside herself, panicking and rushing to make phone calls.
“But do we know anybody in New York?” I asked, confused.
“No,” my mother snapped tersely.
“But then why are you so upset? This sort of stuff happens all the time,” I said, thinking of the then-ongoing genocide in Sudan, which had been in the papers for months and had a much higher death toll than this one attack in New York.
My mother called me spoiled in a tone I’d never heard from her before. I shut my mouth and judged her for so unabashedly prioritizing strangers in New York over strangers in Sudan.
As a Teen…
Eventually, I moved to the US. Still my understanding of politics was limited.
In high school in Buffalo, NY, I finally dared to ask the meaning of these strange variations on the words democracy and republic. A classmate kindly explained it to me, with the air of someone glad to be in the position of knowledge, but confused at this basic lack of understanding in me.
“It’s like, if you’re a democrat, you believe in abortion and not the death penalty. If you’re a republican, you believe in the death penalty and not abortion.”
“But what if I believe in neither abortion nor the death penalty?” I asked, every bit the wide-eyed teen.
“You can’t do that,” said my classmate impatiently. “I mean, I guess you could be independent? But it’s better to pick one or the other.”
Well, clearly this was a ridiculous system. I decided that I was independent, and it would be a waste of time to learn any more about this party business.
The 2008 Elections
The 2008 elections were the first where I was eligible to vote. In 2008, I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska and I didn’t have a car. Therefore, I didn’t vote.
I’ll elaborate.
Fairbanks, AK has an abysmal barely-there public transportation system, and it was even worse in 2008. There were 4 bus lines, and they mainly operated on a schedule of once an hour during normal business hours. The margin of error with regards to the schedule was, in my experience, +/- 1hr. I was once left standing out in the -40º Alaska cold by the side of a road for over an hour, at which point the bus I’d been waiting showed up with the next bus immediately behind it. I would have already been at my destination had I chosen to walk, but it was cold and I didn’t want to miss the bus between stops.
To register to vote, I would have needed to take one of these buses, and then take it back. It would have to be on a weekday, so I’d have to work it in with my class and work schedules. To be out in town entirely dependent on the bus schedule to return felt like a terrifying prospect.
Furthermore, it was Alaska. McCain was running with Sarah Palin as his running mate. What was the point in voting? The state would go to McCain regardless.
Why Should I Vote?
When my mother learned that I hadn’t voted, she made her disapproval clear.
“Why should I vote?” I asked. “They don’t let random Japanese people vote. Why does it make sense for me to vote?”
My mother shook her head mutely. Her disapproval was palpable, as was the air that she thought that I was being cheeky, and so wouldn’t dignify my question with a response.
But my question was entirely sincere. People in the US, I had learned during my time in Buffalo and Fairbanks, seemed singularly concerned with the right of foreigners to have a say in the running of the US. I, it seemed to me, didn’t have the right to a say in a country I felt I barely knew.
For years, whenever the question of voting came up, I would pose the question to people: “Why should I vote?”
“It’s your duty as a US citizen,” some would say.
“It’s wrong not to,” others would say.
“If you don’t vote you’ve got no right to complain,” still others would say.
None of these was an argument—just guilt trips. So I disregarded them. Sometimes, the same people who would tell me these things would also voice the opinion that immigrants with insufficient time or experience in the US should not be allowed a voice in these elections. To me, it seemed odd that I should vote because I happened to be born on US soil, while the person who voluntarily chose the US should not.
I didn’t vote, and I don’t regret it.
Then, one day in Namibia when the 2012 elections were approaching, one of the leaders in my research group at last offered me a different argument:
“We’re each only allowed say in the running of one—maybe two—countries in the world. We have so little say in how the world is run. So we should use what voice we do have to the fullest.”
The moment she said it, I felt that it was true. At the earliest opportunity, I registered myself to vote as an overseas resident—a process more complicated than I would have liked, given that I’d never legally resided in the US as an adult. I voted in the 2012 elections and have continued to do so in the elections where I was eligible to vote ever since.
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