My Favourite Criticism

[gpeters]

Today at lunch, a friend critcized me, and I like his complaint very much.

He asked me: "Gavin, you are volunteering on 4 November to drive people to the polls on election day in the United States, and yet you refuse, on a kind of principle, to vote in that same election?"

I had to agree, he's right. Both are true. Does that make me a bad man?

Comments

[kiwano]

I think the principles motivating your two decisions are rather orthogonal. The driving clearly expresses the value that you place on good government anywhere in the world, even if your participation is rather limited by your geography to small actions like driving people to polls (instead of voting yourself).

The refusal to vote in the same election, on the other hand, speaks to the value that you continue to place on your being Canadian. The good government promoted by your driving people to the polls is right up there with peace and order in its Canadian-ness.

And on a more selfish level, your actually voting in a US election would require forfeiture of your right of return to Canada, which is a pretty big price to pay. You just do what you can, and that doesn't strike me as particularly bad.

In order to score some bad man points, you'd have to ridicule the voters in your car over the byzantine ballot papers that they have to fill out, and repeatedly express astonishment that they can have an election at all without a monarch (or representative) to drop the writ.

[gpeters]

also, more directly: it's a felony for me to vote in this election. The very earliest I could be a citizen, supposing I wanted to be one, would be around nine years from now.

- Gavin

[kiwano]

right, so assuming that comission of a felony makes you a bad man (which, when it's a felony to file taxes late, is actually quite an assumption to be making) then you're really avoiding being a bad man.

also, it's generally seen to be canadian to show more deference to the law than most other nationalities (certainly than americans).