Did The Freedom Riders, Those Who Tried To Cross The Bridge Sacrifice Their Lives And Blood So People Could Turn In A Blank Ballot?

I have no respect for any academic or others who advocate that people on the left not vote.  Non-voters have opted to exercise no responsibility in what reality can be as opposed to their make-believe future which is apparently supposed to just happen without the necessary reality that could produce it being put into place.  Whenever, wherever, I hear encouragement for people to not vote in even a flawed democratic election which has the possibility to really produce a better result than a bad one, I know that someone wants something for themselves, not the common good.

Mostly, those allegedly principled non-voters will present their choice in the most annoying of ways, as something of great moral import that deserves the attentions of other people.   And not only the attention, not only the respect but the admiration of other people.  And in that lies the delusion of the principled non-voter, their non-action is a refusal to act to change reality for the better and, at its worst, an encouragement to others to make the same self-aggrandizing, self-deluding and selfish non-action.

I recall hearing the prominent Black journalist Callie Crossley engaged in a TV show in Boston where they were talking about journalists who don't vote because they want to strike a pose of being impartial.  She said that with all of the struggle, pain toil and blood shed to allow her as a Black Woman to vote, she would never choose to dishonor those who made the sacrifice by failing to vote. Which is, I think, the best way to think about the responsibility to vote, to do what can be done in the way of politics, that I've ever heard.  That idea informed everything I've thought about the issue ever since.

In Time magazine, two Ivy league academics, Eddie S. Glaude, jr. and Fredrick C. Harris advocated a symbolic act of non-voting, asserting that it will gain respect for Black people by politicians who they assert "take them for granted".

As both pressure voters and pivotal voters, African Americans can simultaneously deliver a victory for the Democratic nominee in swing states and keep the Democrats’ feet to the fire. Casting ballots as pressure voters would not merely be a symbolic act. Depending on the Blank-Out campaign’s success, it could have consequences for Democratic Party leaders down the line. Lower vote totals for the party’s standard bearer in red states could reduce representation of delegates at the 2020 convention, under formulas the party uses to estimate the number of delegates for each state. How well the party’s presidential nominees performed in the preceding two elections is one factor used to calculate the number of delegates for each state. We think the threat of losing delegate representation should incentivize red-state Democrats—and other Democratic leaders—to prioritize issues that directly affect black communities on the state and federal levels.

The idea that punishing the the Democratic Party, the party of, by an enormous percent, the largest number of Black People and people of color who hold political office - many from "red states" -  by withholding votes from Democratic candidates has certainly been proposed by others in the past and today.  I would challenge the two writers to point out a single instance in which it has produced the results promised by those calling for the punishment of Democrats by not voting for them.  It is one of the most illogical of all political strategies, as seen in in the disastrous Nader campaign in 2000 and repeated in 2004, it is a strategy capable of helping to produce a horrific Republican administration that produces a disaster for whatever progressive, liberal, leftist or even centrist progress has already been achieved.  It does nothing to improve anything except getting those who propose it time on talk shows and in magazines.  Anyone who doesn't think that the world would be a better place if Al Gore had not been cheated out of the presidency in 2000 is either too stupid to take seriously to or too much of a liar to listen to.

Politicians depend on votes, if they can't get them from one group, they are forced to look for them elsewhere.  A group which can make itself essential to the political election of a politician without costing them more votes than they bring is guaranteed to have the ear of that politician.  The same is true for supporters of political issues.  There are far better strategies than the simple-minded, irresponsible one of refusing to exercise the right to cast a vote which has a chance of producing what you need.   That is especially true this year when failing to get a President Hillary Clinton is guaranteed to put into office someone who will have done so with the support of white supremacists, racists and outright fascists and neo-Nazis.  For two academics to have made that proposal this year got them attention in Time magazine, it could get the rest of us the worst candidate who has run since the worst days of the 19th century.  The history recited in the article is not relevant, no, it is far more than just irrelevant, it is a smoke screen.  Comparing Hillary Clinton to Woodrow Wilson a century ago is not only vilely dishonest, it is insulting to the many Black politicians who have endorsed her, having worked with her for the past quarter of a century.

Young people are especially vulnerable to these perennial come-ons to either vote for never-will-wins and getting conned out of their right to vote for the best candidate who could win because they are the group with the least experience of life and with the least context in which to think about political issues.   Though older people are hardly invulnerable to being swayed by bad ideas.  The declarations of such voices of the alleged or presumed left, full of sound and fury can fork lightening. Unfortunately, it's a better future which is inevitably what gets burned to the ground when they strike.