Lately I have seen quite a few passionate diaries about candidates and supporting our candidates during the primaries and candidates that we do not want to support and so on and so forth. Then these conversations frequently turn to the question of, “Will you support the ultimate nominee?” If the answer is not thoroughly affirmative, the flags start to fly usually accompanied by outcries for the DKos ban hammer.
I personally do not care for this response for several reasons — most of which boil down to this smack of authoritarianism that I just have a natural aversion to, but much of my revulsion is also based on personal knowledge and experience. I disapprove of forced voting under any circumstances. Just as many people in America threw their bodies onto the machinery for the sacred right to vote, in other parts of the world people did the same for the right not to vote — frequently by spoiling their ballot.
Another personal experience was reading a book from the shelves of our family library when I was in my 30’s. Much to my surprise and shock I discovered a loyalty oath tucked within the pages that had been prepared for my mother. She was quite retired by the time I stumbled onto this, but she had been a divorced elementary school teacher in a small town back when a divorced woman was practically a “fallen woman”. Today she is a proud ACLU member, but I have never spoken to her about this paper because something about it makes me feel sick inside. I know that my mother carries some social anxiety, and this has also been passed onto me. I am sure that much of that was generated because of loyalty oaths forced on a divorced woman raising her child in a small town.
Then, there is also the infamous Bulgarian Train voting system. Although referred to as vote-buying and as Bulgarian when it was widespread during Bulgarian elections in June and July of 2009, it also refers to a similar practice that has been used in some of the ex-Yugoslavian republics. In these areas, it is not about vote buying — it is about proof of party loyalty. The party provides its members with pre-filled ballots which the members cast, and then leave the polling station with the blank ballot that they received from the election officials. The blank ballot is then returned to the party officials in charge of running this train so that it can be pre-filled out and provided to the next members.
During the Civil Rights Movement, there was a kerfuffle in our household because everyone in our family was an FDR democrat with the exception of my grandmother — the lone republican. I was quite small, but I remember she held strong to the idea that her vote was her business. I remember when they came back from voting it was still going on — the question about who she voted for, and she refused to tell the adults, but when I asked, she leaned down and whispered in my ear, “I voted for the democrat”. Despite this I always thought there must be a mean streak in my granny since she had been a republican. Later going through family papers, I learned that her people had fought and died for the Union in Arkansas of all places. Her father and his mother were left destitute when they were cheated of a lump pension due them as a widow and child of a Union soldier killed in action.
So when people want to ask you about your vote, follow Granny Ishmael’s lead and tell them it is none of their damned business. We don’t do loyalty oaths, or run Bulgarian Train schemes, or let others force us to share our voting activities. Shame on those “тужибабe” who would rather report on our community members than work with them to try to persuade them or simply give them some space.
Смрт фашизму, слобода народу!
EDIT: I just want to add that there is another diary that has just gone up that has a great deal of information about non-voters and how important getting their vote can be to us: www.dailykos.com/…
I have no idea if I can do that, but I would certainly recommend a visit to this diary. I am reading it right now, and it makes a lot of sense.