Why Your Vote Matters To Me

October 22, 2020

We are less than two weeks out from the election now, and several times in the last few weeks, I have seen people on my Facebook timeline share some form of the following quote. Always with different graphics, occasionally with slightly different wording, but all the exact same sentiment:

"I am less concerned with who you vote for than I am with how you treat the people who vote differently than you."

I understand the main sentiment here is that we should be kind to others, which is generally something I agree with; and in a normal election cycle, this rhetoric wouldn't bother me as much. But I think we're past the point of pretending this is a normal election. Sadly, in this election cycle, more than ever before in our country's recent history, someone voting "differently than you" could actually be a matter of life and death.

So while kindness is a good principle in general, I, for one, am tired of being told that I have to be kind to people who vote against my well-being and the well-being of others. People whose votes are cast with a complete lack of kindness in their hearts.

There will always be people making comments such as "It doesn't matter who you vote for" or "They're both equally bad" or "I don't like either candidate." I do understand the feeling, but at this point, these comments just do more harm than anything else. If I hear one more person say that they will still be friends with you regardless of which candidate you vote for because it's the "adult" thing to do, I might scream. People always have the right to cut people out of their life over major disagreements (such as human rights), and your opinion of whether or not they're doing the "adult" thing is irrelevant.

This election is about harm reduction. I worked in the field of addiction and mental health for years. Harm reduction is a term everyone in that field is probably familiar with, and for those not familiar with it, it's probably self-explanatory. Allow me to give a few examples anyway. Let's say a person smokes meth and heroin every day and they're finding it too difficult to quit altogether. No substance abuse at all would be ideal, but addiction is powerful, and going cold-turkey feels impossible for some, and will be painful for most, if not all. So they focus on harm reduction. Smoking meth and heroin once a week is better than doing it every day. Continuing to smoke heroin but quitting meth is better than doing both. Using cigarettes to help you stop abusing heroin might be replacing one addiction with another, but it will still be better for you.

Similarly, let's say you want to get into better physical shape, but struggle with your diet and exercise. Going to the gym only once a week is better than not going at all. Dieting five days a week and eating junk food the other two is better than eating the junk food every day. Drinking water with your processed fast-food burger and skipping the dessert is better than adding a soda and ice cream to the meal. This is harm reduction.

And in the case of this election, our harm reduction is Joe Biden. How can you look at what we currently have and not think, "This other option seems a little better?" Things are not going to magically be better once Trump is gone, but his removal is a vital piece of that puzzle.

How you vote matters to me because a vote for Trump is an act of violence against every minority group in this country. Do you have a family member who's disabled? A friend who's LBGTQIA? A coworker who's undocumented? I'll make it even easier for you: is there anyone you care about who's a woman? A vote for Trump is an act of violence against that person.

I know you're desperate to tell people that you'll still be their friend regardless of how they vote, but consider how your minority friends feel about you being chummy with people who voted against their safety.

Would you hang out with people who voted for Hitler and not expect your Jewish friends to feel betrayed? If Hitler were around today and were a presidential candidate, would you, knowing what you know now, still share posts about how the "adult" thing to do is just accept the fact that your friends voted for him?

I know, I know, you're probably tired of hearing Trump being compared to Hitler. But have you actually considered why he's been compared to him so many times?

A lot of people act like Hitler and the holocaust are ancient history because it didn't happen in most of our lifetimes (although there are still some living holocaust survivors, so it isn't quite as ancient as people like to think). Trump is here in front of us, this is happening right now, and historians will tell you people are acting the same way about it now as they did back then. Saying that it isn't that big a deal, that people are overreacting when they sound alarms about it, that nothing bad will actually come of it and no one will really be harmed.

But people are being harmed. Not to the level of the holocaust -- yet -- but we can't allow ourselves to rule that out as a possibility. The holocaust began exactly the same way things are going now, and if we don't stop it, there's every possibility that it could lead to something that devastating again. All the signs are there, and despite the fact that we've seen it before, some people still believe that it could never happen here and now. But it can happen anywhere, and at any time.

If something as vast and "unthinkable" as the holocaust doesn't strike you as personal enough, then I'll try something that might be a little closer to home for some of us here in this century. Do you know anyone who's been a victim of domestic abuse or emotional abuse of any kind? Would you remain friends with their abuser?

Let's be honest. Trump is an abuser and anyone who votes for him is actively supporting abuse. Remaining friends with a Trump voter is on the same level as knowingly staying friends with someone who beat his ex-wife, while also leading the ex-wife to believe she has your friendship, telling her it isn't a big deal, using the excuse that you weren't the one who beat her, so why should she be mad at you? You're just palling around with her abusive ex because it's the adult thing to do.

Being willing to accept your friends as Trump supporters doesn't make you superior to anyone else. It is not more mature or adult. It is enabling an abuser.

I get it: Joe Biden isn't ideal. He would not have been my first choice, either. Or my second, or my third, or......... But he's what we got, and literally the only option besides what we currently have.

And what we currently have is a cult leader in the White House. Now, I am not sure if he initially intended to start a cult, but his followers quickly became one. And he certainly isn't shying away from it now. He's too egotistical to ever tell his supporters to stop, even if they are white supremacist hate groups and he's on national television. Instead he just tells them to "stand back and stand by." The Proud Boys instantly adopted that as their slogan, and by the way, the KKK and the Taliban both have expressed their support for him. At least he officially rejected the Taliban's endorsement, but the fact that the Taliban wants him to win should be enough for you.

And he wouldn't even commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election. You all saw that, right? Trump being asked to make a promise that he'll leave office peacefully upon losing the election, and refusing to do so?

Even if we did live in some bizarre parallel universe where Biden was "just as bad" as Trump in terms of racism, sexual assault, or even mental status (three things Trump supporters hilariously like to point the finger at Biden for), he'd still be a better choice just based on the fact that he can at least be trusted to honor election results. I can't think of any other candidate who would be bold enough to say on live television that he wants to stay in office even if he loses the election. Remember when he said that "getting rid of the ballots" would be a way to prevent him from having to leave office? Do you realize what a big deal that is?

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate the two-party system. I'm not affiliated with any party and don't want to be, and yes, in some cases, Democrats can be just as bad as Republicans. There are plenty of politicians from both parties that I don't like (they probably outnumber the ones I do like by quite a bit). But this election stopped being about Democrat vs. Republican a long time ago. At this point, it is simply Trump vs. Literally Anybody Else.

We need to vote for Joe Biden, not because he's a great candidate, not because he's a Democrat, but because he's the only one who stands a chance at getting our current wannabe dictator out of office. Even if he winds up being terrible too, we'll deal with that problem during his presidency, we'll vote him back out in another four years. But right here, right now, we've had an almost four-year trial period of a Trump presidency. It's time to cancel the trial before we get charged for another four years of it.

And between his horrible response to COVID-19 and his constant encouragement of hate groups, a lot of us will not survive another four years.

For many people, this election is the real-life version of one of those "Would You Rather?" games, where you're given two options that are both undesirable, and forced to make a choice. For instance, would you rather have skin cancer or lung cancer? With one, you have only a 1% chance of dying from it. With the other, that goes up to 44%. Obviously, no one wants cancer of any kind, but I know which one I would rather have.

The worst thing about this game is that choosing "neither" simply can't be done. If you don't make a choice for yourself, other people will make it for you. If you refuse to choose between skin cancer and lung cancer, you're still going to get one -- but it will be somebody else's decision which one you get.

I know that when you don't like either candidate, it can be tempting to vote for "no one" and I've seen many people express their intent to do just that. But keep this in mind: even if the majority of the country votes for this mystical person known as "No One," it doesn't mean that No One is going to win.

And as much as I hate the two parties, voting for a third party isn't going to change anything right now, either. The "choice" of a third-party vote is an illusion. They are only on the ballot to make it look like you have another option, when we all know that one of two candidates is going to win. It's going to be Biden... or it's going to be Trump. There are no other possible outcomes. So either admit that you want it to be Trump, or vote for the other guy to prevent that. Four more years of the way things are now, or a chance at something different. Perfection is something we know we won't get. But we already know that what we have isn't working, so let's try something we haven't tried yet.

Even if Biden wins the popular vote by a small margin, the Electoral College can still screw us like it did in 2016. They can't do that if the margin is large enough. That's why this election, and getting as many people as possible to vote in it, is so important. #TooBigToRig is a hashtag I've seen going around social media to promote voting in the largest numbers possible. Make Trump lose in such a landslide that it will be impossible for the Electoral College to force him on us again.

Then, hopefully, we can begin to get to work on abolishing the Electoral College and the two-party system that got us into this mess.

And as a reminder, this isn't only about the presidency. It's about the entire cabinet. It's about the Supreme Court. It's about the entire White House and everyone appointed by the president. It's about Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell. It's about local candidates, too. Your state's senators and representatives, governors and mayors and city councils, and so many more offices.

It's not about perfection, but about progress, even in the smallest amounts. It's about trying to get to a point, someday, where maybe it won't be as important which candidate you vote for, because none of them will be actively trying to harm us.

I know that harm-reduction voting sucks, but it's necessary. Someday, I hope it might not be necessary anymore. But for the time being, please vote to reduce the amount of harm being done to the American people and the world, to any extent possible.

tags: politics, voting, GOTV, elections, election day 2020