Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Casting a vote against voting

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1998 | 10:09 a.m.

I sometimes think I should have titled this column "Au Contraire," so often do I find myself swimming upstream against the prevailing wisdom. Today is no exception as I finally out myself and my shameful secret: I'm not voting today.

While many of you are dutifully casting your ballot, I've cast mine aside. I will take no sides, select no lesser of evils, validate no one's nasty campaign tactics. This sort of behavior (or, rather, nonbehavior) is, I realize, frowned upon. Condemned by editorial scolds. Chastised by friends and family. Decried in a vigorous patriotic manner. My contention that not voting is my vote will be brushed aside by those more knowledgeable. Heads are shaken sadly, fingers wagged, injunctions issued: If you don't vote, you can't complain. You're part of the problem, not the solution.

Au contraire, I say.

My glib explanation is that between job, family, garage clean-ups, the baseball playoffs, cable TV, the New Yorker and the perverse workings of fate, I keep putting off registration. I'll do it tomorrow. But I don't, and, let's face it, registering is so easy these days a trained monkey could do it. Truth is, what began as procrastination has hardened into a stance -- apathy as the last defensible political position.

Part of it is disgust, of course. The process is an impacted tangle of shaded truths, poll positioning and heat-seeking lies, in which even the good guys are forced into the worst tactics. One example: A pro-Harry Reid ad attacks John Ensign's environmental record, accusing him of favoring looser restrictions on Lake Mead pollution. This is illustrated by footage of huge pipes spewing gunk into a body of water that I'll bet my swim fins isn't Lake Mead. It's a subtle distortion but a distortion nonetheless. I may favor Reid, but not without reservations now. That's one massaged truth among dozens during the silly season; who has the time or resources to sort them all out?

"I'm certain (attack advertising) contributes in some significant proportion to people's disinclination to vote," says UNLV political science Professor Tim Fackler. It's not a huge factor, he says. "Perhaps a 5-10 percent decline from what you'd otherwise expect." However, the confusion from dueling ads probably is a large factor.

I know people who plan to vote for Candidate A solely because of Candidate B's venom. Others I know will vote by rote, their "research" into the issues consisting entirely of surveying their own passions (or lack of them) and balloting accordingly. If you cast such a leaky vote, I submit that you're not part of the solution, just a different problem.

But disgust is only part of the equation. To me, voting seems among the least-pressing of civic duties. I no longer believe my vote counts, and not in some Electoral-College, what's-one-ballot-among-many way, either. Even if my guy wins, so what? He'll be one more predictably partisan voice in a process that has all the impact on my life of continental drift. Oh, sure, politicians are distantly relevant, in the way that a cold front in the Midwest affects the weather here. But I'm too busy figuring out how I'm gonna pick up the kids from school or how to make the house payment and the car payments. I'd have better odds of a satisfactory voting experience if they made each ballot good for a free pull at Megabucks.

It's not just national politics. I've lived in Henderson more than two decades while city councils have come and gone, passing bushels of laws, and my life goes on pretty much the same, year after year. City Hall might as well be in Washington, D.C.

"I've always viewed failure to vote as itself a complaint," says Fackler (who nonetheless favors active voter participation). What is refusal to vote except choosing "none of the above" without the hassle of actually entering the voting booth? I don't think you automatically attain some moral high ground by virtue of having voted for one jerk you can't stand instead of another jerk you can't stand. Participation isn't its own reward.

I concede that my stance has its share of pitfalls, as does any but the most rigid ideology. I probably should -- and eventually will -- take interest in school board races, the better to avert any potential Christian Coalition takeovers. But with all the desiccated choices, bad vibes and low return on your investment of time and energy that voting involves, until they institute that Megabucks things, I will continue to wonder, what's in it for me?

Go ahead, write me off as a crank, a weirdo, a com-symp loser. Except for this: According to Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller, a rosy 60 percent of registered voters will hit the polls today; not bad, considering most elections. Except that only half of those eligible to vote are even registered. Such has been the trend this century, as politics has become more confusing than ever. Which means I'm suddenly in the unexpected position of being among the majority. Perhaps I'm not as au contraire or against the stream as I'd thought.