Politics has been an uphill battle since before this year’s freshmen were born. The continuous changes in political climate — woven intricately with social and economic upheavals throughout the years — make it difficult to identify clear progress, and our collective inability to properly recognize the root of our problems may have led us to believe that a single election would work like a get-fixed-quick plan. This kind of mindset, in turn, has valued all possible solutions as transient as we tend to expect the results of elections to address decades’ worth of problems in just a few years. We have failed to understand how elections play into the progress of a nation, limiting our understanding of responsible voting.
When it comes to the responsibilities of a voter, we mostly focus on the basics: registration, education, and prevention of vote-selling. Rarely do we examine further since these basics have already kept us occupied. However, today’s opportunities should not go to waste given the better facilities and extensions on voter registration, as well as the assistance of social media in voters’ education on the different candidates and their stands. It is time we evolve from the worn out “your vote counts” statements, rise above the basics, and understand what our true responsibilities are.
To do so, we ask two questions. First, how do we value a vote?
Once past the rules of eligibility, democracy treats all votes equal. It does not require reasoning; in other words, voting on a whim is equal to a vote done after countless hours of research. It is through our private conversations and public activity online that we influence others with our single vote. To further the point, we must begin taking in consideration the interests of others, especially those we rarely come in contact with. This means improving our ability to see the value of a candidate who may help others, but not ourselves. This is how we make our one vote count for more than just a single voice, and value it better.
Second, what should we value above a vote? (This second question does not mean to invalidate the first, but attempts to elevate the discussion once we’ve answered it.)
Small and large talk during campaign season usually begin with the question of who you are voting for. Our modest hunt for any possible solution is often abandoned for the belief that there is only one available, and that single solution is attached to just one candidate. The toxic manner in which we address elections has created this idea that only one candidate is capable of leading us, thus creating factions of Defensor diehards and Duterte apologists, among others.
Looking past the elections, all the nation’s votes will count for just one winner and several losers, but what lives past this is the influence, and this influence is from the things we have come to know. Instead of educating ourselves solely on who we want to vote for, we must educate ourselves on what kind of nation we would be under each of the potential candidates. We must prepare ourselves for each outcome and support the country in the direction it will be headed regardless of the ballot we cast. The point is to gain the ability to look past elections and not treat the immediate results as a pass or a fail. Give the person you did not vote for every chance to succeed. Give the future you didn’t pick the chance to live up to its billing, and maybe then the elections will start to mean something more.
