Why I do not vote

Alert! Alarm! Vade retro, Satan! An abstentionist! Worse still, a satisfied abstentionist, because the few times I have voted, in a time frame of youthful innocence, I later regretted it and felt ashamed for years. That is how it is, having had a glimmer of hope makes me feel ashamed. Since I want to be a consistent cynic, on election days I lock myself at home, secure in my decision, but also with the will not to look at others with condescension, because no one deserves to have a bitter lady like me do so.

Is there anyone in the room who thinks that I cannot complain then? I am sorry to tell you that I can. I have not voted for decades and I always complain, and they have not come to arrest me yet. Anyway, at this point I would like to make a couple of reminders. Firstly, voting is a right, not an obligation, in the Spanish state. A right implies that we can decide not to exercise it. There are other rights that I have not exercised nor will I exercise, without anyone being scandalized.

Thus, my citizenship card does not depend on the vote. I pay taxes, for example. Is a person who votes every four years and engages in tax evasion perhaps more worthy than me? Can that person complain?

If I were to vote, I would be so hypocritical that I do not know if I could look at myself in the mirror the next day. I know too many politicians up close and many times it is hard for me to maintain a certain intellectual respect for them. It is not that I believe I am better than these people, it is that I expected more from them. A high percentage of politicians are disappointing. Is it sad? It is sad.

We can also talk about the system, if you feel like it. We can ask ourselves a question: do we vote for those who command or those who obey? The world is so complicated, there are so many superstructures that influence even the smallest decision of a city council that it is legitimate to consider what the role of those who govern is nowadays. There are also terribly de-democratizing elements. When a government increases its military spending because NATO has demanded it, for example, it does so by obeying the leaders of an entity that absolutely no one has voted for.

I will not deny that the ballot boxes are useful every four years for one thing: to scare the parties, so that they worry, so that they suffer. The festival of democracy for them is a drama. For me, it is a relic of the past, from when the world was simpler.