Currently, in this day and age, political parties and campaigns yearn for people to make their vote “count”. The current system is leaning towards asking for a mandate in voting, but with the current range of choices, if a person is aware about their standpoint and beliefs, they should be allowed to practice their freedom of choice to stand their ground and not vote.
Speaking from an individual standpoint, in the current landscape of political choice with the pseudo-two-party system in place, one does not have a real choice with respect to their own beliefs. We’re seemingly saying that the current voting system completely depends on the aspect of “choosing the lesser evil”. In this way, If people are aware and educated about their standpoint, what gives the system to force them to have a false sense of contribution? Today, each of the two parties play their own game of crowd capture where they play different sides of the same field. In the facade we live in, if an individual were to be enlightened about this fact, they must have the right to practice their freedom of choice to not vote. After all, a vote is deserved on a party which truly aligns with your ideologies without seemingly contracting it once they face the other way. It’s time to question the stand of these political parties, not because they are seemingly on multiple spectrums of different ideologies, no, that is a valid stance to have. A party is not expected to focus solely on one idea (like Marxism, Socialism, Conservative, etc.), but the question on their stance comes in when they represent stark contrasting idealogies. For example, to capture the support of the masses, the *** behaves as it were following a leftist idealogy and once they require the support of industrialists like the ******, they display a pro-Capitalist face. And, we citizens cannot expect them to not put up this act, after all, its the interests of the entire country that they are required to fulfill. But, at what cost? At the cost of their identity crisis, chaotic representation, alienation, and deceit. This is not the fault of the people of the party, it’s the fault of the system. Additionally, voting turnout does not represent growth in a country, higher voting turnout actively tells that the country is not fighting to be free thinkers of the new world and instead are following one of the two paths which are being taken. If a citizen of a country can happily choose and dedicate their life to a single party, that means there’s a lack of personal opinion. A lack of free thoughts. Robert Frost once said, “I took the road less traveled by and that made all the difference.”
Now, on the other hand, one can argue that the by not voting we’re not contributing to any growth, and if we want an aspect of growth we must take small steps and choose our own leaders that can grow our country, one step at a time. While that is a valid thought, why stoop our expectations so low? Why can’t we question the system? The sad reality is that an individual cannot choose to practice what they actually believe in and vote for a party outside the two-parties, because they know that this vote is going to waste.
The argument of this essay, hence, has slowly revealed itself to be a question of choice between ideologies rather than parties. The problem in forcing a voting system where we’re not allowed to be free thinkers, rather, pawns of one of the parties forced to believe in a change that will never come. If a multiple choice question in an exam had four options, why does our voting system give us two? It is crucial that we realize the fault in this system, and strive for something more.