The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Two academics and an activist want to use disaffected Bahamian voters as guinea pigs. In what can only be described as some kind of weird social experiment these highly educated people want to run a ridiculous test that has as its goal the achievement of absolutely, positively nothing.

Dr Ian Smith and Dr Nicolette Bethel of the now University of The Bahamas have joined with women’s rights activist Alicia Wallace to see just how many Bahamians will drink their Kool-Aid and purposely spoil their ballots in the upcoming general election.

Remember now, the professors are responsible for shaping the minds and honing the citizenship of the next generation of Bahamians. The activist wants to be taken seriously as a voice for women.

But how can we take them seriously when what they propose is a slap in the face to all those who fought in the trenches to give women and all adult males the very right to vote.

We can look straight past Minister Hope Strachan and see her grandmother Mary Ingraham, a champion of the suffragette movement. Or gaze through Attorney General Allison Maynard Gibson to see her grandmother, rights hero Georgiana Symonette. We need to remind Ms Wallace of this when she starts talking fool.

The preamble to the Constitution speaks of the Bahamian people as a collective “we” -- the inheritors and successors of this Family of Islands who commit ourselves to a free and democratic sovereign nation.

Whether we like it or not, this social contract makes us all responsible for the good governance of this country. The most forceful act we all have in determining what happens here is to vote for the leaders who will make the best decisions in our name.

I know that there are some among us who for religious reasons do not participate in the electoral process. They abstain from voting on grounds that I do not agree with but which I have to accept.

I also appreciate that some people do unwittingly spoil their ballot paper and in so doing self-neuter, silencing their own voice at a time when all voices need to heard loud and clear.

But now, we have these obstinate professors giving intellectual cover to the false narrative that intentionally spoiling the ballot is an acceptable form of participation in our electoral process.

If the Constitution mandated election officials to award spoiled ballots in any of their tallying, then these conscientious objectors might have a point. But it doesn’t; so they don’t.

They promote the debunked theory that if spoiled ballots were counted and if tabulated in high enough numbers it will send a message to politicians that people are fed up. But isn’t that precisely the reason we are supposed to vote in the first place?

Voting brings about change, or it approves the status quo. Spoiling the ballot brings about not only a waste of paper but of the time of poll workers doing a civic duty.

Do you really think a new Prime Minister Hubert Minnis or emboldened Prime Minister Perry Christie would lose sleep over the fact that thousands of apathetic voters voted for “none of the above”?

What the professors and the activist are promoting is very dangerous and they need to put this half-baked idea back in the oven. They posit, without evidence, that slow voter registration will equal low voter turnout. Where were they when Sherlyn Hall subverted the registration process with his morality fashion litmus test?

People do care about who governs them. We do believe that our vote counts. We stand just a little bit taller, brandishing our ink stained finger as evidence of the fact that we landed our blow for democracy.

The legacy political parties have formidable “get-out-the-vote” machinery and this has led to exceptionally high voter turnout. This tells me that bellyaching about a candidate or party is just old talk.

We may not like Perry Christie because he talks too much or Hubert Minnis because he talks too little, and although we don’t live in Centreville or Killarney, we carry that animus with us into our voting booth even if in so doing we act against our own self interest.

We should give thanks to those PLPs whose struggle over 50 years ago helped to give everyone the vote. And in the same breath we should applaud the FNM for deepening our democracy by helping to make us more informed and freer to express our opinions and to vote.

Voting is a civic duty. The professors know this. The activist knows this too. They ought to know that being socially irresponsible is not the same as social disobedience.

The descendants of slaves must not tarnish that legacy by being frivolous with their franchise. The grandchildren of Europeans and others must affirm their equal rights by voting.

Vote for a candidate because you like her and her party’s position on an issue, or because you can’t stomach what the other party stands for. If you have problems with both, then vote for the least objectionable. But vote.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

February 8, 2017.