Voting by not voting

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/10/2023 (759 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ALL eligible Manitobans voted in the recent provincial election.

Despite heated debates on controversial election issues from health care to climate change, however, only 54 per cent of them voted for democracy. The other 46 per cent voted for some other form of government. (In fact, the number of Manitobans voting for democracy actually declined one per cent since the last time.)

As I write these words, sitting in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, I am reminded of all the perils of life in a world where democracy is but one option among others. I am also reminded that bad things happen when a democracy does not demonstrate respect, equality and justice for all its citizens.

All around me are displays of injustices, past and present, illustrating how those injustices too easily compound into genocide and ecocide. There are pictures of human rights heroes and martyrs, individuals who have stood against the tide of injustice in their own backyard, and from that place, gone on to support human rights defenders around the world.

In our place of global privilege — a privilege shared by all Manitobans, regardless of other social or cultural distinctions — if we can’t be whole-hearted in support of democracy, what does the future hold in places where democracy is a distant hope?

Are we consigning the rest of the world to the self-destructive spiral still unfolding in Sudan? Or a similar fate soon to befall Chad, Niger, Mali, and other countries in central and west Africa? Do we not understand how fragile our own democracy is, when we see how quickly “normal life” can unravel?

So, yes, you voted — whether you got to a polling station or not. But if you were among the 46 per cent of Manitobans who stayed home, you need to explain what other form of government you would prefer. Absolute monarchy? Dictatorship? Oligarchy?

Unfortunately, there will always be would-be leaders who offer us only what we want to hear. Yet a sustainable future depends upon the people who are not fooled by these false promises, who are able to perceive the real values that lie underneath such glib and persuasive words.

Yet I am more worried about the 46 per cent who stayed home than by the potentially poor choices made by any of the 54 per cent who voted. Inaction and indifference are dangerous in any democracy.

To illustrate the razor’s edge on which we are perched, in the German presidential elections of 1932, Paul von Hindenburg defeated Hitler 53 per cent to 37 per cent, with a voter turnout of about 84 per cent. Hitler was appointed chancellor, however, and then manipulated the situation so that, in another election less than a year later, his party received 43.9 per cent support. The majority of the German people actually either voted against Hitler in 1933 or stayed home, but their vote for (and against) democracy was enough to change the world.

While we need to do better, we can certainly do worse. But how do we strengthen democratic institutions that are under threat from all sides — especially in the midst of a worsening climate crisis that raises the stakes on every decision we make? One way or another, we are choosing the future right now.

Yet it seems our collective hopes for a democratic and sustainable future are not likely to be found in the privileged hallways of western universities.

In Democracy in a Hotter Time (2023), Michael Crow and William Dabars contributed a chapter looking at the role played by institutions of higher education in promoting both the devastation of the planet and the undermining of democracy. Their conclusion? Universities and colleges are not only encouraging the ideas and attitudes responsible for ecocidal behaviour, but they are also eroding the democratic institutions that might keep such behaviour in check.

Such a searing indictment challenges everything that I do, as a scholar and teacher, and why. It disputes whether our current universities and colleges are providing the education for leadership and service that our world so urgently requires.

Worse, after more than 35 years of teaching, I am worried they may be right.

Having retired from Red River College, Peter Denton is contract academic staff at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba.