Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Does My Vote Even Matter?
Does My Vote Even Matter?
Jan 21, 2026 3:13 PM

Tomorrow millions of Americans will to the polls to cast their votes. And many other millions of Americans will not.

Why bother voting when no individual vote makes a difference in any election or political decision? Why bother casting a vote that has no meaning? ​Micah Watson, director of the Center for Politics and Religion and associate professor of political science at Union University, provides an answer:

The first thing to say about such an objection is that it’s a odd way to think about doing anything with munal element. I may as well decide not to recycle because my individual effort alone will not clean the environment. Nor will my modest charitable gift solve poverty in munity, let alone my country or the world. Yet bined efforts of Christians can have a staggering effect when taken together, when individuals do not think of their actions entirely through an individualistic lens.

My country­­­, my state, and my town ask for a relatively minor effort on my part to contribute to mon good by expressing my views in the voting booth. Surely the test of whether I submit to this request cannot turn on whether my decision will by itself determine the entire issue.

And there are other reasons for voting. Voting is one measure whereby we learn what it would mean to promote mon good in our munity. It’s a small but tangible exercise that can lead to even greater involvement in cultivating a just and merciful society. Moreover, we are in pany when we carry our witness about the good into the public square.

Read more . . .

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Is Mass Incarceration the New Eugenics?
“Has the War on Drugs revived the 19th Century progressive crusade against ‘degenerates’?” asks Anthony Bradley in the second of this week’s Acton Commentary. The United States currently has over 2.3 million prisoners incarcerated in federal, state, and local jails around the country. According to an April report by the Sentencing Project, that number presents a 500 percent increase in incarcerations over the past 40 years. This increase produces “prison overcrowding and fiscal burdens on states to modate a rapidly...
Deirdre McCloskey on Ethics and Rhetoric in the ‘Great Enrichment’
In a marvelous speech on the origins of economic freedom (and its subsequent fruits), Deirdre McCloskey aptly crystallizes the deeper implications of her work on bourgeois virtuesand bourgeoisdignity. For example, though many doubted that those in once-socialistic India e to see markets favorably, eventually those attitudes changed, and with it came prosperity. As McCloskey explains: The leading Bollywood films changed their heroes from the 1950s to the 1980s from bureaucrats to businesspeople, and their villains from factory owners to policemen,...
Amnesty International: Release Nigerian Schoolgirls But Legalize Prostitution
Yesterday, Joe Carter wrote about Boko Haram, the terrorist group that has kidnapped hundreds of girls in Nigeria from the Christian school, and is now threatening to sell them into the sex trafficking trade. Salil Shetty, Secretary General of the human rights organization Amnesty International, is calling upon the Nigerian government to initiate a transparent investigation of the girls’ kidnapping and an immediate release of the girls. The horrific abduction shows the serious nature of violations of international humanitarian and...
An Open Letter Regarding Greece v. Galloway
Katherine Stewart is most unhappy about the recent Supreme Court decision, Greece v. Galloway. The Court upheld the right of the town of Greece, New York, to being town hall meetings with prayer, so long as no one was coerced into participating. And that makes Ms. Stewart unhappy. In an op-ed piece for The New York Times, Ms. Stewart decries the Court’s decision as something akin to a vast, right-wing conspiracy. The first order of business is to remove objections...
Kishore Jayabalan: ‘Say “No” to Government Expansion’
Kishore Jayabalan, director of the Istituto Acton in Rome, recently wrote an article at Aleteia, titled ‘Freedom, Truth, & State Power: The Case for Religious and Economic Freedom.’ He begins his piece with a statement Gerald R. Ford made soon after ing president: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” Jayabalan continues: Trust in our political leaders increased around the time of the September 11,...
G.K. Chesterton on the work of mothers
Our discussions about faith-work integration often focus on paid labor, yet there is plenty of value, meaning, and fulfillment in other areas where the market may assign little to no direct dollars and cents. I’ve written about this previously as it pertains to fatherhood, but given the ing holiday, the work of mothers is surely worthy of some pause and praise. My wife stays at home full-time with our three small children, and I can’t count the number of times...
Tolkien, Hobbits, Hippies and War
Jay Richards and I have an Ignatius Press book on mitment to ing out soon, so we’ve been following developments in the Hobbit film trilogy more closely than we might otherwise. A recent development is director Peter Jackson announcing a subtitle change to the third film—from There and Back Again, to Battle of the Five Armies. That’s maybe a bit narrow for a novel that’s also about food, fellowship and song, but I think it’d be going too far to...
The Dignity of Chickens and the Character of God
After a farmer in Australia had a change of heart about keeping his chickens in battery cages, he freed all 752 hens. The video below (via Rod Dreher) shows the chickens taking their first steps on soil, and feeling sunshine for the first time. What is your initial reaction on seeing the video? Did you roll your eyes at the liberal-leaning, anti-business, vegetarian-loving motive that surely inspired the clip? Did you automatically assume the “animal rights” nuts (the video was...
Why McDonald’s Has Become a School for Remedial Work Skills
“Clean up your own mess. Your mother doesn’t work here.” That was a sign, printed on dot matrix printer paper, which hung in the breakroom of the McDonald’s where I worked. While that was nearly thirty years ago, I suspect that same sign is still there (though probably reprinted on a laser printer). But the idea behind it has changed. Your mother may not work at McDonalds, but pany—and others that hire low-skilled employees—are increasingly taking on the role of...
Samuel Gregg: Indivisibility Of Religious Liberty, Economic Freedom
Sam Gregg, Acton’s director of research, makes the case that limiting religious liberty also infringes upon economic growth in The American Spectator. Gregg uses history to illustrate the point. Unjust restrictions on religious liberty e in the form of limiting the ability of members of particular faiths to participate fully in public life. Catholics in the England of Elizabeth I and James I, for instance, were gradually stripped of most of their civil and political rights because of their refusal...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved