If you don't vote, you can't complain

The general elections in Israel will be held this coming Tuesday. I am still not 100% sure who to vote for. I'm also not going to reveal this information on-line. If you want to know who I ultimately decide to choose, give me a call. But I can tell you this: voting in Israel feels like a big deal - a serious decision. I feel that my vote counts for much more here than it ever did in Australia. The outcome of the elections effects the entire country, to its very core, and my vote does count.

But voting is not compulsory in Israel,. Current news reports (see Ynetnews.com, for example) state that they are expecting a lower voter turnout than in previous years. If you look at the statistics of voter turnout since the creation of the State of Israel, the voter turnout rate has declined from 86.9% in 1949 to only 68.9% in 2003. So, looking at the figures let's guess that the numbers will drop by 7% to about 62%, just to round it off.

In other words 38% of those eligible to vote won't turn up to the polling stations on election day. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website there are 5,014,622 eligible voters for this election. That means that 1,905,556 people will not bother to say what they think. Give or take x number of people who are infirm, out of the country or whatever - but you get the picture: out of 5 million eligible voters, about 2 million won't vote on Tuesday.

There is a view that not casting a vote is a political statement in and of itself, that you don't have faith in any of the candidates to do a good job. I have two answers for that:

1) One of the candidates will be elected, eventually. So you are going to end up being stuck with whoever wins anyway.
2) If you don't vote, you can't complain. But if you vote for a particular party or candidate and your choice does not win, you have still earned the moral right to complain.

If you choose not to participate in the democratic process, then you opted to have no opinion when it actually counted for something, for once. You missed your opportunity to make a difference, so who are you to complain after the polls close?

Who to vote for is not an easy choice, but it is a choice that has to be made.