Why I voted for my girlfriend: Lessons in popular sovereignty

            Some people will not understand or approve, but here is the honest truth.

            I voted for my girlfriend for President in 2012.

            A friend was understandably skeptical when I told her about this decision last night.  Though she denied to explain exactly why, I theorize three objections: that I did not vote for her candidate, that I exercised my vote frivolously, or that my vote was an overwrought display of affection (in her terms, “schmoopy”).

            I’ll focus primarily on the second possible objection in this essay.  Briefly, I see no need to address partisan issues; I intend this blog to focus on constitutional issues, not taking sides on political controversies (unless they implicate the Constitution).  My refusal to vote for either major party candidate will be addressed, but to choose neither is not within the ambit of this essay, nor of my larger purposes.

            As for the third: my girlfriend said my vote made her day.  My dad voted for my mom in 2008, which I thought was really sweet.  I regret nothing!

            The second theory implicates the Constitution, but only in the broadest terms.  I looked over my ballot for several days.  I researched the candidates; I followed the news; I watched the debates.  After looking up and down the list of presidential candidates on the Florida ballot, I came to an inexorable conclusion.

            I don’t want to vote for any of you clowns.

            Some candidates manifestly did not belong on any ballot (I’m looking at you, Roseanne Barr), let alone for President of the United States.  Some, like Gary Johnson, espoused platforms in which I might find limited appeal, but to carry through to fruition in its entirety would be, in my judgment, disastrous.

            So then I thought, why should I vote for any of you?  There is no tension between distaste for all available candidates, and a strong value-based emphasis on the importance of voting.  I do regard voting as an extremely important civic responsibility.  And my vote for my girlfriend was not an abdication of that responsibility.  Why?  Because I genuinely believed that she was the best candidate I could name for the office.

            She is voraciously intelligent; she has a beautiful, generous heart; she has good judgment; she does not lust for money and power (if she does, the joke’s on her!).  On those virtues alone, she outpaces 99% of all politicians in the country already.  I cannot attest that any politician in the country of whom I know possesses all of those traits to the same extent as my ladylove.  As such, I believe she was the best-qualified candidate I could name.

            (Here is where the Constitution comes in.)

            This thought process and my friend’s reaction prompted me to think of popular sovereignty and the scheme of representation.  I ask a simple question: why should I have to vote for any party candidate?  My sense is that most people approach their ballot with the following process: I choose the guy I already settled on; if I don’t like either, I pick a third party candidate; if I want to be snarky, I write in someone like Vermin Supreme.  I personally take politics seriously, but I did not feel that any of the candidates on the ballot were worthy to represent me in Washington.

            This is the heart of my decision.

            We the People are in charge of this country; this fundamental principle undergirds our entire constitutional order, and the scheme of representation as a whole.  We are not beholden to the two-party system, or to any third party. 

Think of the candidates as job applicants.  Were I reviewing applications, I’d have thrown out all their resumes, and picked someone who could do the job to my standards.

            A bit of disenchanted youthful revolt?  Maybe.  A romantic gesture?  I won’t deny it.  But I would not have voted for my girlfriend if I thought there was someone on the ballot superior as a presidential candidate.  And that gets to the heart of the matter: I feel these candidates must impress me; they must win my vote.  I will not vote out of either compromise or resignation. 

I am part of the sovereign People of the United States (as are you).  The politicians in Washington and (for me) Tallahassee serve at our pleasure.  They have their powers because We have deemed it to our best mutual advantage.  This may sound overly idealistic or pompous, but I assure you that it is not.  The Constitution guarantees popular sovereignty, as opposed to legislative or darker kinds. 

Witness the Preamble, in which We the People ordained a new government to serve us and our descendants; the Bill of Rights, in which we inform our government that We reserve certain privileges for ourselves; the separation of powers structure itself, designed to force the government to check itself by playing ambition against ambition (as James Madison explained in Federalist No. 51).  The Supremacy Clause in Article VI Section 2 declares that the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land”, the source from which the federal government draws its power and necessarily also the limit of those powers (as elaborated in Marbury v. Madison--whether you buy judicial supremacy or judicial review or not, constitutional review more generally is a necessary consequence of such a system). 

These structural and textual points taken together present the image of a united polity creating a new government for its collective benefit, and then binding its hands to ensure that it not grow beyond its pre-determined limits, that it not grow stronger that the People themselves. (For more on the democratic roots of the Constitution’s ordainment, history, and structure, see Akhil Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography).

  It is our document; ordained by the will of the sovereign people, it enumerates the powers we guardedly delegate to our representatives, the limits we set to those powers, and the means by which we call our stand-ins to answer for the use of their borrowed powers.

I called those hopeful delegates for the office of President to account, and found them all wanting.

In elections, We do not choose our rulers.  We choose our delegates, our servants.  We choose whom we will entrust with the power to do what is in the best interest of all, subject to certain pre-determined limits.  I caution you not to vote for anyone about whom you are tepid (unless you just don’t care about politics, in which case my advice is to be more engaged).  Vote for someone, anyone, with whom you would deliberately entrust the power to do what is best for you, and the polity as a whole.