Ghost Voting

Last November I committed voter fraud. Gladly. Proudly. I gave away my vote. I allowed someone else to cast two votes: theirs and mine.

Maybe what I did wasn’t technically voter fraud. But it may feel like that to other people. I think of it like ghost writing—ghost voting.

For more than half a century I voted for my interests. Fiercely independent, I’ve never been a member of any political party, never cast a vote in a party’s primary until last summer when—a ghost vote—I marked a Democratic Party ballot for Joe Biden. I did it for my children.

I’m a senior citizen (Boomer), white, male, college-educated, and retired from a professional career. That’s the profile of my voting cohort. For decades my cohort voted for candidates who helped fuel economic growth, open up opportunities for women in the workplace, and everyone’s right to marry the person they love, among other milestones. I’m proud of that. But our candidates also ignored the dangers of climate change, worsened racial divides, exacerbated wealth inequalities, let health care and education costs skyrocket, botched wars, retreated from the world, and broke public trust.

On balance, that’s not a great legacy.

During the summer and early fall, I asked my two sons, their wives, and many of their friends to tell me who they were voting for and why. These weren’t debates. I didn’t want to trumpet a candidate or change a mind. I just listened.

I paid attention especially to the values they espoused. I didn’t agree with all their choices. Like many independents I’m blue on social issues, red on economic ones. Over the decades, I frequently voted a mixed ballot, usually tipped red. But last election cycle, I shrugged off misgivings and pledged to support their candidates.

After all, they have to live with the future. I have a few years to live but they have many more. Their voting choices reflect what they want for their children, my grandchildren, who may live for most of this century. The outcomes of elections have consequences, yet those consequences will have far greater impact on them than on me.

Last summer, when I first considered ghost voting on their behalf, I fretted the complexities. I have only one vote and more than one child to give it to; would my lean-in vote be divisive? My two sons and their families live in different states, so their choices for local candidates and propositions aren’t the same. One son and his wife are activists for social justice who live in New York City. I live north of Boston, so I could only add to their vote in federal elections. My other son lives in Massachusetts and, unlike his brother, leans middle-right on fiscal and economic issues. My daughters-in-law, their siblings, their friends—how would I square one vote to many perspectives? Which choice, who’s choice, would I double?

But in the weeks following I pressed this array of thirty- and forty-year-olds on their political choices and I heard common themes. They questioned principles I’ve held for as long as I could vote. They gave less weight to individualism than I, and more truck to social responsibility. They wanted government to do more to shape history than I think possible, or beneficial. They talked about social identity as something more real than I’ve believed. And all of them drew on common underlying values when they described what motivated their choice in a candidate—equality, justice, fairness, balance, and optimism.

Their choices for candidates during the Democratic Party primary differed but the intent of their choices did not. I paid attention to that. Because consensus isn’t valued by my generation of voters. Since the 1980s, differences in political and social beliefs have widened among my go-your-own-way generation, then fractured, and we cannot seem to find a way to bridge them. Old men and women, we’ve staked out our ideologies like dogs will their terrain, and we bristle and growl over nuances.

I had grown tired of hearing myself grouse about changes I don’t like. It broke my heart to acknowledge that the nation my grandchildren inherited was divided, angry, and lost. I’d said repeatedly that there would be no massive government debt on my watch and yet, here we are. I take all this personally. And anyway, I realized, at my age, and in these political circumstances, casting a vote for my interests would be like trying to control the future from my grave.

I couldn’t do it. Never in my life would I have voted for a candidate like Trump. The nativism, racism, and backward cultural agenda of Trump’s party repelled me. I would have voted for Biden/Harris, anyway, in November. So that choice on my ghost ballot was an easy one. But voting a straight blue ticket was a new experience for me. Now that I am determined to support my children’s voting interests, in every election, I’ll likely only vote various shades of blue hereafter. I gave money to Democratic Party campaigns (never did that before, either) and in a few weeks will change my voting affiliation to the party they see as their future.

My children’s generation may, or may not, make better choices than mine did. I’d like to imagine they will. And if I can believe in their possibilities, then it stands to reason that they should get on with the task of shaping their future sooner than later. To make that happen, I can help by adding to their choices.

From here on, my children have my vote.

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This post has been republished on Medium.

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