I Have Never Voted & I Will Never Vote
- Madhukar Dama
- 6 hours ago
- 8 min read
I will say it plainly: I have never voted, and I will not. This is not laziness or spite. It is a decision I have thought about, a moral line I choose to live by.
I ask myself: what is voting? On paper it is one mark, one name. In life it is treated as a seal of consent — a way people say, “yes, this system speaks for me.” But I do not experience my life as part of a single, clear will that a mark can represent. My beliefs, my needs, my knowledge are private, messy, and changing. To pretend a ballot captures that is dishonest to myself.
I worry about knowledge. Most serious choices in life are made with specific information, skill, or long practice. I do not ask a crowd of strangers, once in a few years, to solve the detailed problems that shape my day. I do not believe mass voting reliably turns many partial views into wise decisions. Often it just turns volume into authority.
I see the political process as a marketplace. Candidates sell promises and images. Campaigns use money, attention, and persuasion. The result is less about shared wisdom and more about marketing and pressure. If I join that market with a vote, I give my small stamp of approval to a system that operates by spectacle.
I also fear the soft tyranny of sameness. When opinion becomes the easiest path to acceptance, people learn to value popularity over truth. Voting can become a habit that rewards safety and conformity. I refuse participation in rituals that reward conformity over careful judgment.
People tell me voting is a duty. I respect the idea of duty, but duties must mean something. If a ritual asks me to pretend I have unified knowledge I do not have, then the ritual loses moral force for me. My duty, as I see it, is to be honest with my conscience and my neighbors — not to lend symbolic consent to a machine I distrust.
Refusing to vote is not the same as doing nothing. I take part in real, local life: helping neighbors, teaching, working with small groups, building practical solutions where I can. I focus on actions that change lives directly, not only symbolically. These are not glamorous, but they are concrete.
My refusal is also about humility. I will not pretend that one mark on a paper transforms me into something wiser or more powerful. I accept that my abstention can have costs. Sometimes, when rights or lives hang on a vote, the calculus changes. But as a general stance, I will not baptize a system with my assent when I believe its promises are hollow.
I do not condemn those who vote. For many people, voting is an act of hope or protection. In some contexts, the ballot is crucial. I honor that. This choice is personal: it fits how I want to account for myself before my neighbors and my conscience.
Common objections are real and simple:
• “Abstention hands power to others.” Sometimes that is true. I accept that risk when I judge the ritual’s legitimizing power is morally unacceptable.
• “One must do the minimum to keep democracy alive.” Minimum for whom? If the minimum becomes a hollow gesture, I refuse it.
• “You don’t care about the community.” I do. I just care for it in ways that are direct and sustained, not always electoral.
This is not a manifesto against all public life. It is an account of one life chosen deliberately. I refuse a ritual that asks me to lie about what I know. I choose, instead, the slow, daily work of repair and care — the hands-on acts that make life bearable and better.
I will not vote. I will keep showing up in other ways.
---
A Long Dialogue with Madhukar
Friend: Madhukar, I want to ask you something personal. Have you ever voted?
Madhukar: Never. And I never will.
Friend: That shocks me. You are educated, thoughtful. How can you avoid something so basic?
Madhukar: Because it is not basic to me. It is not life-giving. To me, voting is like pouring water into a clay pot with holes — it looks like action, but nothing remains.
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On Care and Responsibility
Friend: But surely you care about the country?
Madhukar: I care deeply. That is why I refuse to feed an illusion. Voting makes people feel they have done their part, then they retreat to their private lives. My care takes a different path — one of daily action, not occasional ritual.
Friend: But rituals bind society. Without voting, how will people feel united?
Madhukar: True unity is not built by standing in a line once in five years. It is built when neighbors help each other, when strangers act with kindness, when communities create solutions together. A ballot is a symbol, not a bond.
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On The Power of a Vote
Friend: Still, one vote can matter. History shows elections turning on a handful of ballots.
Madhukar: And yet, what do those ballots really decide? Faces may change, parties may exchange seats, but the deeper structure — money, influence, bureaucracy — remains untouched. It is like changing masks on the same actor.
Friend: So you see it as powerless?
Madhukar: Worse — I see it as a distraction. It keeps people busy with hope, while the real levers are pulled elsewhere.
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On Democracy
Friend: You don’t believe in democracy at all?
Madhukar: I believe in people living together with respect, sharing power, solving problems — call that spirit democracy if you like. But the system of ballots and campaigns? That is not democracy. It is a contest of marketing.
Friend: Isn’t counting every voice the most equal system we have?
Madhukar: Equality is noble. But adding up half-informed opinions does not produce wisdom. In real life, when I am sick, I do not gather a crowd and ask them to vote on my treatment. I go to one who knows. Why expect politics to work differently?
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On Duty
Friend: Many would say voting is your duty. That you owe it to the land where you live.
Madhukar: Duty is real, but duties are not blind. To me, duty means being honest, protecting those near me, refusing lies. If a ritual asks me to pretend it represents me when it does not, then joining it is betrayal, not duty.
Friend: You fear that voting makes you complicit?
Madhukar: Exactly. To cast a ballot is to say, “yes, I believe in this.” I do not. So my silence is truer than my mark.
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On Community and Alternatives
Friend: But if everyone thought like you, wouldn’t chaos follow?
Madhukar: If everyone thought clearly, perhaps the system itself would change. And until then, I put my faith in smaller circles — families, neighborhoods, workplaces. There, power is real and responsibility visible. That is where I pour my energy.
Friend: Give me an example.
Madhukar: When a neighbor is sick, helping them directly is more democratic than electing a leader who promises healthcare. When farmers form a cooperative, that is democracy in action, more than a vote for distant policymakers.
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On Hope
Friend: I see your logic. But doesn’t voting at least give people hope?
Madhukar: Hope is precious. But false hope is poison. It keeps people waiting for saviors instead of becoming their own strength. I prefer the hard, small hopes that grow from daily effort — a child learning, a family healed, a friendship restored.
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On Balance and Respect
Friend: Do you condemn those who still vote?
Madhukar: Never. For some, the ballot is a shield. For the oppressed, sometimes it is the only available tool. I respect that. But I cannot use a tool I do not believe in. My refusal is personal.
Friend: So your choice is not arrogance, but conscience.
Madhukar: Yes. I will not baptize an illusion with my consent. I would rather build, in slow and steady ways, the world I wish existed.
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Closing
Friend: And you are certain — no vote, ever?
Madhukar: Yes. I will not mark a paper to pretend I am part of a play. My life will be my vote — given daily, in the way I live, the way I speak, the way I act. That is the ballot I cast, and it does not need counting.
I Don’t Stand in Their Line
they set up tents of democracy with bamboo poles and plastic sheets,
hang garlands on microphones,
smear faces on posters larger than cinema stars,
and promise a tomorrow that never arrives,
a tomorrow already stolen before the crowd even gathers,
a tomorrow sold to contractors,
to banks,
to cousins,
to party workers,
to anyone but the people who wait in the sun.
the election booth stands like a temple
with police holding rifles older than their fathers,
with officials sweating in khadi,
with black ink ready to brand fingers,
with cameras clicking like it is a festival,
and with women in bright saris clutching voter slips
as if they were ration coupons for survival.
i don’t stand in that line.
i see the mason who builds high-rises he can’t afford to enter,
i see the farmer who digs canals with his bare hands
and still prays for rain like a beggar,
i see the bus conductor shouting for coins
while politicians fly in helicopters,
i see the tailor stitching school uniforms for his own children
who are told “no seats left” when results come out.
their votes are swallowed in the counting machine,
their faces vanish from the news before the ink dries,
their hope is used like kerosene poured into a cheap lamp —
bright for one night,
gone by morning.
politics here is not about people,
it is about contracts,
about liquor bottles distributed in plastic bags at midnight,
about five hundred rupees slipped into calloused hands
that built half this city’s skyline.
it is about power that wears khadi in the day
and silk in the night.
it is about promises that sound like music
but rot like meat when you open them.
and you tell me, madhukar,
stand in line,
do your duty,
make your mark,
be a citizen.
i laugh,
because my mark is already on the wall of this country:
in the tax I pay on rice,
in the bribe I pay the electricity man,
in the silence I swallow when the police stop me for no reason,
in the blood my neighbor coughed when the government hospital had no medicine.
their line is not mine.
i have seen boys with degrees polishing shoes at railway stations,
i have seen old men with sunburnt skin bent double in paddy fields,
i have seen women standing in gas queues from dawn
while ministers cut ribbons in air-conditioned halls,
i have seen children in slums reading torn books by candlelight
while politicians’ sons drive imported cars into trees
and walk away laughing.
what vote do they need from me?
they already own the system,
they already trade the seats like cattle,
they already count the numbers before the booth opens.
this circus runs on money,
on muscle,
on fear,
on the hope of the desperate,
on the apathy of the tired,
on the dream of the naive,
on the lie of equality printed on voter slips
that mean nothing once the speeches are over.
so i don’t stand in their line.
my rebellion is small,
it is not fireworks or slogans,
it is not a revolution broadcast on TV,
it is simply saying no.
no to their game,
no to their dice,
no to their booths with ink and flags,
no to their drama where every actor is already bought.
instead i vote with my hands when i carry water for my neighbor,
i vote with my time when i teach a child to read,
i vote with my refusal when i turn away from their circus,
i vote with my anger when i spit their lies into the dust,
i vote with my silence that says louder than words:
you do not own me.
the booth can rot,
the posters can peel,
the speeches can echo into the night air and die,
the jeeps can pass with sirens,
the anchors can scream on television,
the ministers can smile from balconies —
but i will not be in their crowd.
i have never voted.
i never will.
my life itself is the ballot,
scratched in sweat,
signed in hunger,
sealed in defiance,
and counted not by a commission
but by the earth that watches me live.
