Why I Do Not Vote

From now on, I will no longer vote: I have decided to stop going to the polls. This decision does not stem from any hostility toward democracy. I recognize all the strengths and weaknesses of democracy that were pointed out by Alexis de Tocqueville when he visited the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century, and I fully agree with the famous statement by Winston Churchill in the much-quoted speech he delivered in the House of Commons in 1947: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

My decision not to vote is because I am now almost eighty years old. It does not seem right to me that the elderly should shape a future they will not live to see. In other words, they should not determine how younger generations are to live and coexist. It is the young who should shape the environment in which they live according to their own preferences.

Someone might object that the opinion of the elderly is valuable because they are bearers of experience. To this I reply… nonsense! In some cases, this may be true, but not in that of the generation to which I belong. It seems to me—and it is disheartening for me to acknowledge it—that the generation I belong to has failed to achieve anything in order to improve the world. It is not to this generation that one should turn for wisdom.