I should really be finishing up the syllabi for my fall classes. With only 2 weeks until classes start, typically I would have them all done by now. This year is different. I am glued to my newsfeed.

I have a recurring thought about the state of affairs in American politics. It concerns the ethics of voting.

You hear people say it. They say, "political discussions don't belong at the dinner table!" Or "please no political posts on Facebook!" Or "No more tweets about the presidential election!" Then, ultimately they say, either, "please vote your conscience", or "vote your heart."

1. "Vote your conscience"

We have to think about that a little bit. When such a statement is made about conscience in the context of voting, the significance of the ACT of voting is highlighted. Moreover, it establishes a connection between conscience and the choice you make for political office. Why? The undeniable fact is that your vote may contribute to someone being elected has implications, not only for you, but for all others who may have to live your choice for the next 2,4,6 years. Therefore, it is not an act done lightly.

Then, what does it mean to say "vote your conscience"? We first need to examine what conscience is. Conscience, by definition, is the voice in your head that tells you how to choose between right and wrong. Conscience tells you what is right. Conscience turns voting into a deliberate, moral activity.

How then is it possible that there such a range of what people believe is right? BernieOrBusters, for example, are convinced that they are right in rejecting Hillary Clinton's nomination, be it because the election was rigged (oh, how Americans love conspiracy theories!), or she is just as bad as Trump (really? They have bought the Right's demonization of Clinton for over 20 years), or they want a third party (a great idea, but starting with the office of the president is a BAD idea.)

The Trumpsters. They really believe that the world is in a tail spin. God may strike a blow any time now. Because gays. ISIS is going to infiltrate our society and we may all die. Or ISIS will send jihadists from abroad and we all die. Or the world as we have known it is slowly disappearing. That happens. I could go on and on.

They all think they are right.

The problem is that there is no fixed idea of what is right. What we perceive to be right depends upon what we bring to our thought process, which has been conditioned by our experiences. We can't possibly know what others' experiences are so we rely on ours. If you are a white male, you are going to see the world as declining for you. If you are a female, you are going to see the world gradually opening up for you. If you are a black male, you see the world that devalues your life. If you are a black female, you see the world that says you are either a ho or mammy. Etc.

So then, the real dilemma is that it is difficult to see the world outside your experiences. Because conscience cannot ever be objective, there has to be more than that for us to use when we vote.

2. Vote your heart

Just as people say to "vote your conscience," they are also likely to say, "vote your heart." Shall we define "heart" here just as we did" conscience" Anatomically speaking, heart is an organ that pumps your blood. Your heart stops, you die. Unlike your brain. Your brain stops functioning, you are "brain-dead." That means that you lost your capacity to think, but your heart is still pumping. You are technically alive, but we lose the ability to think and reflect and thereby lose what defines us as humans--as sentient beings. So then heart and brain are seeming opposites with opposing functions.

But that's not all that heart is. As we saw above, if conscience is a guide for doing the right thing as opposed to the wrong thing, then what does heart have to do with voting? Typically, we say, "follow your heart" when trying to help others with decisions. Heart, of course, is a metaphor for our warm and fuzzy feelings as opposed to calculated rational thinking. So when you follow your heart, make a decision on your feelings. You are guided by, not by a sense of right and wrong, but rather by a sense of what you love and what you don't. So then we might argue that "voting your heart" means that we do less deliberation and more intuition centered around you. As such, it is radically individualistic. Even more than conscience, heart can never be objective. It's always subjective.

So then is the act of voting destined to be an individual choice based on subjective views of the mind or heart? Here is an interesting article that I came across a couple of days ago.

http://qz.com/717255/ethicists-say-voting-with-your-heart-without-a-care-about-the-consequences-is-actually-immoral/

This one particular paragraph is worth examining.

The purpose of voting is not to express your fidelity to a worldview. It's not to wave a flag or paint your face in team colors; it's to produce outcomes. . . If they are smart, they'll vote for the candidate likely to best produce the outcome they want. That my very well be compromising, but if voting for a far-left or far-right candidate means that you're just going to lose the election, then you've brought the world further away from justice rather than closer to it. 

This passage pretty much tells us that voting far-right or far-left who have no chance of winning, therefore, affecting any meaningful outcome, is throwing our votes away. There is just no meaning in it with the winner-take-all election. Can humans actually be ok with meaningless actions? Can voting your heart really equal this type of meaninglessness?

The following example is is even more pertinent.

As a citizen, I have a duty to others because it's not just me and my principles, but everybody. . . I have to consider how what I do will impact other people. For example, if I was a die-hard Bernie supporter, I might say my principles tell me to vote for Bernie. But I'm not going to let my principles condemn other people to suffering. 

How did voting get so complicated? What we consider to be a private act of conscience or heart is actually not an individual or even private act that calls upon one's ability to think or intuit. It's a collective act whose outcome affects EVERYONE. Your vote matters, not just to yourself, but also to others. Voting is the ultimate collective action in any democracy.

Voting, therefore, is not a matter of pure conscience or pure heart. It is a matter of conscience AND heart. Your heart may tell you what agrees with you. It tells you what makes you feel good. Then that feeling must be followed by your conscience so that you may make, based upon the feelings that are present in your heart, a conscious, ethical choice. Not just for you. For all human beings. It turns out that the every individual act of voting has enormous implications for the collective.

Think about it.