Happy Election Day!

Under our form of government voting is not merely a right but a duty, and, moreover, a fundamental and necessary duty if a man is to be a good citizen.
— Theodore Roosevelt’s Seventh Annual Message, December 1907

Today we go to the polls in New York. Many had already done so, in fact. Over 735,000 votes were cast during early voting, far outpacing all nonpresidential elections since early voting began in New York.

Theodore Roosevelt sincerely believed in the duty of voting. He treasured the ritual of carrying out that duty. As president, he would take an overnight sleeper train to New York City the night before an election. In the morning he would cross the East River, transfer to the LIRR, and continue the journey to his polling place in Oyster Bay.¹

Jacob Riis of course felt similarly. In A Ten Years’ War, he bemoaned the return of Tammany Hall, which retook control with the 1897 election of Robert Van Wyck. Riis assigned responsibility for this regrettable outcome not to the “bosses” of Tammany Hall (who were simply playing the role they always had) but rather to those who knew better, but nevertheless chose not to exercise their right to vote:

The real Tammany is not the conscienceless rascal that plunders our treasury and fattens on our substance. That one is a mere counterfeit. It is the voter who waits for a carriage to take him to the polls; the man who “doesn’t see what’s the use;” the businessman who says “business is business,” and has no time to waste on voting; the citizen who “will wait to see how the cat jumps, because he doesn’t want to throw his vote away;” the cowardly American who “doesn’t want to antagonize” anybody; the fool who “washes his hands of politics.” These are the real Tammany, the men after the boss’s own heart. For every one whose vote he buys, there are two of these who give him theirs for nothing.²

But, crucially, Roosevelt and Riis believed that voting is the beginning, not the end, of our duties as citizens in a democracy. We must vote, but we must not only vote. Roosevelt wrote in The Duties of American Citizenship:

A great many of our men in business, or of our young men who are bent on enjoying life (as they have a perfect right to do if only they do not sacrifice other things to enjoyment), rather plume themselves upon being good citizens if they even vote; yet voting is the very least of their duties, Nothing worth gaining is ever gained without effort. You can no more have freedom without striving and suffering for it than you can win success as a banker or a lawyer without labor and effort, without self-denial in youth and the display of a ready and alert intelligence in middle age. The people who say that they have not time to attend to politics are simply saying that they are unfit to live in a free community. Their place is under a despotism; or if they are content to do nothing but vote, you can take despotism tempered by an occasional plebiscite, like that of the second Napoleon.

One might view these duties as an unwelcome burden to bear. We view them instead as a path to freeing ourselves from the angst and frustration that accompany dissatisfying elections or dissatisfying electoral outcomes. We keep having “the most important election of our lives,” over and over again. It doesn’t seem to get any more fun. If we view the election as the end, after which we wait two or four more years to do it again, then the stakes seem immensely high. If instead, voting is just one of the many actions we take to deliver effective self-government, then an electoral disappointment becomes easier to take in stride.

A great deal of attention, time, and money has been devoted to this year’s mayoral election. The high turnout highlights the strong feelings people have about the candidates from whom we’re choosing. Many people feel strong enthusiasm about one or another candidate. Others feel just as strong in their opposition to one or more of the candidates. Some people feel disappointed with the options presented, and have found themselves in the unfamiliar position of being “undecided” late into the process.

It is a testament to the strength of democracy in New York that so many people have spent so much time considering who should be our city’s next leader. When we wake up tomorrow morning (or whenever we learn the results), a plurality of New Yorkers will joyfully learn that their preference carried the day. Meanwhile, many (or even most) New Yorkers will feel sincere disappointment, or concern, or fear about the future of our city and their future in it.

No matter which of those feelings each of us has, what matters most is that we need not – in fact we must not – simply stand by and wait until our next opportunity to vote. We all must do our part to ensure that the policies implemented under the next mayor are the best achievable policies under the circumstances. There are plenty of things we can do to grow and improve our city and our neighborhoods, regardless of who dwells in Gracie Mansion. We must do those things.

If you wake up tomorrow feeling joyful, translate your elation to action. If you wake up tomorrow feeling concerned, translate that angst into action. If you’re not sure how to take action, then oh boy do we have just the organization for you.

1. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2002, page 287)

2. Jacob Riis, A Ten Years’ War (1900, page 253)