Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, or the day on which the majority of the United States holds its primary elections. Here in Illinois, where I live and work and vote, there are several races at the local and state level which are of interest. As a reporter, it is my job to be informed and to report on political movements within the territory I reside, and to have a sense of the issues, the people, the egos, the platforms, in a word, the politics of the place. But I can tell you with complete honesty, that after several months of being on the local political beat, even having a chance to sit down and talk to an incumbent U.S. Representative and his challenger, I go to the polls tomorrow with a sinking feeling in my gut, because I really haven’t a clue who it is I should vote for.

Cause of Voter Ignorance

The democratic system doesn’t work, at least not as it is practiced today. That is a shame to say, but it is true. In order for a democratic system to work today, there must be an informed voting body. Otherwise, the outcome to any election in which the man elected is unknown is a sham election, because the man voted for does not actually represent the people who voted for him. How does this happen? Simply put, this happens because newspapers are dying, and there aren’t enough reporters to talk about all the candidates.

Of course, I am not talking about Trump or Biden. Every news agency in the country talks about those two. But does your local newspaper talk about those running in your state senatorial race? What about your county commissioner race? Thought not. I know first hand, because of the handful of news publications in southern Illinois, I am one of two reporters in the newsroom, and I am the only one who has written a handful of political pieces in the recent past leading up to the primaries.

If voters are not getting their information about local politicians at the local level, where are they getting it? The answer is they are not. So the typical voter probably doesn’t even look down-ballot after the president and U.S. races. Maybe they know something of those who are running for state offices, but I seriously doubt it, because the Big Media isn’t really covering state news. Regional news outlets are, and those media outlets at the state level are stretched thin, and as you get down to the regional level, even more so, until you get to the town level, where there is usually an empty lot, and old sign, in other words, a mere memory of a paper long since dead.

Rendering Unto Caesar

I am currently reading a very fascinating account of Cicero’s life written by Plutarch, a Greek political biographer. In the book, you get a sense of just how corrupt men are, how back-biting, benighted by self-serving interests over and against the state, and how every man, including Cicero, were in the end either cowards or wicked villains. Cicero died within a few decade of the birth of Christ.

The point is, men are still like that. Politicians are still like that. Nothing new under the sun. If we are truly to render the just fruits unto Caesar, it should probably be with a sharpened sword. But the one among us without sin may thrust his dagger into Caesar first.

I know there are probably those reading this who think we should not vote. Presently, I think I am making the case we may have a good reason not to vote, at least not until we have educated ourselves about who it is we are going to vote for, since newspapers can’t do that for us anymore. Here I would like to offer a few practical moral considerations to answer the question how are we suppose to vote.

Who Should Receive Your Vote

The candidate who should receive your vote, in my own opinion–this is opining on the Apocalypse, not pontificating on the Apocalypse–is the candidate, be it at the county, state, or federal level, who you have researched to the degree that you can, which means you should be able to answer a few fundamental questions about that politician’s platform. For instance:

• Does the candidate believe in the sanctity of life?
• Does the candidate believe in the sanctity of marriage?
• Does the candidate believe in the sanctity of the sexes, “Male and female He created them.”
• Is the candidate reasonable, i.e., just, equitable, consistent in policies?
• Does the candidate seem to support foreign interest more than national?
• What is a basic recap of the politician’s voting record?
• Is the candidate divorced? (Could the candidate govern a state or country well without looking after his own house?)

You will note that I do not ask you to consider the candidate’s political party. Democrats and Republicans, as they have been given to recently, are both morally bankrupt. Consider the scramble from the Right to quickly assure their American conservative constituency that they will work as hard as they can to ensure Americans can still have their cake and eat it, too, by having children through IVF while they let their unwanted children die in the refrigerator.

Nor am I saying one could ever really vote Democrat in good conscience. Is there even one Democratic candidate at any level of government who doesn’t support the sin that cries to heaven or the murder of babies? I don’t think so.

But vote we must as Americans. It is our civic duty to do so. Those who think it is not or will not vote because the 2020 election was a charade of democracy, you have my sympathy, because I agree it was. The evidence of widespread election fraud is undeniable to anyone who has watched the hearings actually airing out the evidence of physical voter manipulation or the data dump analysis and statistically impossible anomalies. But, still, to the best of our ability, we must vote in the primary and in the general elections.

We must, not because I think so, not because the constitution empowers and encourages us to do so, but because God Himself told us to.

Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s

Mark 12:17

The Vote

The vote is a piece, as it were, of the commonwealth. It is a share in the decision making power of a community. Imagine, then, members of a prodigiously large household having to take a vacation to one of three different but all very enticing resort destinations, say, one to the Bahamas, another to Alaska, and a third to Ireland, were each given a vote. Each then has a share in the good of the family, but only if exercised. If a member abstains, then they forfeit their share in determining the good of the family.

But, whereas we might be indifferent as to whether we go to Ireland or the Bahamas, we cannot be indifferent as to whether we allow open borders. We have to get off the fence and decide if fences or walls and borders make good neighbors or not. I am a member of that ever-dwindling body of believers who reason that if there weren’t borders, then there jolly-well needn’t be a country.

But, if you want a country, you need to have a border. Perhaps that is too subtle for the Left. If human zygotes are left in the freezer, that’s murder. Perhaps that’s too subtle for the Right. But Left or Right, we have to make a decision between the lesser evil. Since borders are man’s and babies are God’s, I know which side of the fence I stand on.