I’ve never been motivated to volunteer in a political context, but I feel like I have to in 2020. Voting and donating aren’t enough.
I live in Illinois, but literally minutes from the Wisconsin line. It’s occurred to me that, instead of volunteering in my safely blue district and state, I can work with Wisconsin organizations to promote voter registration and turnout and help the Dem presidential candidate win a crucial swing state.
Friends with whom I’ve shared this idea, however, say it’s unethical to live in one state and work to affect political outcomes in another.
Voter turnout, anywhere, is a good thing. Working to increase voter turnout, anywhere, is a good deed. Choosing what good deeds to spend your limited time and energy on is just good sense.
In all seriousness, what is the argument for it being unethical? I can’t fathom how it’s unethical.
That’s like saying promoting women’s rights in Saudi Arabia is unethical. Or promoting freedom of the press on Myanmar is unethical.
I ‘guess’ some people may claim that you need to place your home first. But your home isn’t the issue. Your home has voters, the nearby states need voters.
I live in New York City. I have friends that volunteered for Hillary Clinton. They went door to door in New Jersey, encouraging voter registration as well as promoting their candidates. NJ was much less of a sure thing so there was more value in working there.
Their argument is that it’s messing around in someone else’s business – that it’s up to Wisconsin Democrats to win Wisconsin, and we Illinoisans should keep our noses out of it. One friend asked, “Wouldn’t you be pissed if a bunch of Indiana Republicans came around here campaigning for R candidates?”
That still isn’t a good argument. For one thing we are all Americans so I don’t know why that’d be bad.
I live in Indiana. The only reason my state went blue in 2008 was because a bunch of Obama volunteers from Illinois came over here and helped. We were grateful for the help, it turned Indiana blue for the first time in decades.
Also that’s like saying it wrong for western Europe and North American to try to stop human rights abuses in the middle east.
This argument makes some sense when you are talking strictly about a local issue that can’t reasonably have an impact on you. “Should they add a streetlight at 4th and Main in Kenosha?” Well unless you visit Kenosha and drive through that intersection, really not your business.
But when you are talking about potentially influencing who will be president of the U.S., or the makeup of the U.S. House and Senate, it absolutely is your business, and the outcome will have a direct impact on you.
I suppose that argument might hold water if you’re talking about issues that are theoretically strictly state issues. For example, suppose your neighboring state legislature was getting ready to vote on expanding casino gambling options. Maybe you have concerns about how their passing of such a measure could cause tax revenue and consumer spending to flee from your home state and over the border. Maybe you like the idea of a casino and want to support the idea. If your home state can’t get around to passing the appropriate legislation, more power to you neighbors.
No matter how you feel about your neighbor’s proposed gambling legislation, there are going to be some residents of your neighboring state that wouldn’t take kindly to your involvement in what they see as their business.
Promoting registration and turnout is a non-partisan activity and should be encouraged by all parties. The opposite of encouraging it would be discouraging it and I find that to be the unethical behavior.
Promoting a specific nominee is a partisan activity and wether it’s ethical or not I could see supporters of the opposing party not that thrilled about it and I probably wouldn’t be either.
That happens to me regularly at work. (Not hard core campaigning, more like the attempted spread of MAGA!) In Illinois, not far from the “Illiana” line. I ask those concerned Hoosiers why they don’t express more gratitude to the State that provides them with a job. (And they walk away muttering under their breath about taxes.)
Yeah, kinda… don’t forget our good friend the Electoral College. The election in this case* is* a local one. Voters aren’t voting for president, they are choosing Presidential Electors to represent Wisconsin in the EC.
That being said, I struggle to find an ethical issue with folks campaigning or otherwise helping out with political races outside their own state/city/county/etc. The biggest reason is the First Amendment. E.g. an Illinois citizen might be concerned about traffic safety in general and a friend in Kenosha asks for her help in pushing for a new traffic light (yeah, I switched hypotheticals. Sorry).
It’s like a person joining a protest in another locality. Free speech.
My region of the country has more than its share of civil rights heroes, but they won their gains with the help of Northerners who came down, on at least two memorable occasions, to help cement the rights of Southerners. I’m pretty happy when out-of-staters come lend a hand in the fight for civil rights.
Just wanted to thank everyone for their responses. Based on your advice, I’m going to follow my gut and volunteer in Wisconsin to promote turnout – and do whatever else is takes to win the state for the Dem presidential candidate.
Hope they can put up with this Bears fan in Packer country!
Also, the notion that it’s wrong to work to affect political outcomes in another state - well, it would be swell if the Koch Brothers stuck to Kansas politics, and Sheldon Adelson was content with being a kingmaker in Nevada. But it ain’t happening, so we folks who can’t set up entire organizations to mess with political outcomes in states across the country have every right to do what little we can.
Also, our system is set up so that, at least in the Presidential election, the only states that matter are the 10-15 states within shouting distance of being winnable by either party. I live in Maryland, which went Democratic by >700,000 votes in 2016, and there’s no reason for the GOP to even bother spending time in Maryland: if they could close that gap by 200K votes, it would mean nothing. Same would be true for the Dems in Tennessee, which went for Trump by >650K votes in 2016.
Yet we all are stuck with whoever wins the election. So there’s nothing unethical about our doing things that will in some small way affect the outcome that affects us as much as it does.
I live in New York and have spent time campaigning for candidates here at home. But I’ve spent more time canvassing in Pennsylvania, mostly but not exclusively in presidential races. I figure it’s been a couple of weeks, all in all, over the last fifteen years or so. I’ve also campaigned in Massachusetts, and once in Illinois (I was visiting and got roped into helping a local candidate). No one has ever suggested to me that I am doing something unethical, and in fact various campaigns have encouraged me to come cross state lines and help out. I’m a little surprised that anyone would see it as an ethical lapse.
(For the record, I do try to blend in; I bought myself a Phillies t-shirt once while going door-to-door in Philadelphia. It seemed to help.)
I hope you will go to Wisconsin! And I do plan to go back to Pennsylvania. Maybe between the two of us…
They already do. Last election a bunch of the surrounding R Governors put out an ad “thanking” the Democratic Illinois Speaker for supposedly driving businesses to their states.
The will of the people exercised through the voting process is the heart of a true democracy. How can promoting voter turnout be unethical? I just can’t see it.
