I Did Not Vote

On Nov. 4 I was going into Quincy House to grab a quick lunch when a couple with a sandwich board stopped me at the front gate. “Are you going in to vote?” the woman asked me. I told her I wasn’t American as I rushed past. “What did he say?” her partner asked her. “He doesn’t want to vote,” the woman responded dismissively.

The truth is international students here have been very interested in this election, as has the entire world. Obamamania is responsible for a part of it: Dial a random international number and you can probably hear the story of Barack Obama’s childhood. But the real reason this American election has received so much global attention is because the last eight years we have reminded us once again of how explicitly American policy can affect the lives of people who have no say in American politics.

A lot of these far-reaching policies pass under the radar here. The 2002 U.S. Farm Bill supported by the Bush administration, for example, increased agricultural subsidies. The Federal Reserve also decreased interest rates, leading people to invest more in agricultural commodities. Both factors have been cited as reasons for the crisis of world food prices that began last year.

The immense impact of American Middle Eastern policy and the two wars in which this country is engaged is self-evident. And if you want to see the international effect of the subprime mortgage crisis, just talk to a poor Icelander.

So, even as a foreigner, I could not help but get caught up in the excitement surrounding this election cycle. I have spent the past year and a half looking at results from the primaries, gazing at red and blue maps, sitting through every debate and convention speech, and worshipping Nate Silver. Since freshman fall I have been engaging in dinner table discussions with all my American friends, talking about the working-class white vote in Pennsylvania as though I grew up in Scranton.

Last month, however, when people around me started mailing in their absentee ballots and flashing I-just-voted smiles, I was reminded that no matter how many times I refresh the Huffington Post homepage ultimately I have no say. This was not my election.

But what if it was? Even The Economist has raised the idea that the whole world should have a say in the U.S. Presidential election, presumably because the American President’s decisions have such a huge impact across the globe.3 It is a far-fetched proposal but an interesting thought. Take this, for example: In 1968, America chose Richard Nixon as president. In 1971, despite Congressional objections, Nixon actively provided arms, ammunition, and political cover to the Pakistani Government while it carried out what an American official in Dhaka described as “genocide” in present-day Bangladesh. Even according to Henry Kissinger, the President’s decision was not really influenced by Cold War realpolitik so much as by a fondness for Pakistan’s military ruler at the time. Nixon’s foreign policy may have helped to kill as many as three million people. Many more fled to India as refugees, mostly to my home city of Calcutta, dragging the already over-burdened economy to near-collapse and fostering the image of Calcutta as the city of the destitute. I wonder if Nixon would have won re-election in a landslide if all these people had a say in 1972.

The truth is, the “all these people” of the world will never have a say in American politics, and so we pay ever closer attention to the thoughts of the American electorate.

To all those who went in to Quincy House to vote two weeks ago, you just helped pick the person we will all look towards to lead the global effort on everything from climate change to Darfur.

As for me, I am looking forward to my country’s general election next May. In all probability I will help re-elect the Member of Parliament from my constituency, a gentleman who happens to be—listen up American Right!—both Muslim and a socialist.



Rajarshi Banerjee ’11 lives in Currier House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.